Cut It Up challenge time!

Hi all!

I hope y'all had a wonderful Turkey day and stuffed yourselves silly!  I know I did - on both counts!  We headed to the in-laws for lunch and then a friend's house afterward for a bit.  So shopping for me as I think all of the stores should stay closed on Thanksgiving!  Plus it ruins the insanity of Black Friday - I liked it better when it ALL started at 4am on Friday.  I was a faithful participant for ages but now it seems lacking.  I can't go out anyway this year as Kevin cannot watch Pezza and I am not bringing her out in that.  She is not a good shopping companion on a normal trip!  The only thing I am planning to do is take advantage of the 50% of entire purchase from noon - 10pm at Michaels.  I have been wanting to add to my acrylic paint stash and those little tubes can run as much as $10+!

Little Miss Pezza Lou Who turned 7 this month (and we all lived to tell about it!)  I decided to go the digital route for her party invitations - easier to mass produce!  I used the It's Your Big Day collection from Sweet Shoppe and put these together:

Then it came time to make her Thank Yous which fit in perfectly to our next challenge over on the Cut It Up challenge blog.

This time I did a hybrid - part digi and part paper layers.  I removed a couple layers on the digi invite and then printed them all out.  I cut them out, Inked the edges and mounted them on turquoise cardstock (I did the same thing with the invites too.)  Next I designed the "Thanks" in MTC and I cut the shadow layer from white and the Thanks layer in pink using my Black Cat cutter.  I inked my edges, adhered them to the card fronts and then added 3 little Pezablings in the bottom right corner.

Prizes up for grabs for the current CIU challenge - $5 gift certificate to Digital Delights by Louby Lou!  So come join us - work on your Christmas thank yous and be ahead of the game!  Don't forget to stop by the CIU Blog to see what the rest of the design team has created!

Digi fun again today - Happy Camers

Hi all!

I have been working unbelievably hard on getting my house cleaned out and organized so I can start re-doing some things...alot of things!  Let me tell you about sweeping with a house full of cats.  We have hard floors on the main level except in the family room so that's a lot of sweeping.  While I am sweeping I have Biscuit chasing the broom, Graham is lying in wait behind and under things and attacking the broom when it gets close enough, meanwhile Bun is chasing the stuff I sweep up and careening through the pile,  Fluffy & Tiger are both laying in areas I am trying to sweep and refusing to move no matter how much I nudge with the broom and when I scooped everything into the dust pan and lifted it to put it in the garbage can and Bubba reaches up and grabs it and knocks it all back on the floor.  REALLY????

Anyway, on to the crafting.  I had told y'all about our last camping trip of the year and you know what I like to work on - my digi album pages.  YEP - i got another 2 page spread done.

I chose several of my fave pics that would represent our love of camping and hiking.

And then I paired it up with an ADORABLE kit from Sweet Shoppe - Happy Campers.  I think the colors and patterns are so perfect for a camping or outdoorsy layout and the embellishments are just so cute!

Beach fun digi pages

Hello friends!

BOY coming back from vacation is hard!  We have lots on our to-do list - unpacking, cleaning up the house, Grocery shopping, school clothes shopping, haircut...  I brought along a pair of long pants for Hollyn when we were camping and when I put them on WOW has she grown.  Everything was still a little big at the end of the winter last year but it is NOT going to work at all for this year.  I had thought we would get away with no shopping!

I have 2 more pages done for my digi brag book to share with you.  I worked on them on my way home Monday. 

These are pics from our trip to Myrtle Beach at the start of the summer.  I used a fantastic collection of digi scrap stuff from the Sweet Shoppe called Heatwave.  It is PACKED full of great stuff and a great deal at only $7.99!

Now the great thing about digi scrapping - if you are not familiar with it - is that it can be done completely from scratch with kits like I usually do it OR you can get templates or even ready made quick pages.

Quick pages are already completely done for you - you just drop in your pictures and you're done.  Most are 12 x 12 but alot of places have them in smaller sizes for mini albums too.  Some 12 x 12 Heatwave quick pages are available too!  EIGHT gorgeous pages of summer fun ready for your pictures!

An in between option is to use templates for your pages.  With templates you have all of the layers in place for your papers, pictures and embellishments BUT you can use whatever digi collection you want - you just drop them into place!  The Sweet Shoppe has lots of templates too!  For the pages above I made my own templates since I am doing 5 x 7 pages not 12 x 12. 

I like doing the pages for my own scrapbooks the traditional way but digi is definitely the way to go when making several albums to give away.  I usually just print them out and bind them with my Bind It All machine but I am thinking of looking in to having them printed through something like Shutterfly so they are an actual bound book.

Now I am off to bed with some allergy meds - the ragweed does me in every year but this year it seems especially bad!

More digi scrapbook pages

Hello everyone!

As you read this we will be on our way back home from another long weekend in our camper. Oh how I love our camper trips (though this one had some grumpy rough spots.) We spent the weekend in Lancaster County - of course now I want to move there. I always want to move where ever it is we visit. I just like to move. But Lancaster is truly spectacularly beautiful. AND I am obsessed with farms - and Amish farms are the best. So of course I made everyone take a buggy ride to tour one. As good as I imagined and then some! And those Amish have quite the setups - these farms are HUGE and don't let the lack of electricity fool you. It' is a misconception. They have PLENTY of power just not from power lines - it's all propane, compressed air, solar, gas, diesel but still power. I also think we need some baby goats - oh so cute!  We had some fantastic meals and hubby even indulged me in a stop at a quilt shop - the handmade quilts were GORGEOUS OMG!  and pricey!  But someone bought one while we were there so they must sell some at least occasionally.  Sunday was supposed to be Dutch Wonderland day for Pezza (a kiddie amusement park) but instead it was looking like a rain day BOO!  We hit a true diner for lunch and then decided to give the amusement park a try anyway since it was only sprinkling here and there and not a full down pour.  We lucked out and it was fantastic!  The park was VERY UNcrowded so no lines or crowds.  Pezza tends toward the dramatic (I know you're all shocked right) so she kept saying stuff was too scary - keep in mind this is a park GEARED for small kids so nothing too crazy.  It was like mini versions of regular rides.  BUT we convinced her to conquer her fears and she went on everything but the larger roller coaster and each time she ended up LOVING it!  Now I am a HUGE ride weenie but since she was doing it I figured I better do it too.  She had me on the log ride THREE times - scares me to death with the straight drop at the end UGH!  So basically we ate diner food, funnel cakes, soft pretzzels and rode puke inducing spinny fly in the air butterfly stomach rides all day.  An awesome time was had by all!  The down side - I was sure we would get rained out and end up going back today so I brought no camera with me - not even my cell phone so NO PICS!  UGH!  We finished it off with daddy teaching her how to fish since our camp site was right on the edge of a stream.

While on the road and during down time in the camper I worked on a few more digi pages for my brag book I am making to pass around to the grandparents:

Again I used some digi collection kits I have had for ages.  I have been collecting them for as long as I have been scrapping but if you are interested in getting some I can at least tell you my fave places to shop - Scrapbook Graphics, Sweet Shoppe, Scrap Girls, Scrapbook Elements & Designer Digitals.  I am sure there are more out there I have not even found!

Do you have a fave store for digi scrap goodies?  Leave me a link in the comments!

Scrapping digi style

Hi all!

On our list of summer fun family fun time this year - the county fair.  Now I haven't checked off everything I put on the list at the beginning but I am doing my best.  Initially we were going to hit OUR county's fair and catch it on demolition derby night - another check mark!  BUT it rained out and we skipped it so we went to the fair in the next county and caught the truck and tractor pull (YEP check mark).  Now I have to say - I was spoiled in San Diego by going to the Del Mar State Fair every year - it was massive and amazing.  This fair...not so much.  I was excited initially looking online at the contest categories for crafts and art and such....yikes.  Pezza was another story.  She has never been to a fair.  We did the buy a bracelet and ride all night option and her and two little friends raced around to do the kiddie rides.  I let her stay until the end (10:00pm) and get an ice cream.  While we were waiting in line she hugged me real tight and told me it was the best thing ever in the whole world and I was the best mom.  Funny how little it takes huh?!?! 

So today I am sharing a layout but not the usual layout.  This one is a digital layout.  Now I know there are some big time digi scrappers out there and they do ALL of their stuff digital.  I am not one of those but oh how I do love to collect it all up!  It is SO much cheaper!  What I do love digi scrapping for - making books for family.  I can send digital photos but they never get printed out or I can send photos and they get tucked away.  There is no way I would manage to do books for all three sets of grandparents but digi is perfect.  I can make a brag book - maybe throw in a few pics customized for each set of grandparents and then print them out and bind them.  I always print my own stuff so I am sure you can do the same basic thing through Shutterfly or something but I don't know anything about that.  I love making my own stuff in Photoshop too.  So here are my first two pages:

 I used a super old set called Sweetie Pie from Ellie Lash and Scrapbook Graphics.  It's not available anymore but they have LOADS of adorable stuff.

I approach my digital pages the same way I do my regular ones.  You can purchase layout templates but I did not find one I wanted to use so I grabbed a sketch I liked on Page Maps and worked from that.  Know what else is nice about these?  Digi pages are easy to bring with me and work on during long car rides!  We have some sort of gizmo my genius hubby knew about that plugs into the car and we have a regular electrical outlet so I can plug in.  I have used our long rides this summer to go through and completely organize all of my photos from the last 3 years so I can get them all scrapped!

Have YOU done any digi scrapping?  Where is your favorite place to get supplies?