Happy Leap Day!

I guess to make use of  this long short month I've been a scrapping fiend. Or maybe it's just that Miss Mint has been out-doing herself with new products that I just can't stop scrapping with! Or maybe it's because I've been having fun playing with my new camera and just have to do something with this {better} pictures of my sweet children. Anyway, here are some layouts using He Loves:

Credits Here

Credits Here

That second was for a blind scraplift challenge and I am in LOVE with how it turned out! I strayed a little bit from the instructions, but challenges are there to inspire us to scrap, and boy this one did!

And now, prepare to be amazed, because Miss Mint just released Disney-inspired kits, and they are on a HUGE sale! Seriously if you buy the whole bundle it's 40% off! Or you can pick and choose what you want depending on your pictures, but these kits are amazing!

Be sure to check out this huge collection of new products, because you will be amazed. And they are so versatile. And I got more pages done from our Honeymoon album, which is one of the first projects I started when I started digi scrapping. It's been fun returning to those pre-children memories.

Credits Here

Credits Here

Credits Here

And along with the regular Disney Kit she released a Princess Kit, for pictures of Princesses.

Credits Here

Don't you just love that little squish face? Ok, so maybe I'm just a little biased. But seriously, check out those chunky thighs!

And in other news, Leap Day has brought us some real snow in New England. I grew up in the desert, so this practically snow-less winter has seemed a little too normal for me. I think tomorrow we may just have to build Frosty the Snowman (who definitely made another appearance today).

Valentine's Day

I've never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day. I've always felt that it was such a commercial holiday that makes light of real loving relationships. And once it's so commercialized that it's all about the presents, if you don't get anything special, then you're left feeling unloved.

My husband hated that in high school, so he made big heart cookies for all of the girls he thought were great (even if they had boyfriends), because it didn't have to be about romantic love, but even the love that's in friendship.

Luckily his feelings on Valentine's Day have rubbed off on me, and I'm not such a bitter hater anymore. Or am I just a hypocrite on the other side now? Either way, he printed out a bunch of pictures of our kids with some cheesy cute valentines to hand out to people at work, and I was feeling bad that I hadn't scrapped one for him to give out, so I decided to up my game and really make my kids the cute Valentine's clothes I was planning. Luckily they were done before he surprised me with a mid-day ice cream date, so he got the preview. I had trouble getting a good photo because it was just about time for Oliver to go down for a nap, and Camilla is still pretty unsteady, not to mention Oliver kept pushing her over. Regardless, I loved these pictures and had to scrap them right away. Can you tell that I LOVE Miss Mint's Lovebird kit?!

Love

I attempted making the Love tag look like letterpress, from a tutorial I saw on Pinterest. I think it's still a work in progress, but I was happy enough to post it. That font is really cute, and I found it via the challenges at Peppermint Creative.

I was inspired to make the clothes by Ashley from Make It and Love It. Random fact is that I found out after following her blog for awhile that I actually know her, and her mom was my kindergarten teacher. I still big puffy heart love her blog!Anyway, I kind of mixed and matched tutorials to come up with my own thing. I started out with 2 shirts on clearance and now have some totally cute clothes that can be worn for more than just Valentine's day. I gave Oliver the choice between a monster (like Ashley did) or a robot, and he chose robot. But wearing the robot shirt that he was so excited about, he started whining that he wanted a monster shirt. Typical 2 year old. ;) Camilla is adorable with all of those ruffles, if I do say so myself!

A New Start

Do you ever have about a million ideas, but don't know where to start? That's how I am with this blog. I feel silly posting things when I haven't posted for sooo long, and I haven't even made a custom header yet, so I just don't go anywhere. I've had a lot of thoughts as of late, though, so why not get started, eh? I'll start simple by posting some of my latest pages. Click the links for credits.

Happy Birthday!

Frosty the Snowman

Can you tell my son is obsessed with Frosty the Snowman? Too bad we've had almost NO snow this winter!

Miss Mint has some new Valentines products out that I am absolutely in LOVE with, and can't stop scrapping with! 

Para tu Amor

Sometimes Matthias is far more romantic than I am. I always feel like some cheesy mushy girl if I try to write down my feelings, so I love scrapping pictures of us with our songs. Music speaks far better than I do, and it means a lot to both of us.

Pea Face

I took this picture because she was just being so adorable, and Matthias thought he'd seen that picture before...so I scrapped this page for memory's sake. And this picture was perfect for the Paper to Digi Challenge that I am hosting.

Pea Face

Best Friends Love

I love catching the little moments where my kids just melt my heart. Those moments make all of the messes and screaming and whining worth it, so I make a point to remember them. Do you like this page? If so, make sure and catch the FREE template I made for it for the Peppermint Creative PMP Template Challenge!

PMP Template Challenge

It will be free for the month of February, and if you use it, make sure check out the link so that you can enter it into the challenge for the chance to win a $5 gift card.

Also, Miss Mint created a whole new product inspired by my template! I may have just shrieked a little bit when I found out. It's on sale, along with all of her new Valentine's goodies, so go check it out!

Epoxy Heart Templates

I've got another couple of pages in the works, but I have a lot on my plate right now so I probably won't get them done for a week or two.

Getting Started with Digital Scrapbooking

The other day I went to Michaels in search of some craftiness for the kids at church to make for their mothers.  I had so much trouble figuring out what to buy, and I was shell-shocked by the prices, and the fact that once a pretty paper was used up, it was used up for good.  Also, where would I be if I couldn't resize or recolor my papers and elements, so that I could use the same kit over and over again without anyone noticing?  I am definitely a digital girl who doesn't understand much about the paper scrapbooking world.  After taking a peep down the scrapbooking aisles, looking at and touching all of the pretty papers and elements, I knew more than ever that I should stick to digital for my own sanity.  I just can't imagine finding a trinket that I love and only being able to use it once.  That or pay $2 again.  I'm too cheap, and I'm definitely afraid of the permanence of scissors and glue because I make mistakes all of the time (that because I'm cheap too and don't want to waste anything).

So I spend a lot of my time sharing my love for digital scrapbooking, and since my pages have been getting better (or at least the pictures of my babe are getting cuter), I've had a lot of people asking about it as of late, so here are the basics to getting started with digital scrapbooking:

First step:  Find your program!

The main feature that you need in a program for digital scrapbooking is a graphics program that works with layers.  Layers make it so that you can move your elements and papers individually and move them in front and in back of each other, just like you would with the physical items.

Photoshop seems to be the most popular program.  I use Photoshop Elements v.6.  You can download a free trial of their latest version here.  Photoshop Elements is the less-expensive and easier to use version of Photoshop.  Many people will never feel the need for anything more, and for the average digital scrapbooker, PSE is the way to go.  Also, you can frequently find it on Amazon.com for around $60 or even less, just keep an eye out.

When I started I used an open-source program called Paint.NET.  It does the job, and got me hooked into digital scrapbooking, but it's definitely not as sophisticated as PSE and runs a lot slower.  I've heard that Gimp is really good, and it's a free download as well.

Second step:  Get some digital products. 

Another cool thing about digital scrapbooking is that many artists offer freebies.  They do this so that you can sample their work, and hopefully fall in love with it so you buy from them.  There are a LOT of bad freebies out there, so don't feel bad deleting something if you don't think you will use it.  Most likely you won't (I sure haven't), and if you do, you'll probably remember where you found it in the first place.  Digital scrapbooking has come a LONG way from its beginning.  Everything used to look digital.  Now a lot of papers and elements are the real elements scanned in, so they look real.  In my opinion, the best pages look like they could be real.

Some good freebies can be found at:
Peppermint Creative (she posts a new one every couple of months or so.  I love her work!)
GG Digital Designs (she posts one about every month.)
Shabby Princess (she posts one whenever she feels like it.  Her latest is really cute!)
Kevin and Amanda have free handwriting fonts (and others) to add a bit of a personal touch to your layouts.

Also my friend Megan was designing for almost a year and a half, and you can find some freebies on her blog.  She is the one who introduced me to digi scrap, and her blog is an amazing resource for all things digi.

Third step:  Start scrapping!

Get to know your move and transform tools and your layers palette, and you'll pretty much be there.  Then you just need to learn drop shadows and you've got the basics.  Then you can go on to learning clipping masks, recoloring,

Open a new page that is 12"x12" at 300 dpi (or ppi), which is the same as 3600x3600 pixels.  You want the 300 ppi resolution so that when you print it'll still be good quality.  I've never printed a 12"x12" book, but it's really easy to reduce your layouts for printing without losing quality (enlarging will reduce the quality).

Good luck and happy scrapping!  Always feel free to ask me any questions!

Zip Files

Hopefully on Saturday you picked up that free kit from DST. (If not, it's still available. I checked!) It is a collab kit from the designers at Scrap Matters, which means that they all made up some parts to make up the whole kit. Collabs (short for collaborations) are a great way to see how you like a lot of designers for a low price.

The link I sent you to had you download the DST Insider (which is a free monthly magazine they put out), and a Coupon Catalog for the iNSD sales. Neither of those are the free kit though! Did you check out the download files within the PDFs? There were 6 downloads in each, for a total of 12.

Parts 1-6: DST Insider Page 31
Parts 7-12: iNSD Coupon Catalog Page 6

The easiest way to download your files is to create a Scrapbooking folder somewhere on your computer (I put mine on my desktop), and then to have sub-folders for stores/designers. Downloading it in an organized manner makes it a lot easier to find what you want later, and it's a lot easier to credit the supplies you use (which is required if you want to post your pages online). I saved all of my files in my DST folder (although since it's a Scrap Matters Collab it would fit there as well).

Understanding how to use Zipped Files:

A Zipped file (also known as a compressed file) will have an icon like this:

Compressed files are used to package up files in a way that they are smaller and easier to download.  However, using your digital files when they are within a compressed folder isn't very nice, so luckily Windows has a built-in unzip tool.  Simply right click on your zip file and choose Extract All...

A box will pop up asking you where you want the extracted files to go.  I generally save my compressed files in the folder that I want them to go, so I simply delete the generic file name that they give me.  This time I wanted to create a new folder to keep all of the collab together, so I simply replaced the last string of the breakdown with "Lifes Little Surprises".

Once you've unzipped a couple of files and learned how they work, you will find a system that works for you.  Also, Windows helps you along by not letting you copy over files or folder, but allows you to merge them together, meaning it won't copy redundant files, but will add the new ones to the folders associated.

Once I'm done extracting all of the files, I then delete the zip files.  Zip files are more liable to corruption because of the mumbo jumbo that goes on during compression, and because scrap files are mostly pictures, they don't get very compressed anyway.

I hope this helped!  Let me know if I missed anything or if you have any questions!

iNSD

Saturday is {inter}National Scrapbooking Day.  Do you know what that means?  Amazing sales, tons of freebies, and games with prizes all weekend long!  I'll try to compile a list and keep updating it for you so that you know of the places that at least I'd like to go.  If you see anything that should be added, please link me up!  In alphabetical order:

Digi Shop Talk - TONS of events in the forums sponsored by all kinds of designers, including this HUGE free kit: 

 You will have to download a couple of free PDF's to get the links.  This would be a great way to find someone new, and LOTS of freebies are posted.  They have a huge list of all of the sales going on, but I just wanted to list the ones that I've personally bought from before.

GG Digital Designs - 30% off her whole store, and her grab bag looks like it'd be amazing for mommas with boys.  Sale lasts through May 6.

The Lily Pad - Will be having tons of activities and sales going on throughout the weekend.  Check out their May BYOC Special too.  Check out their blog hop for freebies from all of the designers (you only have to actually friend 2 of them).

Peppermint Creative - Will have a huge create your own sale (by spending money you save more money).  Also there is an iNSD template challenge (aka free template AND a chance to win $5).

Scrap Orchard - They have a Farmer's Market where you can buy TONS of kits for only $1 (April 29-May 2), and if you check out their forum they will be having freebies and fun events all day long on Saturday (May 1).

Sweet Shoppe Designs - Check their blog for the big announcement about everything,  Basically 35% off everything, a free kit with a $10 purchase, some coupons, as well as some good tips to make iNSD pleasant for you (and the shoppes) on such a busy day for all of the servers.  They also have some really fun activities in their forum that earn you contest entries as well as points toward a future coupon if you do their monthly challenge portfolio.

And as always, my main go-to for scrapbooking is my good friend Megan Turnidge, who introduced me to digital scrapbooking.  She just stopped designing (totally disappointing, but I understand), but she's a great source for beautiful scrappy goodness.  Check out her blog to see what she bought.  She found more deals than I did at first glance.

I'll try to update this as I hear more.  Make sure and check out designer blogs and forums for lots of freebies, coupons, specials, contests, etc. 

Have fun!