Pie Charts

I've seem a few pie-charts in scrapbooking layouts and kits lately. I loved this kit by Paislee Press and One Little Bird - the pie chart described my son almost perfectly. I only swapped mischievieous with adventurous, because my boy has plenty of mischief but is not very adventurous.

* Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye

* Pie Chart and Legend: For the Record by Paislee Press and One Little Bird @ oscraps.com

*Letter Stickers: Basic Grey

* Rubbons, Washi tape, Post it (orange)

* Die Cuts: my own, using the Silhouette Cameo

The top right hand side was looking a bit bare so I added a strip of washi tape. Then I covered some of the red hearts with orange handcut ones.

Clearing the backlog

This was half-finished for weeks, while i was trying to figure out what was missing.

* Digital Elements: Karla Dudley (paper, page protector), Shimelle Laine (November word art), Ali Edwards(quote)

* Mists: Studio Calico

* Pattterned Paper: October Afternoon (yellow), My Mind's Eye(blue)

* Rub-ons:

*Ticket stub: SEI

Finally I decided to add the embellishment of the moment: confetti! But the paper punch was upstair and I was too lazy to get it - I used a much bigger circle punch instead. Also added some faux stitching. The stitching is a old rub-on, love when I find uses for old stash!

The photos are in a digital page protector, when I saw this in Karla Dudley's blog I couldn't resist - I usually don't like digital elements which emulate real-life stuff, but this is very cool!

Red and White Christmas

Do you know when sometimes you get all crafty and bloggy after a long dry spell?

Well, that's me at the moment. I want to use at least a bit of my energy to get started with the Christmas decorations. We didn't do much decoration last year, but I want to put a little bit of effort this year and it is going to be all red and white. Except the tree decorations which will have all the colours of the rainbow as always.

Before  December, I always bring down a banner with little booties numbered from 1 to 24 and fill it tiny chocolate pieces for the children, our version of the advent calendar. But it was always a pain to find something small enough to fit 2 in each boot. And when I found it would always be unwrapped do I had to wrap 48 tiny bits of chocolate with tin foil. Boring! This year I decided that for this amount of trouble, I could so something crafty at least. That's what I did:

The circles are from a digi kit to which I added the numbers and punches. The little bags are sandwich bags. The original bags were too big, so I had to cut then into 4 smaller ones. Of course when I cut, I had to glue the bottom and sides again which took a while, but still I enjoyed making them.

And the photo is an entry for project 365.

Back into Craftland and freebie giveaway continued.

A couple posts ago I offered some Halloween scrapbooking stash, and the winner  :-)  is Grá, I didn't have to have a draw for this one. Grá, please contact me at elisamayn at yahoo dot com with your address so I can post you the stash!

My another giveway is My Memories Suite which I posted here. It is a fabulous prize and I'll wait a little bit more to announce the winner. Put a comment in the original post to have a chance!

Here's another digi I made with My Memories Suite, using a ready made template, I only changed the title of the layout. It traces the change in my daughter's outfit from the last 3 Halloween nights. She wanted to be scary and  she chose her outfit; a vampire; and I let her do her own make up. I have to admit it was a little bit too creepy for me, but she was happy.

As for paper and glue, I am also making some Christmas stuff, some cards like this one:

I'll post my remaining cards in my other blog next week.

Have a great weekend!

Digital Scrapbooking Software Giveaway!!!

Happy Digital Scrapbooking Day!

I have a great and fitting giveaway for Digital Scrapbooking Day; a fabulous sofware called My Memories Suite!

A few weeks ago, I was asked to review it and give a copy to one of my readers.  As a hybrid scrapper; that is one that like to use digital elements to real life pages; I jumped at the opportunity. 

My background is in IT, so I think that sofware should be easy to use so I just started using as soon as I installed it. I was amazed on how easy it is was to create a whole album from scratch. There are tons of templates; with styles to suit all tastes.

My own style veers towards clean and simple; so I choose one of the simplest ones - but there are lots of quirk and colourful ones too. One that caught my eye was the baby one; I think I might have to make one for a friend who had a baby girl recently.

One thing that My Memories Suite have to accomplished is to have ways to create an album very quickly while at the same time allowing you to have as much control as you want. In one hand you can create a 30+ page album in one step and upload all your photos in another step.  Or alternatively; you can pick each page style one by one; or even create your own style. And choose which photos go where by using the drag and drop.

Because I didn't read the online manual it took me a while to find out how modify each photo (eventually most of the things I wanted were in crop and effect tools). Under effects I found a few basic tools like making the photo lighter; darker; black&white; etc. Crop  allowed me to move a photo within the frame. The think I missed was how to resize the photo while keeping the frame intact.

There are a number of background papers, embellishments to choose from, as well as a big array of text effects available. However, since I already have a great amount of digital papers and elements, I wanted to know if I could use them. The answers was YES. There's probably other ways to do it, but the easiest I could find was to upload them as photos.

This is a quick album I created this evening - I used a pre-designed album in My Memories Suite and used the option to add the photos automatically. My only design choice was to add a few doodles and word art by Karla Dudley which I had already in my laptop. And then I exported in movie format which I am sharing with you. Easy peasy!
 

There's more cool features which I didn't review here, like the ways you can make your album interactive. I think an album in a DVD would make a great Christmas present for the family. I am envisaging adding a Christmas message from my children to their grandparents. Maybe I could record them singing a Christmas carol and add it to the album too?

This is my evaluation of the software:

PROS: This is a great software to make an album with interactive features or a quick traditional album to be shared online or to be printed.
It is easy to use and flexible.

CONS: Not many, but it is bulky and takes a while to install and to run the first time.  Some features, like ordering a calendar are only available to US and Canada customers.

I am pleased to say I was given a Share the Memories code that provides a $10 discount off the purchase of the My Memories Suite Scrapbook software and a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store - $20 value!). The code is STMMMS32678.

My Memories website also has digital scrapbooking kits, which of course can be used on its own or with My Memories Suite. If you'd like to put your name in the hat for a chance to win My Memories Suite; leave a comment telling me which is your favourite Christmas kit from My Memories.

Digital layout

This is something I have meaning to do for ages, a photo collage. It's been in the back of my mind since I saw a digital template by Paislee Press a while ago. Then there was this amazing layout by Susan Weinroth.

Finally, after a few false starts, I decided to spend a couple of nights selecting the photos and then adding to the template. They are all photos of my two kiddies taken in 2010 and they are the opening for that year in my project 12 album.

Thank you Liz Tamanaha (a.k.a. Paislee Press). Without her freebie I don't think I would have ever finished this project. Can you imagine resizing and cutting 74 tiny photos?!

I printed the template 10x10 and stuck it into patterned paper but with hindsight I should have done all digitally, I love this zigzag paper which belongs to the same kit as the butterflies.

* Digital Template: Press Plate No. 25 by Paislee Press @ Oscraps.com
* Photoshop actions: Falling for b&w by My Four Hens 
* Background paper (resized), butterfly and word art:  Twenty Twenty by Karla Dudley @ Design House Digital
* Font: Century Gothic

My little reader and March Summary

She loved that we read stories to her every night before going to bed. Since both her parents love to read too, I assumed that as soon as she became a proficient reader, she'd read books too.

But it wasn't the case, we'd buy books for her, go to the library with her. And occasionally, if we insisted, she'd read a book. One of the thin, silly ones, about fairies and the likes. It drove me insane, how could a girl with a pile of books to read say she was bored and had nothing to do? Surely, you have a BOOK??!!!

Then I found some books I thought she'd like, her goodmother gave her one. And she liked them. Then I bought her a book, the first from a series, to bring with her for our Easter break. She devoured it and we had to go to a bookshop to get the next one from the series. She finished it in one evening so the following day my husband got more 3. During the 5 day break she finished the whole series  but one which we couldn't find .

Going from one extreme to the other in a matter of months.

March's summary layout - I misted the border, I seem to be in a border phase. I think all of my recent layouts have a border, even if it is only implied like the one above, where I left a thin white border around the whole layout.

The pen sketched grid is a digi by Ali Edwards - very simple, one of the things I like about Ali Edwards is that most of what she does are simple and anyone could easily replicate (apart from her fabulous handwriting) but she has an eye to put things together that makes them special and original. I haven't put the list of supplies because I've been  lazy, but Ali's digi is available at Designer Digitals.

Have a good weekend!

Isn't good when...

...when you manage to combine a few good things in one single project?

Like helping to organise her stuff, use old photographs and also contributing a little bit to an appeal? And everything done very quickly?

Well, I was doing my regular tidying-my-children's-bedroom, mumbling why can't they be more tidy, bla bla bla, when it ocurred to me that my daughter usually keeps her bedroom very tidy,that is her bed, the floor and her desk. It is inside the wardrobe that is the problem. So, maybe if I put some labels on where to put what, it would help her to know where things go?

I wanted something pretty - that's when I remembered something I saw in this appeal. I'd bought the quotes kit initially, but now I thought I needed the frames:

And with that, I went to my box of unused photos (test photos, surplus photos that didn't make to the album) and found a few of my daughter's.
I resized the frame to fit the photos, labelled them and printed them out. Then cut around and inside them, put the photos inside, added a bit of cardboard to the back to make it sturdy. And they're done!

I've attached magnetic strips on the back - the ones that were to label tin boxes. And just glued  the one that were to label plastic boxes.

As my son would say, easy peasy lemon squeezy!

{No} Joy :-)

Like last year, I'll be giving a customised 2011 calendar to my immediate family this year. Since Photobox had a special offer until last Thursday, I was rushing trying to sort out the photos for the calendar. For December I wanted to have a photo of my two children with the Santa Hat.

That was the plan. I couldn't get a half decent photo of my son, on his own or with his sister. He'd make faces, cover his head with the hat, turn back, etc etc. So I gave up, and let my children take photos of each other and of me.

Digital layout
*Patterned paper: Delovely by Paislee Press @ Oscraps.com
*Frame: Pictures + Words by Paislee Press @ Oscraps.com
*Word Art: Penned Words::Christmas By Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Font: 2 peas Sailboat @ Two Peas in a Bucket

Journaling:

"Trying to get a decent picture of
you for our 2011 calendar is no
fun, No good photos, only outtakes. But at lease we have
some laughs."

Did I get frustrated? Me? Nooo...

 

Halloween 2009

Made a digi LO using Karla Dudley's Spook kit.

I am not 100% happy with it, I feel it is missing something but every time I attempt to add another element, it feels wrong. So here it is, consider it finished.

* Postage Stamp Frames: Mailing Label Frames by Paislee Press @ Oscraps
* Everything else: Spook Kit by Karla Dudley @ Design House Digital

Yippeee! Look at what I won!

I got this gorgeous Halloween digi kit from Karla Dudley in her new shop at Design House Digital. I am delighted, thank you Karla!

I don't have any excuse now, must scrap last Halloween before this year's arrives.