It’s time to tell your story so say it in pixels!
Just felt like posting some doggie layouts:
My bonus page for the ADSR:
A fun game of fetch with cardoc that I captured:
And UTD-girl’s dog enjoyed our nice weather with us:
All pages created in ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 beta. When was the last time you scrapped 3 pages within 24 hours of taking the pictures? Click on the artwork for credits. Thanks for looking!
I decided to offer a freebie again! This time I’m giving away a set of brushes…but not just any brushes…these were made in and for ACDSee’s Photo Editor! Just download the file then load it into your Saved Brushes menu by selecting the brush tool then click on the Saved Brushes button on the toolbar. Find the little icon on the right side and click it for a fly-out menu and choose Load Brushes. Then just browse to the location where you saved the file and you’re all set!
Of course, these are for personal use only and please share my blog link if you want to share the brushes. Even though this is an ABR file, it’s not a Photoshop ABR and will not load in other software programs, but why would you need them to? Photo Editor has everything a digiscrapper could want and for a much better price! You can even try it out for 30 days.
And if you like playing with brushes, be sure to check out my ongoing blog series at Digi Scrap Info for more ways to make, convert, and use brushes in Photo Editor!
Happy scrapping everyone!
I finally fixed all my software conflicts and managed to stitch a few video clips together to show off my new puppy and her 8 littermates! The dark brindle girl with white chest and socks is my Saya. Most of the rest of these cuties are available for sale now!
Adultescent (uh-duhl-TES-uhnt) noun
An adult whose activities and interests are typically associated with youth culture.
OK, this new word totally describes my husband. He gets so excited about playing a new video game on his Xbox 360 and organizing paintball games with the other men at church…probably the same guys he plays poker with. He likes his expensive techie-toys and tinkers with cars for a living. OK, he does more than tinker…lots more! But he has never really had to grow up…not really.
Now it’s my turn. The days of mom-hood have dwindled down to the occasional ride to work and just paying bills…I hardly even have to shop for groceries anymore. In a real pinch I can just hand my debit card to the super-responsible one and send her to pick up a few items. It’s true I still do dishes and laundry but not their laundry…just mine and Cardoc’s plus household towels. But the heavy responsibility stuff, the mom stuff, the homeschool stuff, the discipline and guidance stuff…and the taxi service…wow, I feel almost like a teenager again! And now that I’m on a digi dream team…helping out with Connie and Heidi at Digi Scrap Info…I get to play and actually call it ‘work.’ {insert snicker here}
For the next two weeks I get to play games and help with running chats as a part of our First Birthday Celebration at DSI. I’m scrapping and making up challenges to encourage others to scrap and giving away a ton of prizes and I get to call it ‘work.’ {more snickering} A couple of weeks after this party wraps up the third season of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race will start and DSI team-mate Liz and I are teaming up to travel the digi-world as team Lizzy and Dizzy. 
I have my own wish list of tech toys and finally the opportunity to get paid doing what I love with my professional scrapping business. So I just have to say turning 39 isn’t a problem for me! I don’t know what the fuss is about or why people are so afraid of aging. Of course, for me it’s more like anti-aging. I’ve experienced the powerless childhood stage, survived the puberty and teen stages, endured the responsible adult/parent stage…now I get to try this playful adultescent stage and it looks like it’s going to be fun! This year I turn 40. This year I will send one daughter to basic training to start her Air Force career. This year…hopefully…I can move my college daughter to an on-campus apartment. This year I feel blessed.
As much as I try to avoid New Year’s Resolutions, starting off a new year with goals and aspirations in mind is simply unavoidable. It happens to all of us at the beginning of a new calendar year, at major milestone birthdays, and dates that mark significant anniversaries in our lives. I have a biggie coming up in 2008…I’ll be turning 40! But that’s a blog post for another day…lol! Today, I’m posting the title page of a mini album. I picked up Sherri Tierney’s 31 Flavors Cribnotes brag book templates today with my prize coupon…I came in second place for guessing how many pages Sherri finished last year…thanks Sherri (and congrats!) So I was contemplating tonight’s Bible Study for Dummies service at church while unzipping my new goodies and it just clicked. I’ll scrap my homework! I have two choices…I can either do a chapter in Proverbs every day for a month or attempt to read the entire New Testament in the next 30 days. I think it’s obvious which one I’m opting for…and not just because it’s a much easier theme album to put together…lol! So enough talk already…here’s the page:
Credits can be found in my gallery.
At least I’ve managed to ignore all the weight loss drama the TV wants to cram down my throat.
I have spent months sorting supplies, contacting designers, and deciphering confusing and ambiguous Terms of Use documents and I’m done. I’m choosing to spend my time and energy building my new business. So if you design digital scrapbooking kits and your terms and not clear regarding professional use making crafts and scrapping for clients then I simply will not use them. If I have attempted to contact you and not heard back then you don’t want my business. I’m not being mean here, I’m being respectful. In the absence of permission I must presume prohibition. And my limited budget is going toward building my business and purchasing business supplies. Today’s task: clearing all my unusable supplies off my hard drive. I’ll make DVD’s though…if some of those designers change their mind, or get back to me, I’ll be more than happy to reload those kits and use them in my personal and professional scrapbooking projects! I’ll be posting back later with the stats so stay tuned…
UPDATE…
Well, I left a few questionable designer folders alone until I can contact them and some store collaborations where I know at least some of the designers allow S4O…but overall I took just over 9 Gigs of scrapbooking supplies off of my hard drive. I did manage to keep over 15 Gigs though so I’m pleasantly surprised to save over half of my stash! Now I’ll have to dig into my stash and scrap some pages to see if I even miss those 9 Gigs or if I need to do more shopping…lol!
An anniversary gift from DH (our 20th!) she is destined to be my service dog. DH even teared up a little when he saw the page. I can hardly wait to bring her home at the end of January! Isn’t she the cutest?
Well, here’s part one of a layout about my college girl’s car crash. The right half of the layout will have to wait for the x-ray films but it will have more detailed journaling on it. In the meantime, here’s a freebie hospital wristband for your own use. Yummilicious Papers and Faith Stones by Nikki Painter. Stamped alpha is from Dirty Girl by Blythe Evans. Page created in ACDSee’s Photo Editor.
The Scrapbook Design Studio is now open for business!
I have a passion about telling family stories. I love to tell mine through scrapbooking. And I’d love to show you how to scrapbook using your computer. In fact, classes are forming soon in the Garland, Richardson, Plano area or I can conduct private lessons in your home. If you want to learn to create your own memory album I want to show you how.
But I am also ready to design your custom memory album for you. I know how busy you are and the thought of sorting through all those photos seems overwhelming. Contact me today to schedule your consultation and let me do the organizing and designing for you.
Whether you hire a professional or learn to DIY, the important thing is that your precious photos and family stories are beautifully preserved.
And to make it easier than ever to get those photos organized…or if you would like to take a few lessons in digital scrapbooking…click below and grab your 30-day free trial of ACDSee’s Photo Manager and Photo Editor software packages. Or buy them both now for an unbeatable price during the holiday promotion!
I’ve had several requests to update my blog with a post about my progress in tagging my digital scrapbooking supplies in ACDSee Photo Manager. So here we go.
I started out planning to use keywords on the alphas so I didn’t include a category for them in my list but have since reconsidered. My main thinking is to keep things simple and to have a categories list that fits on the right side of my my screen in the organize palette. So when I get ready to begin the much more daunting task of organizing my photo collection I don’t want to face a mile long list of photo categories to scroll through. I’ve decided it would work better for me to use keywords such as family member names and holidays and leave the tagging to the digiscrapping supplies. That said, I didn’t want to tag every file of every alpha so I just tagged the a’s. Well, the A’s and the a’s…some alpha sets have lowercase, some upper only, and a few will have both so I tagged all the A’s of any kind.
The other change I made to my categories list is to create subcategories under templates so I can tag layered file, quick pages, and sketches plus I did one for color swatches. I wish more designers would include color palette files in their kits. As it is used for reference, rather than as an element, I added it as a subcategory under templates.
So I’m actually caught up on all new downloads…an amazing feat after a Digital Scrapbooking Day full of chats and downloads! I’ve finished all tagging of my jpegs so that means previews, papers, paper colors, tou’s, coupons…all of them. Whew! Then I got all of my alphas tagged. I never really did much with those alpha sets in Photoshop but am finding it so fun and easy to use them in Photo Editor I wanted them tagged and ready for searching ASAP.
So, what’s left are the png’s. I did a group by file type and then sorted by file size which made it easy find my QP’s. I had mentioned trying out file name searches for files named by element type but just haven’t brought myself to try it. I know it would be hit or miss as so many designers just name things with kit name and a number, or maybe just the word element and a number. So if I’m going to be scrolling through the whole collection anyway why not just do that in the first place. So here’s a screenshot to show you what I’m talking about:
Besides the obvious…I’m a Faith True fan…notice at the top of the database window. You can collapse the file types you don’t want to look at and just leave open the ones you want to work with. So that’s what you get from ‘grouping by’ file type. Then I did a ‘sort by’ file size and the QP’s are stacked at the bottom and look, the staples all popped to the top. You can see I’ve highlighted them and clicked on the check box next to my fasteners category. You can scroll all the way through the full set and just be sure to hold down the control key when you find another file to add. Work with as large or as small of a group of files as you want. I’ve tagged all my kits for designers named A through E though and it’s going pretty fast. I’ll get the fasteners done, scroll back through looking for fibers, then wordart, etc. But one session per set of folders is all I have the patience for. And I usually highlight four to five letter’s worth of designers at a time. So if I do 5 letters a night I’ll be finished tagging by the end of the week! But don’t hold me to that…real life has habit of getting in the way…it’s just a nice goal…lol!
So that’s my update. Next task after the tagging: photo key-wording? I’ll have to let you know…just writing that made me shudder. Don’t forget, I’m easily overwhelmed!
Kristi's Digital World 