Merry Christmas!!!

I just wanted to stop in really quick and wish you all a Merry Christmas from my family to yours. I ended up making two cards and I couldn't decide with one I liked most. So I'm sharing them both with you.

Holiday Traditions and Word Art by Designs by Kat and 2 in 1 Templates.


I'll be taking the rest of the week off but I'll be back next Monday for a sneak peek of my new releases and I'll be telling you a little bit about some of the new challenges and blog posts I'll be having in 2013.

Hope you all have a wonderful week.
-Liz

My Blurb Book - A Review


It's here! My Blurb book. Some of you were waiting to see it and hear my reviews on it. For those of you who follow me on facebook, you might have seen the little bit of drama that happened with the original book. Okay, it wasn't really drama, because I'm not a drama kind of girl. I think it was a simple mistake that, thankfully, got quickly fixed VERY quickly. I ordered my book on a Friday night and received it on the following Friday morning.  I was so excited. I even waited until nap/rest time (when 4 little girls would be sleeping or reading quietly) to open my book. I really wanted to enjoy it, sit down and look at it peacefully, you know? I opened it up and at first, I loved it. I loved the cover. I loved our name printed on the spine. I opened it up and the first thing I want to look at was the quality of the print, the colors, how my shadowing looked, etc.  At first, I was so excited because I thought it looked great. Then my hubby asks (who is looking over my shoulder, "Why are the pages sideways?" I didn't even notice because I was looking so closely at the page. Yup, every single page was printed sideways. 


I was disappointed. I immediately sent Blurb a message and even sent them a picture of what was wrong. They responded by that evening and told me they had fixed my book and were mailing me a new one! Yay. By that following Thursday, I had my new book in hand and it was perfect! A+ for great customer service.

My Creative Team Member, Tiff (at Dotted with Dots), did a review a while ago and I would say that what she said pretty much sums up what I thought about the quality of the book. Read her post here.

Now I'm just going to show you some pictures of my book.

Here's the spine. I love how I fit 106 pages in that little book. It leaves so much more space on my bookshelves for more scrapbooks! Plus I love how I'll easily be able to identify my album.


Here's my very simple cover page. Once I had uploaded all my pages I realized I needed a cover page. I just wanted to get it done at that point so I had this pretty little Element Cluster from Red Ivy Designs kit called Letter from a Fallen Leaf and I just slapped it on a 12x12 white canvas and added the title.

Simple but sweet.


The binding. Lookin' good.


As in Tiffany's review, you can see the little bit of warp in the book.



This is what you see when you open up the book. The very first page is a grey blank page. That's how they print them.


Here are what some of my double page layouts look like with the white border.


You can see a bit of the white border in the middle but I think it looks fine.


More double pagers.




A single page.


Look at the detail. I love it. Digital can still look real if you ask me.


Another one of my fave double pagers.


This is the first time I've done a family album in a book like this. Usually, I just print the individual 12x12 pages and slide them into a traditional scrapbook. I REALLY like this way. I think I'm hooked.

I've already reaped some of the rewards for my hard work. Well, it's not really hard work because I enjoy digital scrapbooking so much. ;)  I have already seen my girls flipping through the book, smiling and laughing at different pages, saying, "Remember that?"

-Liz

This post contains affiliate links. All opinions are 100% my own.




Some of My November Pages

I'm here to show you some of the pages I scrapped during November. That's right, I'm only showing you some of the pages because I actually finished my 2011 album! Do you remember my goals from the beginning of this year? Here's just a recap: I wanted to finish my 2011 album while still scrapping some of my 2012 photos. For each month of 2012, I scrapped both my 2012 pics from that month and then all of my 2011 pics from that same month. Once I hit November of this year I was so close to finishing my 2011 goal that I just focused on those photos so that I could get my 2011 album printed and have it to pass around at Christmas time. I've ordered my Blurb book (trying this company for the first time) and I'll let you now how I like it once I get it. I did get behind on my 2012 pictures but at least I have a good start to them and I've accomplished one of my goals.

I actually scrapped a total of 31 pages this month! That's a record for me. I'm not going to show you them all because guess what? I actually scrapped a lot of them without templates. I'm planning on turning them all into templates for you all and I kind of want them to be a surprise.

I'm going to be rethinking my goals for 2013. I know I want to finish Lydia's album, finish up 2012 and scrap 2013 photos as well. Plus there were some other special albums I'm wanting to work on. I'll have to figure out what might be realistic for me and my life of 4 girls, homeschooling, and running a small business. 

Well, enough of that. Let's get on to the fun part. Here are some of my pages.



 12x12 Frames and The Great Outdoors the Bundle by WMSquared.

Photo Mats and Fall Splendor the Bundle by WMSquared

Photo Mats & Fall Splendor the Bundle by WMSquared

Photo Mats and Great Outdoors the Bundle by WMSquared

Photo Mats and Delightful Bundle by Megan Turnidge

I used the template that was part of this weekend's MIS (it will be available in the store soon)
and We Wish You a Merry Christmas by Chelle's Creation

Using the free template on my facebook page and Christmas Cheer by Tracie Stroud and the alpha is Crazies by Kristen Rice.

All of the above are part of my 2011 album and here are some of my 2012 pictures. Yes, I even scrapped some of my 2012 photos!

This template was from my SO November Challenge Template. It'll be available in the store soon. The kit is a retired SO collab kit.

Photo Mats and It's All Good Bundle by Bella Gypsy

Label Templates and County Bounty Bundle by Dream Big Designs

Photo Mats and Falling by Bella Gypsy
Hopefully, I'll be getting my Blurb book soon and then I can show it to you all.
-Liz

Combining Layers - Template Tutorial


I've had a few of you ask me how to place one photo on multiple photo layers on a template. So I thought it was about time for another video tutorial. I also posted some written instructions below and a few sample pages. I hope this will help you try something new with your digital scrapbook pages.

Combining Photo Layers







Here's the page by Lenka that I used in my video.
Label Templates by Scrapping with Liz
Today Makes Me Happy by Captivated Visions

Here's another page by Lenka. She combined some of the triangle layers together so she could easily clip one paper to make a pattern.

Santa's Little Helper Papers by Kristin Aagard Designs
Santa's Little Helper Elements by Kristin Aagard Designs
SO November Challenge Template by Scrapping with Liz
And here's a page by me. I combined three photo layers her. This photo worked perfectly in these three spots.

Using Fancy Templates
and Beauty from Within by Megan Turnidge
-Liz

My October Pages

What a whirlwind of a month! We've been enjoying our first month with our newest little girl. Plus we took a quick trip to Florida for a family wedding. As you can imagine I have LOTS of photos to scrap. I did manage to get a little scrapping in between all the memory making, but I'm definitely not caught up on my 2012 goals. That's okay because I did get a few really meaningful pages scrapped.

I'll go ahead and get to it and show you what I scrapped. I started with some pages about our adoption journey. This one is about the changes we saw in Lydia in just one week.

I used Art and Soul Bundle by Tracie Stroud
You'll be seeing this page made into a template very soon. Look for it in November!
This was our second day with Lydia. See that cute little smirk on her face? It's like she knew she officially belonged to us!
Up Close and Personal Templates
and Perfect to Me by Bella Gypsy
A China page.

Up Close and Personal Templates
and Leavin' On a Jet Plane by Laura Banasiak and Jenn Barrette
and Great Escape by WMSquared.
 Here's a page about the BEST part of our whole 19-month long adoption process. Being home. Together.
Art and Soul Bundle by Tracie Stroud (I LOVE this kit!)
I'm including this page for you all. My 10 year old scrapped this one just a week after we were home. She also took the photos!
Art and Soul Bundle by Tracie Stroud
and you'll also be seeing this template soon!
 Here's a page I scrapped of the girls playing in our backyard. They were enjoying all the fallen leaves.
Using Roots and Leaves by the Scrap Orchard Designers
This template is included in the kit!
Here's one from my daughter's 10th birthday.She wanted to go bowling with her friends. I got some cute poses of her.
This template is an oldie but a goodie. I revised it a little and it'll be FREE as part of my November Template Challenge on my blog! So keep your eyes out for that.
Using Lucky Lanes by Ziggle Designs
Here are a few pages from the wedding we went to in Florida. I had a lot of fun scrapping these pictures I took.


Using Fancy Templates
and Beauty from Within by Megan Turnidge
Here's a bunch of pictures that my sister-in-law took. We discovered them as we were looking at our pictures after the wedding. We thought it was funny that there were so many with me in the background snapping photos.

Using Miscellaneous Templates II
Click by Scrap Orchard Designers
Beauty from Within by Megan Turnidge
And finally, here's a beach page I scrapped this weekend. It's one of my faves!
Using Recyclables 4
and Encinitas by mle Card, Tracie Stroud and Krystal Hartley

That's it for this month. I'm pretty happy with the variety of pages I scrapped. What did you scrap?
-Liz

That's So Me!

The family and I went to Florida this past weekend for a beach side wedding. Thus no sneak peek, giveaway or new products this coming week. Don't worry though, next week I'll have some brand new stuff for you! 

Two of my girls were flower girls in the wedding. It was beautiful.  Needless to say I got a bunch of photos that I can't wait to scrap.  My SIL and I were browsing our photos from the day and she came across these:

Using Miscellaneous Templates II
Click by Scrap Orchard Designers
Beauty from Within by Megan Turnidge

There were a few, (okay, a bunch!) of me in the background snapping away. We both laughed. It was too funny not to scrap. It totally shows who I am and why you can hardly ever find me in a photo.

-Liz



Announcing......

Using Other Side of Crazy and This Side of Crazy by Amanda Heimann
Fonts used: Josephina Slab, Lobster 2 and Caviar Dreams
I edited the original announcement for this blog post.

I made an announcement for our newest addition. I thought I would share it with you since you all played a big roll in helping us fund our adoption. I have a little confession to make. As I sat down to write this blog post I was editing the original to leave off some personal info and I realized I completely made a huge typo. It was too late. I had already ordered my prints, addressed the envelopes, put stamps on them and put them in the mailbox. Oh well, I'm sure it's something that Lydia and I will laugh over in the years to come.

I ordered 4x6 prints on pearl cardstock from Persnickety Prints. With the 4x6 card package, you also get envelopes. Perfect!

I also turned this into a  little template FREEBIE for you. Just click the image to download the 4x6 announcement template in .psd, .tiff, .png and; .page file (for SBC+3, SBC 4.0 and Artisan Software). You can easily replace the China mask with an element or photo.


And I thought I would share a few pages that I made about our adoption journey and Lydia. The journaling on these took me a while because I had a hard time not crying as I was typing. 

Art and Soul Bundle by Tracie Stroud

Art and Soul Bundle by Tracie Stroud
I'll be turning these into templates soon!
I was so inspired by Tracie's kit that I wanted to start with a blank slate.
So far life is good with 4 little girls....a little busier but definitely good.
-Liz



© Scrapping with Liz
Maira Gall