February Wrap Up & March Giveaway!

Can you believe it's the last day of February? Since tomorrow is March that means it's time to release a new set of Weekly Project Templates and to have another super special giveaway from Tracie Stroud Designs!

But before we talk about that I want to show you my week 8 page and then just review the pages I've made for February.

Using my Weekly Project Templates 2 and Tracie Stroud's Capture Life: February, Capture Life: Mega Alpha Pack and Capture Life: January Messy Krafts

Here is what my pages will look like side by side.

Using my Weekly Project Templates 2 and Tracie Stroud's Capture Life: February,  Sticker Bits Alpha No. 2 and Capture Life: January Messy Krafts

Using my Weekly Project Templates 2 and Tracie Stroud's Capture Life: February, Capture Life: Mega Alpha Pack and Capture Life: January Messy Krafts

I'm just so happy with how these are turning out. I love that I can use a new kit each month but that they will flow together nicely. I love that the Weekly Project Templates flow together too but are still different enough to be fun to work with. The longer I do this project the easier it gets.

Here's a look at the Weekly Project Templates 3 that were just released in the store this morning. Grab them now at 20% off! If you email me a page that you made with my previous set of Weekly Project templates I'll get you a coupon to save a little extra on these new ones.

Now it's time for the giveaway part! Tracie Stroud is giving away one of her Capture Life Kits each month hear on my blog, plus offering my readers a 25% off coupon for the Capture Life Kit.

This month's kit is Capture Life: March.

You can enter the giveaway below and if you don't win make sure you grab the 25% off coupon! You have until tomorrow night to enter the giveaway. I'll be announcing the winner early on 3.2.13.

Here's the coupon code to grab Capture Life: March for 25% off.

tsd-LIZ-mar-SAVE

1 use per customer

Expires Mar. 31, 2013

Hope you all are doing good with your scraping goals this year!
-Liz

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February Pages & More

I've been doing a good job of keeping up with my instagram weekly pages but I can't say much for the other albums I would like to complete this year. I scrapped a total of 6 other pages in February. With my instagram pages, that makes 10 total for this month. Actually, when I put it that way it doesn't seem too bad.  I guess there's just so much I want to scrap that I feel like I haven't scrapped anything. I guess I need to remind myself of what I have scrapped and not think about what I haven't scrapped.

I'm  going to start by showing you what I scrapped this month and then I'm going to show you some pages I scrapped a while ago but I couldn't show you because the templates hadn't been released yet.

Here goes. 

At least I got a good ending page for my 2012 album or perhaps the beginning of my 2013 album?

Using Now Showing Templates and other Now Showing Products from the Scrap Orchard Designers.

Then the rest of my time scrapping I spent focusing on doing some more pages for Lydia. I'm trying really hard to get a lot of our pics from China scrapped.

From my February Blog Challenge and Moments Like This by Sugary Fancy Designs

Using More Double Templates, Great Escape by WMSquared and Leavin' on a Jet Plane by Jenn Barrette and Laura Banasiak.

Big Photo Fun Templates and Leavin' on a Jet Plane by Jenn Barrette and Laura Banasiak

Big Photo Fun Templates and Leavin' on a Jet Plane by Jenn Barrette and Laura Banasiak

Here are some pages I scrapped back in November and December (2012) when I was working really hard to finish up my 2011 album. I made a lot of these pages and then turned them into templates later on. I had such a hard time keeping my layouts to myself!

Using More Double Templates, Fall Splendor (the bundle) by WMSquared, Chrome Alpha by Dream Big Designs, Krafty Paper Bundle by Happy Scrap Girl, and Sticker Bits Alpha by Tracie Stroud Designs.

Double Monthly Challenge Templates 1 and Hip Holiday by Bella Gypsy Designs.

Double Monthly Challenge Templates 1, Hip Holiday by Bella Gypsy Designs, and My Favorite Things Alpha by Ziggle Designs.

Double Monthly Challenge Templates 1, Hip Holiday by Bella Gypsy Designs, and My Favorite Things Alpha by Ziggle Designs.

And this is probably one of my favorite layouts of all. I had several "leftover" pictures from 2011. They were pictures that I really wanted to scrap but I didn't necessarily want to scrap a whole page for each picture. So I came up with this!

Using More Double Templates, Carefree Bundle by Amanda Heimann Designs and then a few various elements from other kits found over at Scrap Orchard.

Hope that inspires you to just keep scrappin' along with those photos.

-Liz

Here's What's Coming! Sneak Peek & Giveaway

It's Monday! That means it is time for another sneak peek and giveaway. I have 2 new sets releasing this week. Can you guess what they might be? Enter with your answer below and you could win both new sets!

-Liz

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A New DIY Gallery Wall

Most of you know that we've recently added a new addition to our family. Actually, it's been over 5 months that are new little girl has been with us. Wow, time flies! I've slowly been updating our home to include pictures of her *ahem* lots of pictures of her. I thought I would show you one of the walls in my house that I just updated. I even used digital scrapbook products!

I had all the frames and they were actually all arranged just the same way as you see above, except that they had different photographs in them. They were filled with professional pictures that we had taken over 5 years ago at Christmas time. Definitely time for a little update.

First I picked out some photos that I wanted to include. I wanted it to be like a history page of our family on our wall. I included a wedding photo, a new family photo, a new photo of Lydia and then a new photo of all the girls together. I kept the three individual ones of the other girls....they look so tiny and cute (boy do they grow up fast). Look at those little feet.

Forgive the dust. I only noticed it once I opened my photo in photoshop. The first thing (well, maybe not the first) I'll do tomorrow is go and dust my frames really good.

I picked a digital scrapbook kit that would work well with my decor. Bella Gypsy's Smile Sparkle Shine was the perfect kit for the job. I printed a few pieces of paper from the kit to update the frames that had photo mats like I did here in this post. I didn't spray paint these. I just updated the mats..

Then I used the text tool in photoshop to make a big letter A and then I clipped some paper to it, added a shadow, added a background paper and then printed that out and put it in one of the frames.

Then I made a little est. sign the same way I made the letter A. Wow, it's been almost 14 years!

After completing the A page, EST page and the photo mats I decided the new photos would look better black and white. Thankfully, I decided that before I had my photos printed. Minus the cost of printing the photographs, this project didn't cost me any money!

I think it turned out quite nicely. I love the fact that I can go down my stairs now and see all parts of my family.

-Liz

Now Showing and More Doubles

Liz has two new products this week, and both are really fun.  First is More Doubles - Templates, four 2-page templates (individual 12x12s also included) with lots of photo spots.  These will be great for your event scrapping, photography projects, as well as monthly and yearly summaries.  More Doubles - Templates are 20% off through 2/28.

Also new in the Market are Now Showing Templates, which were Liz's freebies and challenge prizes from the Scrap Orchard Super Bowl festivities.  These templates are themed after the movies with film reel elements and ticket stub clipping masks.  They will be perfect for scrapping your movie night tradition or your going-to-the-movies memories. These are also 20% off through 2/28.

And here are pages from the team, sure to inspire you!

Thanks for stopping by!

Week 7 is Done!

Using my Weekly Project Templates 2 and Tracie Stroud's Capture Life: February, Capture Life: Mega Alpha Pack and Capture Life: January Messy Krafts

My Instagram Week 7 page is done but I do have a confession to make. Some of you may already know what it is if you follow me on facebook. Look at day 6. Notice anything different? Probably not. At least I hope not. Well, it's not an instagram photo. My phone battery died early on in the day. Apparently I was too lazy to plug it in to charge. Thankfully, though, I took a lot of photos with my regular ol' camera. So I used one of those photos instead.  It's okay though.....because everyone on facebook said it was okay! I used RadLab to add a little bit of a instagram photo effect to it and I think it looks great!

I like what Sharon said on my facebook: A photos a photo no matter what it's taken with. Don't feel bad, but glad. :)

I'm glad. I got my Week 7 photos taken and scrapped.

Here's a little more inspiration for you this week from Gina. She emailed it to me and I also noticed it in the SO gallery. I love the bright colors and how each picture really captures a different part of her life.

Using Weekly Project Templates 2 and Swoon by Digi Preserves

Remember to email me your pages and you'll receive a coupon to save extra on my next set of Weekly Project Templates and you might get featured on my blog. :)

-Liz

Making Your Own Titles

I love digital scrapbook alphas but sometimes I want a quicker way to make a title on my page. On the page below I have two titles. Today I'm going to show you how I made the cloisonne title. I'll show you how I made the lunch title in a later blog post.

Just a note: I'm working in Photoshop CS3. I believe most of the things I'm doing here are achievable in photoshop elements.

2 in 1 Templates 
Chinese Takeout by mle Card
Krafty Papers by Happy Scrap Girl

Step 1: Type out your title and pick a font that you like. Preferably one that is a little thicker. I used Sail for my font.

Step 2: Put a digital paper on top of your text layer and clip it to your title. Ctrl+alt+G for Photoshop and Ctrl+G for Elements.

Step 3: Go to your your layer palette and double click on your text layer. Your layer style box should pop up. From there you can play with your shadow and inner shadow settings.

These are the settings I used for my title:

My Drop Shadow - Pretty much a normal shadow.

The Inner Shadow - Make sure you play with the blend mode. I chose Hard Mix for this particular title.

Adding an inner shadow is just one way to make a custom title.

There's another way I like to use as well and it's by adding a stroke. You can see it how I did it on the title below.

This template will be releasing tomorrow!
Great Escape by WMSquared
Leavin' On a Jet Plane by  Laura Banasiak and Jenn Barrette

Use the same steps as above but instead of adding an inner shadow, play with the stroke style instead. On this page I used Pacifico as my font.

Here are my stroke settings. 

Play around with all of the different settings until you get your desired look. Make sure you have that Preview Button checked so that you can see the changes to your title as you are playing with the settings. You can also change the color of the stroke by clicking on the color box.

These are some of my favorite ways to make my own custom titles. I also like to apply styles to my text but I'll save that tutorial for another day. Hope this helps adding a title to your page a little bit easier.

-Liz

GSO Winner!

Please join me and congratulating NJacobson on winning this month’s GSO. She competed against some outstanding competition but her's was voted the best by you the voters! Using the Artsy Journal Templates, this paper-licious layout has layers of papers and paper elements and combined with lots of journal, images of everyday life (including the scrapper), and cutout title its a definite STANDOUT! 
 

Thank you to all you voters! Random-dot-org selected number 42, lwyant, as the winner of $5 to Liz's store in the Vote and Win drawing!

 

Click HERE to leave some love for NJacobson on this wonderful, family layout!

Sneak Peek & Giveaway Time!

I'm REALLY excited about this week's new templates. I know, I say that almost every week but here's why I'm really excited about these. I have used every single template in one of the new sets and I really love every single one of my pages from those templates. I can't wait to show you my pages! The other set (yes there are two releasing this week) was a really fun set that I made for the Scrapper Bowl promotion that Scrap Orchard had a few weeks back (so some of you  might already have these) and that set ended up being really fun and unique.

You will definitely not want to miss out on these because there is something for everyone in these sets. So, if you want a chance to win them make sure you enter the giveaway below. Also, you might want to be signed up for my newsletter because there will be a special coupon this week for all of my subscribers.

That's it for now folks. Cant' wait to show you my pages later this week!
-Liz


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Easy DIY Photo Frame

I'm here today to show you a fun, easy and fairly cheap way to make a unique photo frame. I was at Lowe's with the hubby and I saw this ceiling medallion and I immediately thought, photo frame. I snatched it up (I think it was about $20) and then I went to the spray paint section and picked out a light blue spray paint. I went home....and it sat in my garage for a couple of weeks.....

Then I finally I decided to spray paint it. While it dried I opened up photoshop and made a circle mask with the same dimensions of the circle in the medallion. I think it had a 4.5 inch diameter. I found my photo, edited it a bit and then clipped it to my mask. I printed it out from my home computer with some cardstock and then just cut the circle out. The quality of the print isn't the best but it works for now. I taped it to the medallion (after it was completely dry) and hung up my new frame.

What do you think? I love my new frame and I especially love the little pic that is in the center of it.

-Liz

Big Photo Fun Templates

Big Photo Fun Templates is a new set of digital scrapbooking templates that feature very large clipping masks - use them to show off your photos in a big way, or use them to clip pretty patterned papers. They are very versatile, with some smaller photo spots too, and even some faded masks.  Everyone on the team LOVED these templates, and I think you will too.  Big Photo Fun Templates are 20% off through 2/21.

Here are some examples from Liz and the team.

  

Thanks for stopping by!

Week 6!

Using my Weekly Project Templates 2 and Tracie Stroud's Capture Life: February,  Sticker Bits Alpha No. 2 and Capture Life: January Messy Krafts

Here's my week 6 page. I tried to capture a variety of things this week. I realized that last week's photos mainly consisted of my family (which, in reality, is 95% off my life!) but I do have other things I enjoy....playing piano, running (although not when I'm attacked by a dog), digi-scrapping and cooking.

When I look at my instagram pages 20 years down the road from now I think I'm going to want to look at all those other areas of my life as well.

How are you doing on your daily pictures or weekly pictures, or monthly pages....whatever it might be that you are working on this year?

-Liz

P.S. My leg is okay, for those of you who are wondering. A dog attacked me on Saturday while I was running in our neighborhood. A pit bull jumped the fence, bit me and scratched me on my calf. All is well now, just a little bit of a scar and bruising.

My - MyPublisher Book

I was at a friend's house, actually the friend who got me started on Digital Scrapbooking, and she was showing me a book she got printed of their vacation pictures. I loved it. It was simple but beautiful. It was one of those digital scrapbooks that you just upload your photos and stick them in the photo spots and get your book printed. You all know me. You know I love making the typical digital scrapbook page but this book appealed to me because I saw all her vacation pictures in one nice little album and I knew it would be a quick way to get photos from one event into an album quickly and beautifully.

This same friend had also taken family photos of us after our return from China as gift to our new family. So I had a bunch of professional photos that I had been wanting to scrap but I wasn't sure how I wanted to scrapbook them. When I saw these books I new they would be perfect.

I just recently put the book together with our professional photos by Laressie Ann Photography and ordered one (actually 2 because they had a coupon for buy 1 get one free!) from MyPublisher. I thought I would share it with you and tell you a little bit about the book.

It was very easy to make. I picked about 40 of my favorite photos from the photo shoot and just uploaded them into the MyPublisher software. You can quickly and easily download it onto your desktop (it's free). I just picked a simple theme for my book (no text or color) and placed my photos in the photo spots. They do have a lot of options as far as different styles and being able to add text to your pages but I just wanted plain and simple for these photos.

I ordered a 8.75 x 11.25, with a linen cover. I chose the tangerine linen color because I thought it looked nice with our fall attire. They also offer a variety of book covers from custom photo covers to leather.  I also chose the lay flat option with the super glossy printing. I wanted my pages to look more like printed photographs.

The MyPublisher lay flat binding is hinged. You can see the thin strip of binding there (the little black spot).

When you open the book there is one sheet of vellum type paper and then the pages begin.

I loved the colors in my book. They were very accurate to what I saw on my computer.

Here you can see the binding a bit more. There's a little gutter so if you were making full page spreads you have to take that into consideration but since I was just using photographs it was fine.

I just love the pages with the photos taking up the whole page.

Then the very last page has this printed on it and then the vellum piece of paper again.

I'm very happy with my book and I'm so glad I can easily pull it out and show everyone the gorgeous pictures from Laressie Ann Photography.

-Liz

I am in no way affiliated with My Publisher, they did not compensate me for writing this review.

GSO -- Vote and Win!

It's Tracy here and it is time to pick the first 2013 GSO! Make sure to vote, HERE, by this Friday the 15th and you will receive a 30% off coupon to Liz's store* and you will be entered into a drawing, where one lucky voter will win $5 to Liz's store!! Liz's gallery brought in the new year with much AWESOMENESS, here are our top four favorites!

(and don't forget to leave the nominees some love, the titles are linked back to their gallery posts)

Title: 2013: Week 2 (Winter Days) 
Scrapper: njacobson
Template: Artsy Journal Templates 
Reasons to Love: layers of paper-paper elements, lots of journal, images of everyday life (including the scrapper), and cutout title One Word: Paper-licious!

Title: Sweet Boy 
Scrapper: Michelle (mhreen08)
Template: SO December Challenge Template
Reasons to Love: color work with the patterned papers, clusters framing the photo, and stamped layers on top of the photo 
One Word: Sweet!

Title: On The Go 
Scrapper: Jenn (jenn18)
Template: Background Starter Circle Templates
Reasons to Love: this action photo is perfectly scrapped in circles, it adds to the feeling that he is going to run right out of the image to you
One Word: GO-rgeous!

Title: Wading Pool 
Scrapper: Kan Violen
Template: Insta Square Templates 
Reasons to Love: big open blue of negative space - just like a pool, clean lines and uncluttered feel 
One Word: Splash-tastic!