in the thicket

Sick with a cold, but I accomplished *something* today...

Wow, going crazy with the blogging here! Anyway, managed to contract a lovely cold from Miss Gwennie (as we've been calling her lately) so I'm sort of dragging on the home front. I'm actually supposed to be on a "scrapping hiatus" but I had signed up to post on the team blog for one of my designers, Kristin Cronin-Barrow, so that gave me an excuse to scrap. I created a couple of "quickpages" that are ready for you to pop your photos in this afternoon.

So, here's the link, the download links are on the blog there!

http://kristincbdesigns.com/blog/?p=116

I do this occassionally...

I get some weird idea that I could actually "design" digital scrapbook kits. The last time I made one, it completely burned me out. It's very challenging! This time I attempted to keep it a bit more simple, but nonetheless it has been a challenge and took many hours the past couple of days. I know that if I *were* to attempt to do more of this, even just to give away freebies as part of the learning curve, I simply would have to do it at night on a computer of my own... this computer just cannot handle it because the harddrive is too full. And it causes me to too often say, "Just one more minute!" to my girls. So that's not acceptable.

So this is the first thing I've designed in a while, and it may be the last...

In case anyone stumbles upon this and would like to download it, here are the links:

http://www.4shared.com/file/46674535/f77448/AfternoonVisitwithMimi.html

And here's the "preview"! Mimi is what I called my grandmother when I was little, it is inspired by her, the colors remind me of her home and some of the "elements" I got from her, like the jewelry box and little ceramic name plates.

Happy Saturday...it's National Scrapbooking Day! :)

Well, today is National Scrapbooking Day! If I had any money at all to spend, I would be quite happy about that right now, lol! There are many, many sales going on right now. But it is exciting to see all the beautiful layouts for the Scrapper's Choice Awards at DigishopTalk... last year I was a judge, but I don't think I'm elegible to judge this year as a board moderator. But wow, so many gorgeous pages I missed along the way!

It's also a bit nostalgic for me, because it's now been over a year since I've been digi-scrapping the "second time around." I sometimes have mixed feelings about this hobby- I enjoy it soooooo much, but it does take a lot of time (during the girls' quiet time or in the evening occassionally) and also some money, though much less than traditional scrapbooking I think. It has been quite a few months since I spent any money at all. I'd like a small budget for this hobby again one day, though. But for now, I'm fortunate to be able to get some new products from my creative teams- I just try to keep myself focused on them, and not all the other wonderful new products coming out! It does help that I'm no longer tempted by many things since I know my style and what works or doesn't work for me.

I was excited to create some new pages for two of my creative teams, though... The first one is Charlotte sitting up for the first time, the second one is the girls in our old garden (gosh I miss that yard, someone needs to buy our house and take care of it!), and the last is a recent picture of the baby, not smiling...

credits

credits

credits

Scrapping goals for 2008

One of my favorite digital scrapbooking stores is Sweet Shoppe Designs. They host various challenges, and one of them is called, "From our Blog to yours." The question posed is, "What are your goals in 2008 as a scrapper?"

Mine are fairly simple... first, to take better pictures and learn more about how to "process" them. Second, to continue to refine and develop my personal style in a way that enhances my photos and any journaling on them. Third, I want to actually print my LOs! My very sweet SIL gave me a gift card to have my pages printed, so that should get me started. Oh, one more goal- pace myself to avoid burn-out. :)