Sunday, November 29, 2009

Another little freebie kit for you!

This is what you call waiting til the last minute! I had good intentions of finishing my kit for KimB's Color Challenge over at DSO early this month. I started right away and had most of it done and then life got in the way.

Being the "newbie" to my husband's family this year, we were nominated to host Thanksgiving. We have a small condo which is perfect for the 2 of us, but wasn't built for hosting a dinner for 14. Never mind that only 2 people can fit in the kitchen at once and there is a whole 5 ft of counter space.

Never, never, never again. There is not enough wine and valium in Minnesota to make me go through that again.

Now that all of that is out of the way and my house is back to normal I was able to finish my kit. There was such a great response to my "cute" kit last month I decided to go with cute again!

I hope you enjoy my Kooky Kingdom!





Friday, October 9, 2009

A new Freebie!

It is a new month, which means a new color challenge from KimB over at DSO.

This month was hard for me! Kim let her husband choose the colors this month and they were... well... colorful! I don't do bright, cheerful colors. I just don't. I always lean towards jewel tones, dark and moody colors, etc. So after staring at the color palette for 2 days and drawing a complete blank, I decided to ask a man's opinion, since a man's brain thought up this color combination. I said, "Honey, look at these colors. What is the first thing that pops into your head?" He took all of 2 seconds to respond, "Candy!"

But of course!

Then... I went candy colored wild. I was having so much fun creating papers and cutesy little elements. We even bought some candy to photograph, but we ate the chocolate which is why there is none of the "brown" in my kit. *lol* Then I decided we had to name it "Candy, Candy, Candy" because that is how my grandaughter asks for candy. She is a candy addict and she never says it once. It is always, "Candy, Candy, Candy!" The cute little bug in the kit is also named for my very own "Jewel Bug".

I'd still be creating in these colors if I didn't have to wrap it up and install my new computer. OMG... I am so excited. I am going from an ancient clunker with 768 mb of ram and a 38 gb hd to a "beast" with 8 gb of ram and a 1 terabyte hard drive. I'll be able to render papers through a filter in less than 5 minutes! *lol* That is if I can figure my new program out as well. Since I've lost my PSP9 disc I am also upgrading to PSPX2. Hopefully it isn't too different or this may be my last kit. *lmao*

I sure hope you like my new kit! This is my first attempt at "cute".



Here is my layout using the kit. This is my first layout with my own kit. It was sort of weird. *lol*




Sunday, September 27, 2009

First Post, First Kit, How Exciting!!!

I am so excited and more than a little nervous to be releasing my very first scrap kit!

I'm new to the digital scrap booking scene, but am loving it! I previously designed stationary and tags for IncrediMail, but stepped away from any graphic work for a few years. I was married in May and decided I wanted to create a scrapbook with our wedding photos. Well I almost fainted in the aisle of Michael's when I realized how much it would cost me to do 20 or so scrap pages. In looking for less expensive sources on-line I came across digital scrap booking. I quickly decided it was time to brush the cobwebs off the old PSP.

Since I used to participate in several stationary groups on Yahoo I knew there had to be groups out there for digital scrap booking. I came across "Digital Scrapbook Freebies" and the price sounded right, so I joined. I'm so glad I did! One of the first sites I came across while chasing down freebies was NumbBumm's. The kit was just gorgeous. I loved the realistic look of the elements. The kit had been created for KimB's color challenge at DigiScrap Obsession. After going through the color challenge thread and downloading every kit they had... I was hooked.

Kim's work is just gorgeous. To this day her Mezzaluna kit is the only kit I've ever actually spent money on. *lol* I just had to have the posting bonus she wa offering, so it was time to start participating. Last month I did a lay-out and then I did another this month. But some little bee got under my bonnet and I decided to attempt a kit myself. What was I thinking?

Seriously... hats off to all of the designers out there. I had no idea how hard this was. It is way more work than you can imagine. It has taken me all month to come up with this tiny little kit. First you have to find CU products. Then you have to do something with them. The TOUs are all different and some just utterly confusing. I'm terrified I've used something incorrectly and someone is going to write a blog about me. *lmao* Then if you are obsessive like me and want more you start searching free use photos and extracting embellishments yourself. Then if you are really a glutton for punishment, you start photographing the contents of your jewelry box, your Grandma's button tin, the flowers in your garden, and the flowers in the neighbor's garden. The extraction is easy compared to getting just the right lighting, just the right angle, and perfect focus on your item.

We went to the Renaissance Fair last weekend and I was photographing all of the flowers in the little gardens they have dotted about. I'm sure people wondered what the heck the crazy woman was doing down on her knees with a camera up in some flower's face. My husband just laughed. He knows I'm insane.

OK... enough jabbering... here is my very first freebie scrap kit, "Tiffany Twisted".