Saturday, May 7, 2011

Bringing back the past...

So sometimes as a scrapbooker, I stop and look back at some of my past layouts... and then it makes me remember why I do what I do. WHY I am a SCRAPBOOKER.

so I keep things online in "galleries" where I share my pages with other women who have the same loves as I do... Family, friends, life, photography, and of course scrapbooking. 

So from time to time we do "challenges" or "games" that send us back in time so that we can 'find' something. I was sent back in my gallery to find a layout I did with some work from an amazing designer named 

and as I was going I seen this layout-
which I knew used her kit... because I had LOVED this kit sooo much!!


** since I have a little problem with dating things... this was made 
· Date: Tue June 23, 2009

another great reason to upload to a gallery. Not to mention the positive feedback and amazing praises you get.

so if you ever wondered... Mommy had thought about you for a very very long time before you were born. and now I can look at these layouts....


and I love you... I love photographing you, I love recording every second I have with you... and I will keep reminding myself to keep doing what I love...

Scrapbooking.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Puppet Tutorial!


lets start with a new document. Open up any element object or shape you want to start with. I'll open something rather generic.

I grabbed a little diamond butterfly from a charity kit by Jenn Barrette.



Click that puppet warp button under the edit drop screen.

when you do that your screen will disable all other actions until you click on your object to drop your place marker.

I dropped my on the wing of the butterfly. it shows as a yellow with black dot


so after that I'll decide if I want to drop other markers or begin my warping there.



since I placed markers at all points of the wings I then clicked on the circles when they have the black dots and I can begin to manipulate the element. I can make the little wings curve or make the antennas bent...

and so on.



so here is before and after.



also a close up to show how detail isn't lost!!



I took a straight ribbon and made it into a heart... keeping all detail.


My 3 years of Scrapbooking... scrapbooking goals

As I've passed into May I'm happy to close up my little 3 year scrap history review.. and I would like to set my goals for the next year. I honestly don't have long term goals simply because I say you never know what to expect. Did I know last February that I was going to be pregnant? NO, did I know that in October I would deliver my first baby.. NO did I know that the entire career path would change dramatically? NO and did I know sitting here today that I would be relaxing on the couch typing scrapbooking goals while daddy washes dishes, and you jump in your jumper @ 7 months old watching your favorite show?? NO NO NO!! So how could I have ever made a long term goal and expect to keep it... My goals would have not mattered anyway because there is no where else I would rather be or I would rather be doing. So life goals... ahh not so much. I do make other small lists of things I would like to do ex: Bucket Lists.... Like this one I made for you:

or a goal for your first birthday... tho who knows in 5 months what I'll really do


Despicable Me 1st Birthday Party





**to be continued ;)**

haha I know I tease but you'll have to wait till your first birthday to see the rest of my plans!! its going to be huge!!

ok ok to my scrapbooking goals since thats what I'm suppose to be talking about,

<Focus on my Journaling>


I always love my pages with fantastic journaling and so my focus is to capture and write more on my layouts. I can do this.... I can. I atleast need to make sure I'm titling, dating, and explaining lol ;)

<Pick my 1st year baby book kit>



I attempted one already and wasn't happy. I went for a large one rather than one I liked everything in it. I think i'm going with Paislee Press or One little Bird designs. OHH maybe a collab between them will work.

<Scrap atleast 50 more pages>



I think I can manage that... maybe. Well I've done 20 already so I guess I'll mark through that number and just say scrap more great pages that I can include in your 1 year album and journal book that I'm working on lol.

<create your blurb book>


*photo from Megan's blog*
Im going to take this blog and all the great relevant layout pages and photos and compile a blurb book. I can't wait for October so I can put it all together... ohh October will be an exciting month. 

Monday, May 2, 2011

the mighty puppet warp!

So as I'm sure when you get older I'll teach you how to scrapbook... most likely we will both still do digital... so I'll aways show you new things as I learn them... in the simple fact I love to share with you and all the other ladies that love to stop by and read about you.

So anyway to my point.

by accident I learned the Puppet Warp tool in Photoshop cs5.

by accident? you are wondering how someone could do that right? lol its okay sounds strange but actually is true.

I was playing with the free transform action which you always do in scapbooking because you need to make things "fit" on your page. Well I slipped and hit the button above it... 

the Puppet Warp.

and I got stuck there with this PIN stuck as my pointer and unable to do anything else... I clicked on my element. Well that didn't do anything but set down this little yellow dot... thought what the heck????

so I started clicking and clicking then pulled my mouse and all of a sudden I started to manipulate the element and change its shape.... looked strange at first, but when my mind started to put things together I realized what it was actually for... and how I could use that wasted action I never used.

and so I learned how to bend a branch element that was straight to then curve around my elements in a cluster... and look absolutely fab mind you!!!


pretty cool huh??

all my other friends out there if there is something cool you use that warp tool for please let us know!

Thanks

Breaking News!

So today as you sit in your jumper and watch despicable me... the rest of our nation is tuned into the news. 

because of breaking headlines-

Inside the raid that killed bin Laden




WASHINGTON – Helicopters descended out of darkness on the most important counterterrorism mission in U.S. history. It was an operation so secret, only a select few U.S. officials knew what was about to happen.

The location was a fortified compound in an affluent Pakistani town two hours outside Islamabad. The target was Osama bin Laden.
Intelligence officials discovered the compound in August while monitoring an al-Qaida courier. The CIA had been hunting that courier for years, ever since detainees told interrogators that the courier was so trusted by bin Laden that he might very well be living with the al-Qaida leader.
Nestled in an affluent neighborhood, the compound was surrounded by walls as high as 18 feet, topped with barbed wire. Two security gates guarded the only way in. A third-floor terrace was shielded by a seven-foot privacy wall. No phone lines or Internet cables ran to the property. The residents burned their garbage rather than put it out for collection. Intelligence officials believed the million-dollar compound was built five years ago to protect a major terrorist figure. The question was, who?
The CIA asked itself again and again who might be living behind those walls. Each time, they concluded it was almost certainly bin Laden.
President Barack Obama described the operation in broad strokes Sunday night. Details were provided in interviews with counterterrorism and intelligence authorities, senior administration officials and other U.S. officials. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation.
By mid-February, intelligence from multiple sources was clear enough that Obama wanted to "pursue an aggressive course of action," a senior administration official said. Over the next two and a half months, Obama led five meetings of the National Security Council focused solely on whether bin Laden was in that compound and, if so, how to get him, the official said.
Normally, the U.S. shares its counterterrorism intelligence widely with trusted allies in Britain, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. And the U.S. normally does not carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without collaboration with Pakistani intelligence. But this mission was too important and too secretive.
On April 29, Obama approved an operation to kill bin Laden. It was a mission that required surgical accuracy, even more precision than could be delivered by the government's sophisticated Predator drones. To execute it, Obama tapped a small contingent of the Navy's elite SEAL Team Six and put them under the command of CIA Director Leon Panetta, whose analysts monitored the compound from afar.
Panetta was directly in charge of the team, a U.S. official said, and his conference room was transformed into a command center.
Details of exactly how the raid unfolded remain murky. But the al-Qaida courier, his brother and one of bin Laden's sons were killed. No Americans were injured. Senior administration officials will only say that bin Laden "resisted." And then the man behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil died from an American bullet to his head.
It was mid-afternoon in Virginia when Panetta and his team received word that bin Laden was dead. Cheers and applause broke out across the conference room.


Joy erupts on U.S. streets with killing of bin Laden


WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Thousands of people poured into the streets outside the White House and in New York City early on Monday, waving U.S. flags, cheering and honking horns to celebrate al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's death.
Almost 10 years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people, residents found joy, comfort and closure with the death of the mastermind of the plot. For many, it was a historic, long-overdue moment.
"I never figured I'd be excited about someone's death. It's been a long time coming," firefighter Michael Carroll, 27, whose firefighter father died in the September 11 attacks, said in New York. "It's finally here. ... it feels good."
At Ground Zero, site of the World Trade Center Twin Towers toppled by al Qaeda militants flying hijacked planes, thousands sang the U.S. national anthem, popped champagne, drank from beer bottles and threw rolls of toilet paper into the air. Another big crowd gathered in New York's Times Square.
"With all the gloom and doom around us, we all needed this. Evil has been ripped from the world," said Guy Madsen, 49, a salesman from Clifton, New Jersey, who drove to Lower Manhattan with his 14-year-old son.
Many in Times Square recalled the thousands of New Yorkers who perished on a clear September Tuesday almost a decade ago. Some people held pictures of loved ones who died.
In Washington, people gathering outside the White House soon after the first reports that bin Laden had been slain in Pakistan by U.S. forces and even before President Barack Obama announced the news. The boisterous crowd swelled into the thousands and chanted "USA, USA, USA."
'OH MY GOD'
"We had to be there to celebrate with everybody else. I'm very happy with the outcome of today's news," said Stephen Kelley, a Gulf War veteran and former U.S. Marine, who said he rushed to the White House after his wife told him the news.
College students, who were just children when the attacks took place, turned out in huge numbers, like Jennifer Raymond, 18, wrapped in a huge U.S. flag outside the White House.
"We were all in our dorm rooms and everyone's Facebook was blowing up," Raymond said. "It's like 'Oh my God, Osama bin Laden's dead.' Everyone in the dorm was screaming. Everyone decided to come to the White House."
The celebration may well have been the biggest crowd to gather spontaneously outside the White House since Obama's election in November 2008.
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement: "New Yorkers have waited nearly 10 years for this news. It is my hope that it will bring some closure and comfort to all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001."
Firefighters hold a special place in New Yorkers' memories of September 11, as hundreds died in the collapse of the Twin Towers while racing up flights of stairs to rescue trapped people on upper floors.
"This is a tremendous moment, and hopefully it will bring us together, it doesn't matter if you're Muslim or Christian or whatever," said Patrice McLeod, a firefighter dressed in uniform. "We'll never give up."
It was also a night to remember the 100,000 or so U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan. Elaine Coronado, 51, whose brother served a year in Afghanistan, said that joining the crowd outside the White House was a way of showing her support to U.S. military families.
Donna Marsh O'Connor, who lost her pregnant daughter in the 2001 attacks and is active in the group September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, watched events unfold on television.
"Osama bin Laden is dead, and so is my daughter," she told Reuters. "His death didn't bring her back. We are not a family which celebrates death, no matter who it is."

I remember that date like all others who lived in America on September 11, 2001. It marked a day where our world changed. We were attacked... breaking headlines reigned through my school. Tears began as we all immediately paused and tuned into the news. 


The United States has been attacked by Terrorist.


Posted on every station and came out of every mouth. It replayed the devastating pictures and videos of what had transpired. Hundreds dead, buildings destroyed, and the deployment of millions of troops would then follow in a 10 year long war.


So you can see how surprised and happy the world is in see the new headlines.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

3 years of Scrapbooking... Hits and Misses scrapping for others...

As I continue through learning a little more about myself... I want this blog to be dedicated to you, but also I want you to  know more about everyone who is around you. I do that through scrapbooking as well. Before I had you.. I really only scrapped about myself, Daddy, your family, and travels ect... I've noticed now that you are born I've focused only on you... and I can't forget you wanna know more than just you.

<scrapping for others, rather than myself>
Miss

I've noticed the layouts I love from the layouts I hate... our the ones that I put all my heart into rather than just trying to meet a requirement for a ct team. When I purchase the kit for myself and its one I really really love... I get more into it and create absolutely beautiful layouts. I can also see separate time lines where I have more mojo than other times. I think it happens to all of us at some point in time but I notice if I scrap for myself and myself only... I am so much happier! I'll journal a story, I'll place the elements, and critique so much better than the opposite of I have this kit and in 2 days I must make a layout, work full time, watch you, play with you, feed you, feed myself, blah blah blah lol.


this is one of my favorite layouts of all time.... It has so much love and meaning to it... its perfectly set and clustered and shadowed to be perfect.

and one of my least favorites...


okay yea I scrapped daddy in a girly girly of all girl kits. wait I think I may have missed shadows again... wait is there a title anywhere??? a story??? a date?? journal?? 
This is what happens to me when I scrap for others. I was on a creative team... had my day or two to complete the layout... couldn't I suppose and I made something. Completely not happy with it... and I didn't do the kit justice at all. 

over the years I've worked with some of the most amazing designers you can meet...
Scrap Orchard
Shawna Clingerman
Valorie Wibbons
Emily Powers
Jenn Barrette
Traci Reed
I've also guested with some amazing women
Lauren Grier
Kate Hadfield
Darcy Baldwin

and so on... but as much as I miss them... I'm happy to scrap to my hearts content. Then if I need a day off I can take it.. if I want a week off its mine.

I had also tried to sell templates... again not my love. 

.......
to be continued

3 years of Scrapbooking... Hits and Misses experimenting with design

So to continue with these lovely posts inspired by another amazing scrapbooker named 

I want to continue with what some hit and misses are throughout my scrapping journey. 

<Experimenting with designs>
HIT!
I've never placed myself into a design box. Some people would say their styles are "traditional" "fantasy" ect.... Ive always looked for inspirations, challenges, and inspirational people. If I love a kit, template, design... I go for it.
ex:
I do liner paper designs
then i do cluster design
and try traditional
simplistic
not simplistic

shoot i even take a swing at making a magazine cover layout
i say the altered design works!! going for a hit here

.........
to be continued 

My 3 years of Scrapbooking... Loves, Laughs, Cries, elements, and paper

So one of my greatest adventures and life altering hobbies that I found was 

Digital Scrapbooking

I've always love to scrapbook, but was just terrible at it. I really couldn't afford all of the supplies, and I was annoyed by anything "laying' around the house, so the thought of a bunch of supplies laying everywhere makes me cringe. 

So one day on the phone with Grandma Toby she said you have to check out these digital scrapbooking site, kits, and forums. These people would help you and I'll help you learn how to make a digital layout

and so I said okay lets do this!! and 3 years ago this month... I joined my first forum and made long friendships with some of the amazing women that are in this community.


from then on, Sweet Shoppe Designs has become a "home" to me. I've celebrated, cried, laughed, opened up, mentored, looked up too, chatted, and enjoyed many personal and fun chats with these ladies. With some inspirations from them....

 I made my first digital Scrapbooking layout

 

OMG can I absolutely see EVERYTHING that is wrong with this layout.... ack its such an eyesore. 

first of all there isn't dimension to it at all. I don't think I've touched this layout with a drop shadow. Also look at the annoyingly "floating" text. I know digital can break some "traditional" pages... but that text is so wrong!! Where is the story????? THIS IS MOMMY's and DADDY's wedding.... and you would have no idea the story behind it, what happened, who was there... blah blah blah... These things the layout should say not me in your blog over 3 years later. oh and looking now I would say this was from the planning stage!!! not even my wedding. Now thats the dress but not my bouquet and then we married on Ft. Walton Beach in Destin Florida. So yea idk what I was thinking... but yeah this isn't what I wanted relayed in the layout.

So over 3 years... where my design has grown and evolved to what it is today, I can say I'm much more enthusiastic and excited about it.

Here is my most recent layout. It is a template because I'm making it for a little challenge... but here is is....


wait look back up there... now scroll back down... yep see that

amazingly different layouts!! Even tho I'm using a template you can tell I now know how to use

Drop Shadows, correct font work, layering, angles, and total design work is all successful.

........

to be continued.....