30.3.09

Twilight Cupcakes....I wanna BITE!

Two things we like at our house...cupcakes & Twilight!! I following a darling cupcake blog called Cupcakes Take the Cake and they posted today some of the cutest "Twilight" inspired cupcakes that I had to share.




Check out their cute blog for more ideas or links to the sites that originally showed their Twilight inspired sweet creations.

26.3.09

Photobook Arrived!!

I meant to post about this 3 DAYS ago when my 12x12" photobook arrived for my hubby's 40th birthday gift. It's AWESOME and so much better then I expected it to be....actually I expected it to be great, but until you see the hours of work you've put into a project COMPLETED it's hard to know what to expect. I absolutely love the photo of Kirk on the cover...isn't he handsome?

Just a reminder for those new visitors to my blog, I created the entire book in My Memories Suite software. It's amazingly easy and had I created this entire book in Photoshop (which I could have) it would have taken me weeks and weeks, instead of days. I spent more time scanning in photographs and tweaking them then I did laying them out in the book. I have to send a BIG THANK you to my friend Michelle, she took this gorgeous picture of the Salt Lake Temple and was willing to let me use it in Kirk's book. The year we were married they were cleaning the Temple, so all my wedding pictures have scaffolding on the left side of the Temple. The original, full-size of picture is stunning and I think she should sell the prints...I would buy one!! If you want to see more of her amazing photography, check out her blog here.

Absorbing Talent


Today I got to meet two of the most talented ladies I know for lunch. Both Fayette Terlouw and Annette Ward from Ettes & Company finally made time for me (wink) so we could visit, talk creative scrapbook ideas, digi designs and more. They still make me laugh a ton and I hope hanging out with them will help increase my own level of creativity. If you haven't already, go check out their new digi website..it's awesome and so are their designs. They can be found at EttesandComany.com or their blog, asktheettes.blogspot.com.

Thanks for a fun lunch girls!!

24.3.09

Twilight Inspired Bedroom


My daughter has been asking for Christmas if we could remodel her room (which use to be yellow and green). She really wanted it to be "Twilight" colors...red, black and white. So after putting her off a couple months I decided it would be a great 12th Birthday gift and we got to work. We painted over the yellow - white...the green was covered with the best red paint color ever. We then repainted the closet doors, ceiling fan, dresser, chair, night-stand all black. For her birthday she received those inexpensive poster frames that we put her very cool Twilight posters in and we have on order some cool "Twilight" inspired vinyl for the walls. The last thing we need to get are some black sheer curtains for the two smaller windows and then it's COMPLETE!! 
Description: Layout created in My Memories Suite
 using the (soon to be released) Twilight Fanpire Template. Font is
Lettering Delights Nettle

22.3.09

Cupcake Anyone?

My good friend turned 40 last week and I wanted to make something fun and memorable for her for her birthday. Haven't been scrapbooking with paper a lot, so I thought "cupcakes". My daughter has the cutest cupcake book ever and so I chose the popcorn...since it went along with the movie bucket of goodies and "Twilight" movie I was giving her too.

Now I thought these would be super easy...which they were, but they were TIME consuming for sure...because you have to cut apart mini marshmallows and make little popcorn parts and then stick them to the cupcakes. But they turned out super cute don't you think??

Description: Created this layout in My Memories Suite software. Fonts used Lettering Delights Flutter, Satisfaction, Grilled Cheese

17.3.09

Finished!! Photobook is Ordered!

For those of your following my Facebook or Twitter then you've heard me complaining about working on Kirk's 40th Birthday gift...a photobook about him. His mom and sisters sent letters, stories and GREAT photographs to include. I then dug through some albums Kirk has hidden away in boxes or in the closet and started scanning in pictures. 

Well, I finally finished it and boy am I glad. Now I'm crossing my fingers that the book which I ordered in 12x12 will arrive in time for his birthday. So for kicks and giggles I created a iPod slideshow to post here (ignore the black bars on the sides).  I'll post a pic of the final book when I get it!! 


Description: 33 Page Album created in My Memories Suite 
 with Celebrate Life template. Placing the photos was the easy part for sure. It was gathering the journalling and getting it all where I wanted and were it would work too longer. But I thought this template worked great for a guy. 

12.3.09

Photo Background Idea

I was working on Kirk's 40th Birthday Photobook and a friend told me about this very cool feature I can do in the My Memories Suite
software. Read below for the details...
Directions: Starting from scratch in My Memories Suite you simply need to go to the "Backgrounds" option on the right hand Control Panel. From there select "Custom" (file folder) and select a photograph from your computer and voila your picture becomes your background. Note: It will automatically center the photo, so if you don't want it to you'll need to crop it outside of the program. I then scaled the opacity back to 40% and added text and a small photo by the poem. I like how it turned out!! 

Monster-ously Cute Idea

My friends over at Ettes & Company shared this darling idea using the new DUDE Collection. Their creative team member, Mary Ruth printed out the fun monsters onto to t-shirt transfer paper and ironed on the designs onto onsies. Read more by visiting Ettes & Company Gallery.

11.3.09

Taxes or Scrapbook?


So my tax guy called today to remind me that it's "time" to send him all my tax info so he can get going on them. I've had it all buried on my desk for, oh a month or so and have been trying to forget about it. Some people are quick to get this taken care of, but since last year about this time I left my regular job and ventured off into "contract labor"...I am not nearly as excited because I've been here before and probably will end up owning good ol' Uncle Sam. So rather then dig my information out from under the pile of bills, papers, etc I decided I'd scrapbook instead. Obviously this doesn't pay the bills or my taxes for that matter, but it does make me feel like I accomplished something that will last a lot longer then my tax refund ever would. 

Description: Layout created with the Forever Friends Template design by Ettes & Company in the My Memories Suite software. Text: Lettering Delights Remington font.

10.3.09

Cute Card Creation

Found these darling cards on Melissa Bickford's blog this morning and wanted to share. She created them with new papers from Making Memories called Chloe's Closet. If you want to see more beautiful card creations visit Melissa's blog

8.3.09

PageMaps for Inspiration

Sometimes I just need a little inspiration and find looking at completed scrapbook layouts a challenge because I either love or hate the products used, theme of the layout or even the pictures are distracting. So I often times prefer to look at "sketches" and wanted to share one of my favorite website resources with you, it's called Page Maps by Becky Fleck
Every month they post new maps/sketches for all sorts of things (12x12, half pages, tags, cards, round, landscape 8.5x11, mini maps and more). It's a great resource when you need a little bit of an idea. So I took one of the Page Maps posted for March and created this fun layout below. The pictures are super old ones that I had to scan in so they're not wonderful, but they are of a wonderful memory that I wanted to keep. And I created the entire layout in My Memories Suite. Read below the layout for tips & tricks on the layout.
Description: The designs I used for this were all from Ettes & Company. I used some items from the Feelin' Happy Collection and the background paper and bracket paper were both from their Blue Skies Collection. The fonts I used were both from Lettering Delights (LD Imagine That-text & LD Antique-title). 

Design Tip: I have to share how I create the bubbles to the upper right of the main photograph in My Memories Suite. They are circles I created using the "Shapes" from the Control Panel. I created them the size I wanted and placed them on the layout and then Opacity to about 50%. There are a couple bubbles I wanted to give a little more depth to so I copy and pasted those two circles and changed the background circle to a light blue with a low Opacity too. I liked how subtle these turned out and how applicable to the layout. 


3.3.09

My Project 52: Weeks 7 and 8

Just finished up two more layouts for my Project 52...a layout for each week of the year. Yes, it's a spin off from Project 365, just not as much pressure. I had a fun couple of weeks and can't wait to see this printed off 12x12 when my year is over. 

Description: Celebrate Papers/Embellishments by Miriam Lima; Built in My Memories Suite. Note: If you don't want your journaling blog to have too much contrast, try adjusted the opacity of the shape or embellishment and it will give the appearance of vellum. 

Description: Soar Papers/Embellishments by Traci Murphy; Built in My Memories Suite software. Love, love, love this collection...perfect for my topic!! 


2.3.09

Blue Skies Collection by Ettes & Company




How darling are these layouts I put together using the Blue Skies Collection by Ettes & Company. I'm trying to dig out my old Easter pictures so I can play some more with this huge digital kit.

Easy Flyer in Minutes

My of my friends ask me to post tips, tricks and simple ideas using the My Memories Suite software, so here's another fun idea. I needed a flyer to pass out at church this weekend, but didn't have a lot of time to create a cool graphic design one like many people seem to expect from me. So I opened up my My Memories Suite program and searched through the Templates until I found one that would work.

I opened up the Carnival Template and got to work. I only needed to pages
(see the images below) so I selected those and opened them up. I then copied the "Party Time" title from the second page and pasted it where the "Let the Festivities Begin" title was (after I deleted of course). I then deleted the second page. Then I changed the page format from 12x12 to Portrait and adjusted all the graphics until I thought it would work (see image above). I knew I'd be printing this 4 to a page, so I actually only worried about designing the top half to the page and cropped off the bottom. I then selected the "SHARE" button and output it to a medium quality image. The next set I did for printing I did in word...read on.



So to print, I opened my MS Word program and set up my page to be landscape. From there I "inserted image". Once I had the original image in work, I selected my crop tool and cropped off the bottom section. Then I sized it to a quarter of the page, copied and pasted it three additional times until my page looked like this. Then I printed them off and I was ready to hand them out. By the way, everyone thought I spent a LONG time on this but I snickered because it didn't take me much more then 30 minutes from start to finish (actually took me longer to cut them down).
For more information on My Memories Suite click here!

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