Green Sea Studios

Announcing the new home of my digital designs: Green Sea Studios!

I've been working on this for quite a while, but thought today would be a nice day to officially launch. May 5th is a special day for me--it's Children's Day in Korea, and the day that I first arrived in Korea (in 1992), and the day that I found out I was pregnant with Andy (in 2007).

It's been quite a while since I've focused heavily on designing, but I do have lots of ideas for more things that I'd like to create.  (That's always the problem, isn't it--so many ideas, so little time!)  I imagine I'll be adding things as I go.  For now, I wanted to have a place to make my products available again, as I do still get people asking about them every once in a while.  Maybe I'll even do some more scrapping, myself!

Sprayground Layout

In honor of Digital Scrapbook Day this weekend, I actually scrapped!  (Gasp)

Paint Splatters
Border made with my crayon line.
Alpha by CD Muckosky
Block stamps by Christine Borgfeld
The orangeish square frame is by Katie Pertiet; the other two are from my Paper Drawer.
The polka-dotted paper is by Flergs. I didn't do a good job on keeping track of the others.

sidewalk chalk layout

Challenge #3 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to do a page about something our family likes to do, and design the layout to represent the activity (say, if you enjoy playing Monopoly together, you could make a page to look like the Monopoly board). I had a hard time picking something. What do we all like to do? LEGO? Reading? I suppose I could take pictures of everyone playing on the computer.

I decided to go with sidewalk chalk.  We have been doing that a lot lately. 



I thought doing the title in chalk would probably fit the requirement of the referential design. I wrote the titles on the sidewalk but then discovered that they were too big to fit in the frame (with my lack of wide angle lens), so I had to bring out a chair to stand on while I took the pictures.



I also made a border with my crayon line, which you can get here.

Grandpa Al (inspiration layout)

Challenge #2 of The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race. We were supposed to layer one paper on top of another, and then cut out shapes in the top layer so the bottom one showed through. Then add a picture about a family member who inspires you, with 25-50 words of journaling. I decided to do a page about Doug's dad, and got him to do the journaling. (Keeping it under the 50-word limit was tricky!)

Suede Lacing tie
frame from The Paper Drawer,
cantaloupe tracks from Potato Prints

Bottom paper by Megan Farrow (Flergs), top paper by me. Leaf by Anne deJong. Michelle Coleman's stamped alpha. Worn overlay from Something Blue Studios.

(Thanks for your help with this one, Doug!)

our family in...

Challenge #1 of The Amazing Digi-Scrapping Race was to create a layout with six facts about our family. That was the hard part for me--deciding on six things.  

See how I have my head tipped almost exactly the same way in both pictures?  I didn't do that on purpose.  You may also notice that Doug is wearing the same shirt.  That was deliberate.  I love that shirt.

frames: Paper Bag Frames and The Paper Drawer.
flower: The Paper Drawer
stamped dot: Potato Prints
white paper: Masks and Mats
other papers by Megan Farrow (Flergs), Michelle Coleman, and Loretta Labarca.

Could it be... Scrapping?

Seems like a looong time since I've done any scrapbooking.  A little designing, here and there, but I can't remember the last time I made a layout.

Season 6 of The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race is starting at NDISB.  I did it a few years ago and had a blast, but haven't felt like I had time to join any of the seasons since then.  This time I thought, what the heck--I do have a lot of things going on, but hey, it'll be fun, and I'll get some scrapping done.  So I'm signed up for the race.  This time the lovely and talented CheleOh is my partner.  Our team name is "Chelena."  (Heh.)

The designers at NDISB have been putting together a prize kit. Bernadette (the coordinator) asked me if I might have one of my cool layered templates that I could contribute. As it happened, I did have one that I'd made a couple of years ago that was used in the store design, but I'd never done anything else with it. Since Theresa just recently did a site re-design, it seemed like a good time to put this template to some other use.



It needed a little cleanup. And then I had to make some instructions with screen shots, and while I was at it I made a layout with it.



Ta da! The race hasn't even started and I've already done a layout.  More to come!

(Update:  Since NDISB has closed, the template is available here.) 

Re-calendaring

From where I'm sitting I can see pieces of no fewer than five unfinished projects. With all this non-accomplishment going on, it was nice to actually get something done. I redid Mom's calendar for this next year. Peter and Karen's daughter Bridget was born in May. I didn't have time to rework any of the top layouts, but I did swap out a couple of the photos so I was able to include her. (And some more recent photos of the other kids.)





Mom asked me if I could add moon phases to the calendar. Through some improbable stroke of luck, none of the moon icons conflicted with the birthday and anniversary pictures.

Calendar!

I finished my mom's calendar! Originally I was hoping to get it done in time for her birthday (Dec 21st). I did start on it at the beginning of November, but it just took longer than I was expecting. I think I'm just slow.

When the new year rolled around and I still wasn't finished, I emailed the January pages to my mom so she could print them out and put them up on the wall. Since it's no longer a surprise, I thought I'd go ahead and share the rest of the pages here. I'm just thrilled with how everything turned out.



























Scroll down for partial credits.

I got a picture of each of the four grand kids (sometimes more than one) for each page topper, and then pictures for all birthdays and anniversaries. Peter and Karen are expecting their second child in June, so then there'll be five grand kids! (and a June birthday! But we still won't have anything in August. It looks oddly bare).

I'm getting it printed at Zazzle. There are a lot of places that print calendars, but Zazzle was the only place where I could find the larger size. There are a few things about their interface that are kind of annoying to work with, and I haven't seen the printed product yet, so I can't speak to that. They do have a lot of options.

The whole experience has been interesting. I've been designing digital scrapbook products for a few years now, and of course I've done a few layouts and small projects, but the actual volume of my scrapping productivity has been pretty limited. It was kind of cool to focus on this for a while, and figure out what I like to use and how, and what I was lacking in my stash. I did some more digi shopping (instant gratification!) and got most of my stuff tagged in Windows Live Photo Gallery, which makes finding things a lot easier. I love it. Now I've got lots of ideas for things I'd like to scrap and more things I'd like to design.

Some of the main products used:

(My stuff) Paper Bag Frames, The Paper Drawer, Pinks, Shoelace, Red Ribbons, Paint Splatters, Brush Strokes.

(Other people's stuff) Something Blue Studios Worn Alpha Overlays, Worn Photo Overlays - Set Two, Worn Overlays Set 3 - Shapes; Anne deJong (AnneMade) Paper Leaves 2; Michelle Coleman Merry Little Christmas, Glow, Nostalgia, Wild Sorbet (this one's free!); Megan Farrow (Flergs) Colour Theory: Cream, Flairy Floss; Megan Farrow and Kaye Winiecki A Perfect Day; Galiscrap Brown Addict.

Christmas Card

Here's our card for this year!



I wasn't sure if I was going to get these out in time, with everything else going on, but I did! In the interest of saving trees (and, you know, postage) we figured we'd focus on people that we don't have regular online contact with, so don't feel bad if you don't get one!

I also made a card to send to friends in Korea:



I did have some people in Korea that I was keeping in touch with, but it's been years. We'll see how many of those addresses are still good. This is actually a New Year's card, which is nice because it works for either the solar or lunar new year, so it's okay if they don't get there right away.

(Credits: stamped alpha and red, blue, and green papers by Michelle Coleman, tabbed card by Nina. Everything else is mine.)

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Happy birthday to my blog! (Here's a present!)

My blog is four years old today! This particular blogiversary is significant, of course, because Andy is the same age now that Kate was when I started blogging. These pictures of her sitting were taken on July 25th. Andy's still not sitting, but he's got the Carpet Commando thing down and is rolling and worming his way all over the place.

Here's a little digi-gift for my blog birthday!



Click here to download the zip file. ("Save as," and then you'll have to unzip the file before you can use it.)

These frames were previously part of my contribution to the March 2009 megakit "Fresh" at NDISB.

I also got this up in the store a few days ago:



Super-realistic tears with a cool edge that lets your paper color peek through in places. It looks especially good with dark colors.

My brain has been more in crocheting than digi design lately, but I do have a lot of things that I want to do. So many projects, so little time!

(Update: Since NDISB has closed, this template is available here.)

Lo, I am publishéd.

I have a layout (the Korean food one from this post) in the Oct/Nov 2008 issue of Digital Scrapbooking Magazine. I didn't realize it was out until Heather T. mentioned it, and then my complimentary copy came in the mail a few days later.

I had quite a few (paper) layouts published, way back when (some are posted here), and was even a winner in Creating Keepsakes' Hall of Fame contest in 2002. (This was before they changed the rules. I don't know if I would even enter these days. Talk about complicated.) But it's been a few years since I've submitted anything. This is my first digital layout, and also the first layout with Kate in it that I've had published, so that's kind of fun.



I got the whole page to myself! They spelled my name wrong once and right once. Heh.

Paint Block Freebie

Here's one of the rejects from working on Masks and Mats. It was stamped with acrylic paint on cardboard (you can see some of the corrugation in the texture). It's really not usable as a photo mat, but I thought it was cool anyway so I thought I'd share it here. Click here to download the zip file. ("Save as," and then you'll have to unzip the file before you can use it.)



In Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you can lock the transparency of a layer by clicking on the little checkerboard icon that looks like the Purina logo, up at the top of the layers pallet. (Make sure you have the right layer selected first.) When the transparency is locked then you can just fill the layer with a new color. You should be able to press alt+delete to fill with your foreground color, and control+delete to fill with your background color, but I find this always stops working after I've had the program open for a short time. What I usually do is use the rectangle tool and just draw a big rectangle over the area that I want to fill. It's faster than using the paint bucket.

You can also use a soft round brush to add touches of another color on the locked layer. I used two shades of purple.

Viovio books

These are the books that I made for the kids in our complex (posted about here). I got some in 7x5 and some in 5.25 x 3.5. I was trying to figure out what to do on the cover, since I didn't have anything like a picture of all the kids together, so I had this idea to do stick figures. They turned out pretty cute, I think. (Kate is the second-shortest stick figure.)

Service was pretty quick--I placed the order on a Tuesday and had them the following Monday. It's not exactly photo-quality printing, but about what I was expecting. I planned the pages with the quarter-inch trim and binding room around the edges for the 7x5 size, so on the smaller size a little bit more got trimmed off, proportionately. Something to keep in mind.



The back on the book has the Viovio logo on it. You can get that taken off for an extra charge.

Masks and Mats

I haven't had a new product in...oh, about three months, but I finally got these done and up in the store on Saturday. I have a few other things that are kind of half-done, which is frustrating. I'll finish them up eventually!

(Update:  Since NDISB has closed, this set is now available here.)

These are a few samples I made to show how the masks and mats work together: