snow pants and snowball

We finally got our snow! Kate has been having fun playing in it. (She went out for a little bit before church on Sunday, and then we were in a hurry to get ready.)

I had the idea for this layout last year, but never got it done.  (It's a quote from Little Bear.)  Credits here.



I got a snowball started for Kate, and then she rolled it around for a while. She hasn't had many chances to do this sort of thing!




A girl and her snowball.  After this she rolled it down the hill and it broke, so she turned it into a snow cave for her rubber dragon. 

The snow pants are hand-me-downs from Glory and Sky.  She wore them last year and we were pleased to find that they still fit just fine.  She's got pink pants, a pink hat, pink boots, and pink mittens. 



I crocheted this scarf--also pink, but it doesn't really match.

Doug has been teaching Kate how to stomp the snow off her boots before she comes in, and how to take off her things just inside the door.  He says, "If you don't grow up in snow country you don't know these things!"

It was pretty good packing snow but now it's all crusty.  We're supposed to get some more--maybe a lot more--tonight or tomorrow.

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.) 

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.

Pinks and Potatoes

It's National Scrapbook Day! And I finished my big digital design project that I've been working on. This is a collection of fun handmade embellishments, all in different shades of pink.



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

I've been working on pieces for this over the past year or so (my felt butterfly is in there), but I've been really focusing on it for the past couple of weeks, trying to get done in time for NSD. I kept coming up with more and more things, and probably could have kept going, but I figured this was a good stopping place!

I got to play with so many things in making these pieces... paper, ribbon, Sculpey, felt, beads, wire, cardboard, paint... and potatoes, of course. I made a potato-print flower and stamped a cardboard frame with it, and then turned the potato over to Kate to play with for a while.



I also stamped the potato in black and made some coordinating brushes.



HelenaJole_FlowerStamps.zip (Click on that to download the zip file. Includes recoloring instructions.)

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

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.

All tied up, lately

It's been unseasonably cool lately (we haven't been complaining--it's been nice after the heat in California), but now we are having a bit of a warm spell. We slept with the fan on last night for the first time in weeks.

I discovered that Kate will eat frozen peas for a snack! Hooray! We've been looking for ways to get more green veggies and fiber in her. (And hey, they're cheaper than frozen peaches.)

I haven't been posting much, since I've been busy working on some more digi stuff. (I do have some pretzel-making pictures to post, but I want to double-check something on the recipe first.) Here's the most recent project:



(Update: Since NDISB has closed, the twine set is now available here, with coordinating freebie.)

I've been working on various bits of twine since last November, and including them in some of our monthly collaborative kits at NDISB, intending that eventually I would release them in an all-twine package. I finally finished up the last bit that was half-done, and got all the other pieces together. I also made this cute layout to show them off:



That's some very time-consuming extraction. I think next I'll do something easier!

The end of the race

Challenge #11 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to make a layout with wings in it. A lot of people did altered-art style creations where they put wings on their kids. I decided to just use my chickadee drawing.



(Credits here)

Challenge #12 was another "Intersection" (like the collaboration in #2). One partner provided the photos and journaling, and the other partner did the scrapping. The topic was "a major accomplishment." Since I lost my first partner I teamed up with Lukasmummy (Crystal) and sent her some of my Cupboard Under the Stairs pictures. Here's the layout she created:



I like the sparkles!

The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race is known as ADSR for short. Doug tells me that this also stands for "Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release." Apparently it's a musical term. Who knew?

That's the end of this race! If you're a digi scrapper, and interested, I would definitely recommend getting in on the next race. It's a lot of fun, and there are cool prizes for each challenge.

Little Artist

Last week Kate saw me working with some paint and wanted to do it too, so I popped my painting shirt on her and let her have some fun. She went through a few sheets of paper and then started making finger-dots on the cardboard that I'd put underneath. She was having a great time and I just had to get some pictures. It's amazing how her eyes look just the same color as the shirt here. I think her eyes are a lot like Doug's--kind of blue-gray, but they change in the light.

Challenge #9 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to do a page in the "altered art" style. That's pretty broad, so I had a little trouble choosing a topic, but then I decided that one of these painting pictures would be perfect.



The watercolor splatters in the background are some that I was playing with a while back and then never really did anything with. (One ended up in my blog border.) They worked so well here that I decided to make a few more and put them up in the store.



(link)

Since my camera is kaput, I'm going to be looking for things I can do with the scanner for a while. Actually I'm lusting after a 40D now, and I think I can probably swing it, but I have to wait and see what Canon says about my camera first.

Cousin Squidge and Cousin Pudge

Challenge #7 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was a real doozy. I think just about everybody, upon first reading the requirements, experienced something of a sinking feeling. It was a "number crunch" challenge with two parts. I chose to do the first part, "messy," using one paper, two ribbons, three buttons, four glitter doodles, five frames, six pictures, seven alphas, eight flowers, nine staples, and ten random elements, all from one designer. I used all my own stuff, and had to make a few things on the spot for this challenge. Fortunately we could use the same element more than once to make up the required number.



(full credits here)

This was really a challenge. Definitely not my usual style, but it was fun. (Doug was looking at it and said, "This is going to be really busy, isn't it?") The hardest thing was the title. I spent a bit too long on that. I made a paper bag flower that I was really pleased with (it matches the frames). It's going in the April mega kit.

The title requires some explanation. We invented the word "squidge" to describe what Kate would do when she was kind of fussy and squirmy. (Sometimes we call her Squidgeon, or Squidgit.) These pictures were taken three years ago, when we were visiting my family in Ohio. My sister Betsey has this cute little dog, Angie, who is her "baby," so she decided that Kate and Angie were cousins. Hence Cousin Squidge and Cousin Pudge. (Angie has gotten a bit snappish in her old age, so these may be the only pictures we ever get of the two of them together!)

I worked on this one for a few of days, got it done with about an hour to spare before the deadline, and then threw together a layout for challenge #8 in about twenty minutes. Fortunately this one was a lot easier!



A memorable vacation experience, one-word title, black and white photos, journaling incorporating song lyrics, and no travel-related embellishments. Easy, yes? It certainly could have been more elaborate, but it was nice to be able to go minimalist on this one.

So I successfully completed the challenges for the week, but, sadly, I lost my partner. Karin was having internet problems and didn't get hers done. I'm teaming up with somebody else who also lost her partner. I was thinking about just dropping out, since I've got a big project that I'm trying to get finished in the next week or so, but I guess I'll stick with it.