Friday, September 28, 2012

Personalize your stationary

My Digital Studio can be used for so much more than cards and scrapbook pages.  Why not use it to create flyer's and stationary too?   Do you send out a Holiday letter each year?  Make it your own with borders made from stamp images or designer paper.   I was playing around with this idea today and came up with a few monograms and page borders.   These would be cute headers for a word document or stationary.    You can print these on standard 8 1/2 by 11 printer paper and write on them with pen, or add them to the top of a word document.









This second page is an idea for a flyer.
 
A less formal Christmas flyer.





















Stamp Camp flyer. 
















So many ways to use MDS2!!









Monday, September 24, 2012

The Pirate Ship Hotel!

Whenever we go to Iowa, we always stay at the Pirate Ship Hotel.  That is what the kids call it, its actually a Ramada.  The rooms are nice and the price isn't too bad, but best of all, it has four pools and a huge Pirate Ship.  It helps make the long car ride more enjoyable for the kids when they know that when they finally get there, they can play in the pools and go down the big slide.   This digital kit is just perfect for my pages!   It has everything you need for a pirate themed party, too.  Pennant makers, eye patches for the kids, invitations and more.  But if a pirate party is not in your future, the papers and stamps are fun too.   My title was made from the kits stamps, and kit comes with the pennant punch and corner embellishments too.  The skull and cross bones are also included, and much more. 
I made a two page spread so that my photo's could be larger.  This is page two.  What do you think?  I didn't put a whole lot on the page, very minimal and it came together in just a few minutes each page.  I am happy with the results and Zachary loves it, can't wait to get it back from the printer!












 The kit is $14.95 and includes 12 dsp papers, 12 piece stamp brush set, cupcake toppers, eye patches and a cute treasure chest print out that you print, cut out and assemble into a cute treasure chest to hold some candy party favors.  There are invitations, party pennants and more.  too fun!

Thanks for stopping by!
 

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Working together

Today's page is from a Challenge at Splitcoast Stampers.  You know I love to do the challenges, I feel they give me a place to start.  Its hard to stare at a blank page, so if I have a template or starting idea, its a lot easier.  The challenge was to use angles on your page.    So, I put my page together and then locked the items on the yellow square layer.  Then I rotated the whole thing -3 degrees.  I really think it adds a nice touch to the page, a bit more interest.  I used papers from the Storytime collection.    Try putting some of your pictures and elements on an angle and see what you think!

Friday, September 14, 2012

Last Day of the 31% off digital print products and select downloads

Today is the last day of the 31% off My Digital Studio print products and select downloads.  I just got the 40 pages I ordered last week.  They look Great!   Love them!!  What are you working on?

Fall Leaves



This page uses the fun new download "Wonderfall".  This download comes with 12 designer papers, several stamps and best of all, Leaf Punches!  Fun!  I made this page of the kids playing in the leaves using elements from the new Wonderfall kit. 
The papers are really cute, but it's hard to see what they are in the little swatch, so I made a page of just the bigger patterns so you can see them better.  The phrases that the kit comes with will be great for fall pages, Thanksgiving projects, and more. 
Thanks for stopping by!





Thursday, September 13, 2012

Hexagon Challenge

As you are aware if you read my blog, I love the MyDigitalStudio.net site.  There are always inspiring samples to look at, or videos to watch to learn new techniques and tricks.  Well, now there is an even better reason to visit the site each week.  A Contest!!  Each week there will be a new contest, and the winner gets a free download.  These are great because not only do they give me a good starting point for my pages,  and they help me to get more pages completed, but I have a chance to get a free download too! and I love the weekly downloads, there is always at least one or two I love.  Did you see the new frames yesterday?!   Last week I entered the contest.  I didn't win but I like my finished page so that's OK.  This week I am entering again.  The challenge this week is a Scrap Map challenge.  I like this sketch and decided to use some pictures I took last weekend at the Villa Park Oktoberfest. 
This is the Scrap Map.   There are quite a few entries already, but all is well because I have a cute page of Jillian.   Why not give the weekly contests a try for yourself?  Don't have the Hexagon punch, thats ok, you can change the challenge up and still enter  your project.  I saw some pages that used flowers and others that used pictures. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Monday, September 10, 2012

Grandma's Farm



I love Digital Kits.  The papers and embellishments work together so nicely.  This page uses the Tickets and Tags digital kit.  It comes with papers and stamps and journaling boxes and more.   You know that everything is going to look great and co-ordinate beautifully when you use a kit.  I added frames from the Downtown Grunge kit and the bow from the Family Fun kit (my two most used embellishments I think).









Another thing I love is being able to add a duplicate page and just change a few things so that I have a great two-page spread.   Click on the insert tab, then the insert Duplicated page (mirrored or unmirrored- either way-what ever is great for your project).  Then I just switched out the photos for some others, changes my title a bit and deleted  my tags.  I added some new journaling and moved the bow.  Done!






















item #127431   $9.95 and worth every penny :)







These are pages that I made with this kit last year.






















Thanks for stopping by!

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Changing a pre-made Template

Stampin' Up! has some very talented Artisan on staff, so why not make use of their talent and knowledge of space planning?  When you buy digi kits, they often come with a pre-made page.  There are also some great photo book templates that I have bought for their papers and embellishments.  But, you can also think of the value in the template itself too.  I looked through my templates looking for a template that used just one photo, because I only had one photo of this day.   I found so many I liked and finally decided to use one from the Fan Fair photo book kit.  I changed the color on the frame with the recoloring tool.  I changed the papers that were in the punches, and swapped the doily for a snowflake in the top corner.  The journaling block was a darker ivory, I recolored it white, and I swapped the wrinkly kraft background for a wrinkly blue.  So, if your ever stuck on where to start with a page, think about looking through your templates for some inspiration.
Here is what the page looked like before I changed it up.
Thanks for stopping by! Hope you got some inspiration from today's post.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Starved Rock State Park

This is another layout from Heathers class.  In case your wondering, someone asked this question so maybe you have it too, Heather has given permission to post the things we made in class.  Which is how she is, very nice and just wants to share her love of MDS.   She gives us lots of tips and tricks.  And, even if you see projects from her class posted here and at other sites, you don't get the videos and Q and A we get at class, so its still worth it to take the class.  And no,  I don't get anything if you join her class, I just truly like taking them and think they are great, so I'm passing that info on to you!  : )  And, since these are her designs, she deserves the credit.

This page uses elements and papers from the Fan Fair digital Kit.  The papers, frames, and stitching all come from this kit.  The frames were recolored with the new Recoloring tool that comes with the update to MDS2.  I love this feature.  The frames with the Fan Fair kit come in More Mustard and Island Indigo, but here I clicked on the recolor button, then used the color picker feature to match the polka dots on the background paper. 
Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Final page in the August Progressive Challenge

We got the final task for the August Progressive Challenge.  If you are not familiar with a progressive challenge it is where we are given a few tasks each week, and at the end of four weeks we have our finished page. The final task was to add buttons to our page.  I added my buttons as balloons. fun! 












 Here is how it all started.  Week One, large layerd background, three layers deep.


















Task two, add 7 or 8 photo boxes and add paper to some and photo's to others.  I only had 6, but I added one more the next week when I realized my boo boo.
 
Task three, add a title in a fun font, a date,  and journaling to the page.






These Challenges are at splitcoaststampers.com in the forums section.  Once in the forums, look in "splitcoast challenges" and then "scrapbooking" then "digital Scrapbooking".  Progessive challenges post each tuesday.  You can go back and due the challenges for past months too.

Thanks for stopping by!





 

Monday, September 3, 2012

Zachary at Two

Playing with the splatter stamps that came with My Digital Studio version 2.  This is my son Zachary at age two.  He is about to turn 6!  Wow! Time flies.  I can remember taking him for his birthday pictures.  He was so good and smiled for the camera.  He even showed us his true self by taking several pictures with his tongue sticking out.  What a ham!