This you REALLY gotta see!!!

Friday, 31 August 2007Wednesday, 16 January 2008 / LivE / 5 Comments

Amaaaaaazing!!! It is always stunning to see wonderful layouts made by my friends A. because they’re great works of art; B. because they take a lot of squeezing of creative juices (and that’s not always an easy thing, believe me); and C. because each layout is always done with a lot of love and devotion and a willingness to expose one’s heart and soul on a page (and really, who has an easy time being vulnerable?)

Now if that isn’t even amazing enough to appreciate, try experiencing the honor of having those wonderful friends of yours actually use stuff you, in your amateur creative attempts, have made with a lot of love and affection for them, and tell me if you don’t soar to the highest heavens with delight!

Lemme tell ya, this is me:

Yeah, well, okay, without the milk moustache and the blonde hair, but you get a pretty accurate visual of the delight, yes? 😀

So here, let me show off the most wonderful things I’ve seen in the last couple of days:

This one’s by my dear, dear friend, just-totally-fantastic Jana (okay, I’m cheating with the adjective here, but there are sooo few adjectives that begin with J!!!) … a lot of love and sweat and major FUN went into making this, I hear… 😉

This one’s by brilliant Barb… don’t you just love those swirls and all those touches of green? Perfect!

This one’s by darling Dawn, love the summery cool look of this! And gotta love the wordy background, eh?

And these are from some of my friends from the Up&Running August Course of Jessica, which I’m helping to moderate … so much fun! And the girls are amazingly energetic and enthusiastic and talented! (Just like everyone who has made Jessica’s playground their second home 😀 )

This one is a wonderful job by terrific Tina, who calls herself a “newbie”… certainly doesn’t look like newbie work now, does it? Yay, Tina!!! (Doesn’t the layout just ooze coool? Plus I totally love that she did a layout of herself!)

And this, by another new friend of mine, awesome Alisa… now doesn’t her layout just shout out coool fun!!! I love that the pool is filled with kids! Totally! 😀

Girlfriends, you have my deepest gratitude, way deep from the bottom of my toes (that’s farther down than my heart!) I am truly honored that you have chosen to preserve your memories with my humble creations. You guys RAWK!

Now, can we have a standing ovation please for these absolute masterpieces? Thank you, thank you, thank you. Love ya, girlfriends!!!

Hoo Ha Ha!

Thursday, 30 August 2007Wednesday, 16 January 2008 / LivE / 1 Comment

My kids never fail to amaze me. I love that everyday I get to have a hoo-ha-ha moment, you know the kind of unexpected dose of humor that works like a shot in the arm when you’re feeling sick, and after you get it, instantly you feel better? Imagine getting this dose when you’re not even sick to begin with, and you’re in laughtime heaven!

My kids give me huge doses of laughter. Every. Single. Day. They come up with the funniest statements. Sometimes I’m afraid my mouth will resemble that of a donkey from all the laughter they manage to pull out of me at the slightest provocation. I also wonder: do I think they’re hilarious because they’re my kids? because I’m really a silly fool who’ll laugh at the simplest things? because I’m cheap when it comes to laughing? 😀 😀 😀 Who cares? Laughter never hurt anyone, right?

In the past 24 hours I was lucky enough to get two Hoo-Ha-Ha’s from my 5-year-old son:

HOO-HA-HA #1:

Last night, I had a terrible grumbly, roller-coaster-riding tummyache. I was telling my son J how strange my tummy felt, wondering aloud in that stream-of-thought way.

Then he said: Mama, maybe you have saran-san.

Me: Huh?

J: I said, maybe you have saran-san!

Me: Saran-san? Huh? (feeling like overnight I became a dope and my son became my all-knowing wise parent)

J: Yes, saran-san! Remember?

Me: (struggling, thinking-frown creases on forehead) – Saran-san?…??? 😯

J: Yes, Mama, saran-san. You remember, you said before that Jm (our 20-month-old baby) had saran-san!

Me: Jm? Saran-san? Huh? (Great. Now I’ve sunk even further, becoming a neanderthal from the Ice Age, unable to comprehend the simplest concepts)

J: Yes, Mama. (trying hard to make me understand, as I grow in admiration for my son’s incredible patience with his totally lost-in-space mom) You said last week that you were giving Jm medicine for his saran-san… you said maybe he ate something bad, so he had saran-san.

Me: (slapping forehead and resisting urge to shout Eureka) OOOOOH!! Sirang tiyan you mean!!! YEAH!!!

Sirang tiyan in the Filipino language translates to bum stomach. Obviously I need to teach my son the language soon.

HOO-HA-HA #2

Today, as we were driving to school, I happened to look out the car window and lo and behold, in front of me was a large poster of the juiciest hamburger on the wall of a restaurant (it didn’t help, perhaps, that it was lunchtime) .

I told J: Look! Do you see that burger! That must be the yummiest-looking burger in the world!

J: (craning his neck) Where?

Me: There! (pointing to the wall) See? On the wall of the restaurant!

J: Oh yeah! I see! It DOES look yummy, Mama! … (thoughtful pause. And then…) But you know Mama, when you get the burger in real life, it doesn’t look as yummy anymore.

Yep, that’s my son. All grown up at 5 years of age. Already aware of the vast divide between marketing ploys and the real thing.

Where do these kids get this, this innate wisdom of theirs? 😀

Sing with Me Your ABC’s!

Wednesday, 29 August 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 7 Comments

Indulge me please, and see this video to the end… the last part is exactly how I felt when I finished wrapping up this freebie in a zipped package for you! (Gotta love that YEAH at the end!) 😀

{Click for larger view} Here’s the last of the Play With Me Kit… a slightly grungy chipboard alphabet. It includes numbers and the basic punctuation marks (sorry, there’s no question mark… the font didn’t have one 😯 ). I just added drop shadows on the preview, but it comes without drop shadows to give you more flexibility. Every letter and punctuation mark is evenly sized at 300 ppi, as usual. You’ll have to forgive me for putting the files on png sheets… I wanted to get this to you as quickly as possible; separating the letters in a file each would’ve taken me longer than the ABC song sung a hundred times 😀 You can use the marquee tools or the lasso tool to select each letter you want to use, control-c, on your layout control-v, and voila! (But of course, you knew that already 😉 ) Special thanks to atomic cupcake!

Do pass by tomorrow because I’m going to put up some masterpieces done by my dearest playmates at Jessica’s playground, so you can oooh and aaah along with me over their layouts done with some of my freebies. I wish I could accurately express how honored I feel when I see their layouts. It’s awesome. They’re awesome. Seriously. So stay tuned for that! Woohoo!

I’m feeling a bit sad that this kit is coming to an end, but I’m very excited to begin a new freebie set! I hope you’ll still want more of my freebies, and do drop by to snag them when they’re up! I’m falling a little behind in my digi-scrapping (and I so need that creative release) plus I have some other creative commitments to attend to, so I may not be posting freebies everyday… or I may… who knows? I love creating so I don’t think I could resist… LOL! If you’re a regular at Jessica’s playground, then you’ll surely hear when a freebie’s up–just look for the Laundry Piles (wink, wink!) on the General Forum board!

Alright… need to go back to my moderating duties on the playground (I love the girls who’ve joined our family! They’re such a creative, energetic, enthusiastic bunch!).

Please don’t forget to leave some love in my blog (4shared is fine too, although when the freebie has to be taken down, the comments go with it 😦 … and I would so love to be able to read your comments again and again. :D)

Here’s the link; download HERE! The zip password is letterrific (that’s a double t and a double r!) Have fun and I hope you enjoy using this!

ETA: Sorry, link has been removed.

PS. I created another lower-case alpha using the swirly-patterned paper that I made for the preview… do you think I should put it up on a link for you to download too? I hesitated because I was afraid you might scream “enough with the alphas already!!!” 😀 Do let me know if you want it and I’ll upload it for you. It’s not grungy… it’s cleaner and swirlier (does that word even exist?) 😀

It’s really not a big deal, but…

Wednesday, 29 August 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 4 Comments

it’s a nice gesture nevertheless. Leaving comments, that is.

When I download freebies (who doesn’t love freebies? Everyone does! :D), I would sometimes see rants from designers on their blogs about people downloading their freebies “without bothering to say thank you or leave a comment.” Now that I’ve started making my own stuff to give away (and I love doing so!), I get more than ever what they’re saying. It’s funny when you see so many downloads and only 1 comment… I say funny because, personally, I really don’t take it against those who download without leaving comments. It’s honor enough for me to know that someone wants something I created. I really mean that.

But I can understand how some can feel a little sad when they don’t get comments. It’s like you work the entire night to make a wonderful handmade gift for your friend, and then when you hand it to them, they take it and don’t say thank you. None of us would do that now, would we? So why would some do it in cyberspace–maybe because it’s easier when anonymously receiving? Honestly, I don’t know.

But let me tell you, it’s really a great thing to get comments, you know? It drives the spirit, it sparks the creative juices, it makes one feel appreciated. And that, to me, is worth soooo much more than any amount of $$ one can get by selling their creations.

So I’m taking this time to thank you, my darling, wonderful friends, for the trouble you’ve taken to leave comments, here or on the 4shared download sites: Janie, Jana, Joan, Deb, Annie, Stacy, Kathy, Nancy, Dawn, Tina, Connie, Mer, the wonderful Connie of digiscrapinfo, cindyj, and my favorite divine-digi-goddess Jessica, and everyone else who left their comments on the MB of our playground… and I’m not just talking about the download comments here. When I read your heartfelt messages, it’s like receiving double the honor: your visit to my blog, and your sharing of yourself. Wow, how do I put into words how absolutely precious that is? You do me proud, girlfriends. Your comments are the vitamins of both my soul and my creative muse. I can never say thank you enough to you; nope, words will never come close to the gratitude and affection I have for you. (And mind you, it’s not because of the comments. In fact, the comments just reinforce that I have the best-est friends in the entire world!)

So I just wanted to give you a million hugs… for everything that you are. 🙂 You seriously rock, girlfriends!