Did you ever notice…

Friday, 23 November 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 4 Comments

how totally cool the mom is on the Starbucks cup?

Sipping on a cup of hot cafe mocha, I happened to look at the Christmas design (did I tell you I find inspiration for digital design in everything, even a street sign? 😛 Now why would a coffee cup be spared my inspection? hahaha ). And there was the requisite happy family in the snow. Dad, son, daughter, even the family dog, and… hello? What was that I was looking at? No apron strings, no headband-in-hair, unh unh. With utter delight my eyes beheld The Mom.

Short spiky hair. M.O.D.E.R.N. Soooo N-O-W.

Instant thought bubble: COOOOOOOOL DUDETTE!!!

Of course, I may be biased since I myself have short hair. >teehee<

See, that’s why I’m impressed by Starbucks. They have amazing marketing gimmicks (loooove the packaging… and have you bothered to read the literature at the back of each Tazo teabag? Love it!), and if this cup is any measure of how well they know their market, well, hats off to you, Starbucks ad-men! You just earned another gold star in my coffeebook. 😛

THO, HATH ANYONE THEEN HER?

The toof fairy? Becauth here cometh the thecond thet in the Toof Fairy Therieth!!! 😆

{Click on image for larger view}

The other day we had the blues, now we have some greens as well! 🙂 There’s a real grungy, scratchy solid paper (looks like it got toothpaste all over it) and a patterned paper filled with teeth. There’s a sticker that says “Mind the Gap” (loved seeing that all over the London tubes); small and big silver tooth brads; 2 paper journal tags with stitches around them (the blue one is shown in its actual-relative size to the layout and is blank; the green one has lines for journaling–I made it smaller but it comes to you in the same size as the blue tag). Then there are the 7 labels. Download Toof Fairy Set 2. Zip password is thankful (Happy Thanksgiving everyone!)

ETA: Sorry, download link is no longer available.

I HEAR YA!!!

I’m pretty excited to start on the Christmas kit, but I think I kind of like intermissions along the way as well (Who doesn’t love surprises?)

So I just wanted you to know:

Mary, I hear you on the celestial boy kit, blues, yellows, moons, stars, the works!

Beth, I hear you on the winter nature kit with birds, snow, grass, evergreen, cardinals, tans, whites, blues, reds…

Anybody else wants anything? Do leave me a note in the comments and I’m sure I’ll be inspired to come up with even a mini kit (or, gasp, a mega kit?) for you!

Have a happy day, my friends! I’ll be back tomorrow with another freeb!

And we interrupt your regular programming…

Friday, 23 November 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 11 Comments

to give you a surprise intermission! 😛

I’ve been so amused with my friend Veevs’ love for colors (and she’s the Queen Enabler too–ask her about any sales and she’ll give you a hundred… we’re speaking digital of course, though… hmmm, I haven’t asked her about shoes… and maybe I shouldn’t, given my weakness for shoes I just may not be able to resist her enabling 😆 )

So anyway, on a spur of the moment, I decided to create some glitter frames to indulge her love for colors, and here’s the result!

{Click on image for larger view}

{Special thanks to atomic cupcake, amylynn of stock.xnchg for the stock photo of the Peruvian cutie-pie, and to Carrie Stephens for her commercial use items}

I don’t know how useful these frames will be, but I hope you’ll find a use for them (with Christmas just around the corner, maybe the glitter will come in handy, eh? 🙂 ) Actually, as I stumbled upon creating these, I realized I could add some to the Christmas kit I’ll be making soon, so you’ll have some of these frames in Christmas colors coming soon! (unless you’re sick of them already, hahaha)

Download Peruveevian Delights, with a total of 8 supercolorful glitter frames. You can use them at landscape or portrait orientation. Each frame is about 5.5 x 8.5 inches. Zip password is chauveevs 😛 (Note: paper and drop shadows are not included with the kit. hahaha!)

ETA: Sorry, download link is no longer available.

Enjoy, and thank you for leaving some love in my blog and/or on my 4shared site!

Have a happy day, and happy thanksgiving to all my friends in the US!

Hath anyone theen…

Thursday, 22 November 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 3 Comments

the toof fairy??? 😆

This is the new kit I’ve been working on… inspired by my friend Tori (yup, she of the “why-don’t-you-make-a-boy-kit” wisdom). She’s a wonderful friend, and I’ve been keeping her in mind and in my prayers (and it would be great if you could, too!) 🙂

Tori, this is for you, sweetie.

And for you, all my sweeties, all of you who pass by (my darling friends!) too!

Now I do realize that a lot of us have children sporting permanent teeth already (in which case, I certainly hope they don’t lose any just so you can use this kit, hahaha) … but as usual I tried to incorporate parts of this kit that anyone can find useful (especially the papers… the elements that come in this kit are specialized, I have to admit).

I had to stop myself from adding to this kit, because as I was playing around, I took a look at my Toof Fairy folder and realized that I had more than 20 papers!!! Holy looth teef!!! 😆 Don’t worry, I’m not going to dump them all on you; I just chose the best and that’s what you’re getting, of course (nothing but the best for you!) 🙂

So here now is the first Set of the Toof Fairy Kit:

{Click on image for larger view}

I know that there seem to be a lot of blues here, but don’t worry, the next coming sets will have greens and yellows and light blues as well, so you can use them for your girlies too! This set has 3 grungy papers and one patterned paper with stripes made out of a toothbrush-brush (literally! heh!) that I made and played around with. It also comes with a felt tooth patch that has stitches around it (doesn’t show up too well on the preview, but it’s there, trust me 😛 ) If you want to add some journaling on the patch without losing the texture, you can always use the blending modes… 🙂 Download Toof Fairy Set 1. Zip password is pearlywhite .

ETA: Sorry, download link is no longer available.

Hope you like these, and thank you so much to all my thoughtful friends who leave love in my blog (and on my 4shared)!!! I truly am immensely grateful that you take the time… it is always so inspiring to read your words.

Have a happy day! I’ll be back tomorrow with Set 2!

PS. I’m going to start working on a Christmas Kit (mega kit??? 😛 ) soon… but since we’re talking about Christmas, is there any kit you’re wishing for? Who knows? I might be able to grant your wish (as long as it’s not the moon and the stars… oh wait, have had a request for that, and will work on that soon!!! 😀 )

Seriously, though, if there’s anything you’re wanting, do leave me some comments right here… I’ll do the best I can. 😉

Today’s Funny

Tuesday, 20 November 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 4 Comments

Got home close to midnight from a planning meeting for the next Big Project, and who did I find wide awake, waiting for me and hubby to come home? My five-year-old J, who joined us for a midnight snack of burgers, chicken sandwiches, ketchup and fries, and macaroni salad (yum! >burp!<)

Now this wonderfully articulate son of ours constantly amazes me with his snippets of conversation. This is the little guy who told me when he was three years old “Mama, I am so disappointed with you” when I didn’t allow him to drink cola. Hmmmm… disappointed? Can you spell that for me, son? 😛

Anyway, he comes up with the most astounding insights and I often am left speechless and in awe when he tells me what’s on his mind. I always wonder: from which corner of his brain does he pull out all these thoughts? He seems to have an innate understanding of so many things, and often (and best of all) they are hilarious!

Today he declared out of the blue: Mama, I know the difference between real and fake.

Me: Hmmm?

J: You want to know what fake means?

Me: Okay, tell me.

J: Fake is when you buy a Zoid (his current craze) and then it breaks apart easily and then when you try to fix it you can’t ever get it back together again.

😆

Really. How do these kids come up with these things? 8)

Boy Oh Boy!!!

Monday, 19 November 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 10 Comments

That’s what I’m saying as I whoop and jump around like a real nut! 1,203!!! That’s the magic number of visitors I had here at my blog home in one day… woohoo!!! How wonderful to have so many friends come around! We are having a parteeeeee!!! 😆 Oh and I am so happy that we have in our company the one male visitor I’ve had in my blog so far… Clarke, was that you? 😛 I am so incredibly happy because the number of wonderful people downloading and leaving love in my blog and on my 4shared account is increasing! I looooove that the stuff I create is worthy enough for you to want to download, and I love being able to share with you, and I love having company, so I hope you’ll be coming around real often! (Okay, gushing, gushing and giddy, giddy 😀 😀 😀 )

Alright. I’m calm now. 😆

I am especially giddy now because I’ve just had the most amazingly fun time creating elements for our kit today! Well, okay, make that the last two days, as I was up till 5AM this morning playing with Wilson and Adobe 😀 (For those who don’t know yet, Wilson is my compy… and since I’m introducing my best playmates, I might as well let you know that Cameran *yes, that’s an A in Cameran* 😆 is my Nikon D40X. I know, I’m so corny. But I love these toys of mine! hohoho)

Today was the first time I tried doodling my own bicycle (since Terebene asked for a bicycle and I am always inspired by requests, so off to the drawing board–literally–I went! 🙂 )… and I had the greatest time of my life! So it might be safe to say you’ll find some more doodles in my freebs sometime in the near future. 😉

Here’s what I’ve been having fun with!

{Click on image for larger view}

Set 3 of our Boy Oh Boy kit is full of elements (the paper you see in the preview will come with tomorrow’s download, which will be the last in this series so I can get to the next mini kit 😉 yippee!!! A new one! ). A bit of explanation of these elements, since I had to squeeze them in to fit the preview:

All the elements are in coordinating Boy Oh Boy colors. There are 12 brads, three different sizes of 4 designs each (so you don’t have to resize… though you can, if you want! 😀 ). There are 6 grosgrain ribbons with knots in the middle–5 are solid and one is patterned (I figured the patterned papers were quite busy, so it would be nice to have plain ones that could easily coordinate with them). All the ribbons are 12 inches in length (as the green one is in the preview), but you can easily resize them and make them smaller. As you know by now, I like making items as large as possible so that quality doesn’t suffer when you downsize.

The green round thing you see below the ribbons is a wooden frame (since Tori said she likes frames… wanted to go a bit masculine on this one, so I didn’t make any with swirls). The preview shows one of the 2 frames, which are actually exactly the same, except that one has a hanging thingie so that you can make it look like it’s attached to your layout, and the other one is a simple round wooden frame with the same design. Actual size of the frames are 9.5 inches (yeah! So you have the option to fill your whole layout with it… or not 😀 ).

There’s a crumpled red tag which comes with the rope attached to it already (I just added the brad to the preview, but the rope has a knot both below and above). The other tag, where I’ve summarized the contents of the kit, is a tag chalked on all sides and with one edge where the BOY text is cut out. I’ve attached the eyelets to the tag already so that you can use the brads or even the knotted ribbons on it. Actual size of the triangular crumpled tag is 5×8 inches, and the BOY tag actually measures 4.5×8 inches. (hahaha, I’m having visions of Supersized Mcdonalds meals!)

Then there’s the bicycle charm which I doodled and turned into a metal chain with the hanging thingie attached as well. (Actual size is 6×11 inches).

And that’s it! Those are the elements for this kit! I’ll be back tomorrow with the last paper pack, which has the paper you see in the preview and more, all in coordinating colors of course.

Download Set 3 here. Zip password is elementary 😀

ETA: Sorry, download link is no longer available.

Hope you like this as much as I enjoyed making them! Now back to the drawing board to play and create again for you!

Thank you soooooooooo much for all the love you leave! I love reading your comments! Thank you in advance for leaving love again (and do let me know what you think of these elements as this is the first time I’ve tried making a lot of these types).

See you tomorrow with the next freeb! Have a happy day, and here are a kazillion hugs from me to you! Mwah!

Special thank you hugs to atomic cupcake and cindy doerksen for their commercial use items!

Do you love words?

Saturday, 17 November 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 17 Comments

I doooo!!! I love words, I love reading, I love writing.

Did you ever think of what sense you would hate to lose the most? I can lose my sense of smell and together with that my sense of taste (they go together, did you know, to provide us with the gustatory experiences that are responsible for making our hips grow to the size of Texas?). Heck, my body would probably even roll its eyes in gratitude if I ever lost my sense of taste 😆 (I love eating too… but I love reading more).

Losing my sense of sight would kill me. I’ve always known that. Perhaps it’s because I’m myopic to begin with so every morning when I wake up and start groping around for my glasses, I know what it’s like to be blind. Thank heavens the blindness lasts only till I fix those specs upon my nose. 😀 And there are a lot of cool people who wear glasses, beginning with my friend Jessica, and… come on, tell me now, you DO wear reading glasses at least, right? hehehe 😆

Now that I think of it, perhaps it’s a case of the chicken and the egg: which came first, my love of reading or my myopia? I do have memories of hiding under the blanket past bedtime with a flashlight and a book in hand… 🙂

But I digress. This love of words should explain the next set in the Boy Oh Boy Kit. Man, as usual, this kit is growing to epic (unintentionally so) proportions! But that can only be good, right?

This set has 2 papers, ultra-grungified in a very big way. I actually thought of my friend kimi when I was making this (as her style is so wonderfully different, and I don’t think she would use any of my freebs… maybe with this one, there’s a better chance, hahaha!) There’s Mudtrail, which is a beige/cream/brown one with little accents of dark red, and there’s Kimi’s Boy–and I know Kimi has no boy, but she does have a hubby, right? 🙂 –which is a wildly grungy brown/green thingie.

The set comes with a full chipboard alpha in coordinating colors: there are 2 files–both uppercase and lowercase with as many punctuation marks as I could fit in. It also comes with a set of dymo-inspired labels, also in coordinating colors: there are 44 in all (so you don’t see them all on the preview, but they’re there!) They all have to do with boys, but I think they’re generic enough to use for any kid in general, and maybe even for us wanna-be kids. 😆

There are drop shadows on the preview but the actual elements do not have any drop shadows–more freedom for you to apply your own, yay!!! 🙂

Here’s the preview:

{Click on image for larger view}

Download Set 2 of Boy Oh Boy here. Zip password is wordlove (but of course! what else? 🙂 ) Thank you so much for your patience in waiting for the downloads to process: I know they take long, but that’s what happens when the files are large… 😳

ETA: Sorry, download link is no longer available.

Hope you enjoy this, as I truly enjoyed making them for you. Thank you for all your kind comments. I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate them and how I so look forward to hearing from you again (speaking of which, I have a request for a bicycle… will work on that! I hear ya, my friend! 🙂 )

Have a happy day, and come again soon! 😉

AT LONG LAST!!!

Friday, 16 November 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 20 Comments

FREEBIE TIME!!! Woohoo!!!

There’s nothing like a gust of cool wind on a hot, humid day–and coming up with this freebie after a long drought has felt exactly like that plus a glass of cold iced water thrown in for good measure! Wow, this feels so good to be playing with design once again! 😀

It’s a bit demanding on time when one has to take a course, moderate a course, and design all at the same time–although it is an AWESOME LOVELY WONDERFUL experience that I would never trade for anything! So given the three choices above, the first to be laid on the shelf (with absolutely NO second thoughts) was the design-play. But now that the course I’m moderating is over, and the course I’m taking is almost over, that gives me a bit more time to indulge in freebie-creating, so here we are, my friends! (It also does keep me from biting my nails while waiting for the next courses that Jess will have… they are just so absolutely wonderful that if there’s anyone reading this who hasn’t taken one or two of them, I suggest you head on over to her site and take ALL OF THEM!!! I’m willing to bet all the digits on my body that you will never regret it. 😉

I wanted to give my sweeties at Jessica’s playground a sneak preview of the colors of this kit, sort of like a teaser (yeah, yeah, I like teasing once in a while–the good kind, mind you 😉 )… but I have hardly any experience posting images on a message board, and so mine ended up throwing my posts way out of whack (ugh, and I felt like I was littering all over the MB with my useless posts cut in midway because the image was too large for the area to hold… I am so so sorry, Jessica & Jared, sending apologies through the net-waves!). So anyway, here I suppose I will be able to post it (as I’m more used to the space requirements in here 😀 )

Here are the colors I’ve been playing with:

This is a bit of a skip into the deep forest for me, as I’ve experimented to a much greater degree in grungifying the items (well, at least the papers, at this point, as I am still working with the elements). Here is where I’d like to give a big shout-out to my friend Tori, who inspired me to come up with a boys’ kit. A couple of days ago, we were chatting and she told me she was surprised that I hadn’t made a boy kit yet, given that I happen to have five sons. Good question, my friend!!! 😀 So off I went to design my latest freebie: this one’s named Boy Oh Boy.

For today’s freeb, I have 6 papers–3 solid and 3 patterned papers. (More coming, but since they’re large files, I kind of have to divide them to upload them…hope they don’t take forever for you to download the zips! 😯 ). I like versatile kits–those that you can use for various purposes and that don’t limit me to just the theme of the kit–I try to do the same with my freebs… so I think you’ll find various uses for the solid papers that come with this kit (uhhh… the blue text-patterned paper that comes with this set, unfortunately, is really targeted for boys as it has an embroidered design above and below that reads “the splendor and joy… of my precious little boy”).

So enough talk about this, and onto the download links (so that I can make more stuff for you, woohoo! :D) Here’s the preview of Set 1:

{Click on the image for larger view}

Download the kit here. Zip password is thanxtori 🙂 {Seriously, girlfriend, thank YOU for your inspiration!}

ETA: Sorry, download link is no longer available.

I’ll be uploading more papers and elements in the next few days, so do come around soon… but will also come up with a mini kit in between for Tori’s little son… 😉

If anyone has any requests for a kit, I’d be more than GLAD to know… it’s always nice to know that at least one person will have some use for the results of my playtime 🙂 Come now, don’t be shy, do let me know–what you want, what you need, themes? elements? –in the comments section right over here. Go ahead, click on it, you know you want to… LOL!!! 😆

Hope you enjoy this, and I would really, really, really, r-e-a-l-l-y love to know what you think about this kit. I would truly be grateful if you could leave some comments for me… thanks so much in advance!

Have a happy day!

COMING SOON!!!

Thursday, 8 November 2007 / LivE / 5 Comments

It’s been crazy nuts and I know I have been sooooo unforgiveably remiss in being “home” for your visits here… but my compy Wilson has been panting and chugging slowly, trying to keep up with all the designing load and scrapping work I’ve been giving him… Didn’t want him to lose steam and just fizzle out so I’ve been holding out till my wonderful blessing-from-heaven hubby would give me my additional 2 gigabytes of RAM and maybe an extra hard drive?

Have I told you that my dh is the most amazing man in the entire world? I have? Well, let me say it again! Today he came home with my 2gig RAM and 500GB of spanking new hard drive space!!!! Whoooopppppeeeedooooo!!!

Christmas in November! Ladidadida! Do the happy dance with me, my friends! And you do know what this means, don’t you? It means more FREEBIES FINALLY are coming soon!

Woohoo!!! So in the next few days I should be coming up with new stuff to snag! Thanks for hanging in there with me!

((((HUGS))))

Off to get some more work done! 😉 Have a great day, y’all!!!