Photo Catch-Up!

Monday, 2 June 2008Thursday, 25 September 2008 / LivE / 3 Comments

Uhhh…. probably more like Photo Avalanche coming up (consider yourself forewarned, my friend). 😛

Our May Photo-a-Day challenge at the Spraground has just ended, and I have to admit, I’m experiencing a bit of withdrawal symptoms… There’s just something magical about the Spraground activities that makes one keep hankering for more. Amazing.

I loved seeing all the photos of my Spragmates come up in the Photo-A-Day gallery… the eyecandy is just so astounding over there! Even greater than that, this gallery is yet another testament of just how much phenomenal talent there is in that special home on the web! (If you happened to stumble onto my porch today and haven’t joined us yet on our Spraground, dooooo come and join us! We’re celebrating our home’s birthday this June 4th, so come a register on that day–it’s free–and join us in all the wonderful celebrating, whooping and yeehaw-ing that we’re surely going to be having for about a week!)

OK, so now you can stop reading if you don’t want to get bombarded by photo phreakishness! 😆 I haven’t uploaded my photos since the last time, so here’s a whole avalanche of them!

May 11 ~ Traffic Lights

I so don’t like traffic, but I do get mesmerized by the red lines made by brake lights on the shiny, rain-kissed roads…

May 12 ~ Beacon

Turned off all the lights in my home except this set of 4 dinner lights that hang over our dining table. I thought the matte silver bars holding them up would show, but ended up with these seemingly-floating lamps instead. They kind of remind me of those biblical virgins with their lamps waiting in a line for the bridegroom… 😛

May 13 ~ Shell Cathedral

Couldn’t help thinking that this looked like a cathedral among the rest of the shell village. 🙂 (PS. i am nowhere near the beach… just had this bunch of shells for the longest time and decided they made a great photo-op, hehe)

May 14 ~ dare to be different

I have always been fascinated by smooth, dark river stones… or, for that matter, stones in general, including glass ones.

CREDIT: Used a texture by Voidix as overlay

May 15 ~ X marks the spot

Ha! Finally found another use for our metal and leather tic-tac-toe set on our coffee table in the living room.

Credit: Used a texture by Ghostbones as overlay

May 16 ~ El Burrito

Meet Burrito, one of the many donkeys in my home. 😀 I’ve always loved donkeys, mostly because there’s something so moving about the most lowly, most humble animal carrying the greatest King on his back… 🙂

May 17 ~ Mug Shot

Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun. Love my stainless steel coffee cups but not as much as i love what’s inside them. hahaha!

May 18 ~ Seek and you shall find.

My son has been very “into” Pink Panther lately, and decided to be Inspector Clouseau for the day. Totally funny. 😛

May 19 ~ Seek the light.

Could not help marvel at how this little plant remains verdant, fresh, and alive despite the bramble of thorns and darkness that surround it. I think it’s another one of Nature’s silent lessons to us: that in the depth of all the tribulations we may face at one point or another, we need to just keep our faces turned up to Heaven and things will work out…

May 20 ~ His & Hers

He has his marbles; I have my pearls. 😀 (The “he” is my 5 year old son, and the pearls are from the South China Sea, which happens to be very nicely located near the islands I call home 🙂 )

May 21 ~ Small Beginnings, Great Things

A very ordinary photo, but a testament to my belief that there is an artist in every child, and a child in every artist… here’s to the children in us! 🙂

May 22 ~ Ideal

I have ducks in almost every room of my house. They’re a good reminder of what I strive for: to be like a duck–calm on the surface but paddling like the dickens underneath (Michael Caine quote). 😀

May 23 ~ Haven
Is there any place more comforting, more safe, more serene, than the embrace of a mother? There is an indescribable warmth in her arms that we will always run to (or remember fondly, when she’s gone), whether we’re 6 or 60… I am always amazed by the softness and gentleness of the Madonna & Child, even when represented in hard brass sculpture. (This is one of the works in our home done by a Filipino artist called Michael Cacnio).

May 24 ~ For Sale

My 6yr-old son spent the entire morning of the 24th making this, and then declared that he was going to put up a toy shop and sell his creations “so we can have enough money to spend (when we go on our vacation).” ROFL. I thought it was incredibly cute and certainly a moment to remember so I can remind him about it when he’s older.

May 25 ~ Nurture the sillies.

I think a sense of humor is definitely one of the essentials needed to get through Life, don’t you? 🙂

May 26 ~ Ssssshhhh…oes!

Promise you won’t tell anyone about this sssshhhoe secret? I really do not have many obsessions in life besides shoes (uh, there’s digiscrapping, and hard drives, and photography stuff, and… hehehe). Oh… and don’t tell my hubby: he hasn’t opened my shoe cabinet since we got married. hehehe.

May 27 ~ Serious Business

Sssh. This is a really important earth-changing board meeting going on; maintain silence and no comments from the peanut gallery. LOL! I am so amused by how serious these two look, when in reality their conversation revolved around what each had drawn on their own papers. Gotta love kids! 😀

May 28 ~ Simple Pleasures Ahhh… once in a while you taste wine so delicious, you just have to sing… it’s just one of those simple things that make life a joy to live. 😀

May 29 ~ Succor

We all have those days, when darkness falls and we grope our way through, hoping for a hand to hold onto… it always helps to know that there’s a warm and safe place to run to, where we can count on a friend waiting there for us with a ready embrace. My light, my home, my arms are open to every single one of you both here on my blog porch and in my Spraground family. 🙂

PS. I wish the front door of my real home were as romantic as this; however, this is the back door of a restaurant where hubby and I had dinner. 😛

May 30 ~ Order in Chaos

This is the plant that I see when I look out of one of my dining-room windows… Today I was amazed that as the wind blew the soft stems of the plant every which way, the individual leaves nevertheless looked calm and in place… Again, Mother Nature gives us an amazing lesson: no matter how confused and confusing everything is around us, if we hold on steadily to our principles and values, we will get through the chaos with our serenity and certainty intact. 🙂

May 31 ~ Believe in magic.

I think that one of our greatest challenges in this journey called Life is the struggle to see the world with the freshness, the innocence, the purity of the eyes of a child. My children have taught me a very important lesson: that no matter where one looks, if one believes in magic, there will be miracles to be witnessed in the most ordinary of places. Here’s to the miracle of our friendships, our Spraground, and our lives!

Phew! Wake up! The show is done! 😆

Am presently working on freebies; will be back with them soon!

Have a happy day!

That Dreaded White Screen

Monday, 12 May 2008Thursday, 25 September 2008 / LivE / 15 Comments

ETA: I typed this in yesterday but am only getting it posted today… Read on and you’ll understand why… 😉

I’ve been staring at it for close to 48 hours now. I click on Internet on my computer, and normally I get my msn homepage from which I launch into my wonderful day of work and play. Sometimes, when the net connections are iffy, I get a white screen with that message below (trying to connect…) and I know if it takes about 5 seconds, there’s definitely something wonky going on.

Well. Let’s just say I’ve stared at that white screen for so often this week, I almost feel it’s a wall I can climb.

I need a new router. I need it soon. Like yesterday. Or I’m seriously going to need to be committed. Haha.

I feel so bad that I can’t get to the Up & Runners on the forums and the galleries. Jes, hang on! I’ll be there as soon as I can fly on the internet waves!

Making the Most of It

So… what to do when I can’t get to my Up & Running friends, my Spraground family, and my one-million virtual field trips? I do what I should’ve done way way back. Start cleaning up my compy’s guts. Start trying to make sense of the kajillion gigabytes of digistash I’ve accumulated over the past year and a half. And maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll actually get to organize some of them in ACDSee. Maybe.

So here I am, in between stifling sighs and the urge to scream in frustration, in between constantly clicking on the Internet button and hoping and praying I’ll get more than a five-minute connection before it disappears into the virtual black hole again…

Catharsis

So while fixing my files in my compy, guess what shows on HBO? StepMom, that movie that stars Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts, and Ed Harris. That movie that is sooo real, where the line that separates the “bad guy” from the “good guy” is so blurred that it’s totally believable. (I love that. I mean, is there really a bad guy through and through, who has not a sliver of goodness in him? I doubt it. And for that matter, is there really a good, good person who has not a sliver of weakness in him? Doubt that too. So this is so real. You don’t know who to hate because you can totally identify with the characters, so in the end you end up loving them all.)

I don’t know if it’s because the past week has been particularly stressful, having to deal with daily (I kid you not; DAILY, as in every single day) trips to the hospital for my kids… mostly for vaccines but the one that worried me a lot was my little baby whom we were afraid would need surgery for 2 masses that started to grow… and Saturday morning, when we saw our pediatric surgeon, he declared immediately that there would be no need for surgery; that the masses were due to hyperactive glands; that they would resolve themselves in time. I had a bum stomach the entire week waiting for that appointment with the doctor to push through, and that very same day that I found out my little one was free (and I’m absolutely positive that it’s all due to the prayers of my Spraground family and my friends in real life), the stomach issues disappeared. Stress.

(So thank you, thank you, my dearest Spraground family, for all your kind thoughts and prayers).

So. I don’t know if it was that stressful week. Or the fact that I missed the Up & Runners’ chat that Jes and I had scheduled for this morning (not for lack of trying to connect). Or the fact that I can’t get to my virtual workplace even if I want to. Or the fact that I’m again way behind with visiting with you on my blog porch. Or the fact that I lost my mom when I was a kid and had a stepmom whom I loved dearly (and lost too eventually). Or the fact that I’ve been trying to be valiantly cheerful while wanting to kick this dumb router for being so unresponsive (and let me tell you, the support of my DSL service provider did not have a solution for me… in fact, I think the guy knew even less than my hubby, who called them to get them to fix it for us).

But. The fact is… I cried. Buckets. Pails. Pools. Heaves and sobs. I totally sobbed my heart out . So my eyes look terrible and I look almost as ashen as Susan Sarandon did towards the end of her days as her movie character.

But you know what? I needed that cry. Strange. But it felt good after.

And so here I am, typing my blog entry into Word, waiting for that magic moment when I’ll be able to connect to the net… at least long enough to get this post up on my blog.

(((hugs))) to you and do know that I’ve been missing you!

I’ll be back soon for another post! I have my router fixed (thanks to my always-knight-in-shining-armor, resident compy geek hubby)… so I am alive again!!! WOOHOO!!! 😀

Come on feel the noise…

Monday, 5 May 2008Thursday, 25 September 2008 / LivE / 5 Comments

…girls, rock your boys… we’re going wild, wild, wild… wild, wild, wild…!!!! 😆

I totally went wild over the weekend at the digiscrapping shoppes; did you, too??? OMG. The joy, the absolute joy, of finally being able to grab those items you’d been longing for, at the best prices too! YAY for (Inter)National Scrapbooking Day!!!

I went crazy at three places: ScrapbookGraphics (where one of my absolute favorite designers, Meredith Fenwick, has her shoppe), DesignerDigitals (yeah, DD rocks!!!), and ScrapArtist. Where did you go, and how crazy did you get? 😉

Now I’m totally stoked to begin working on my backlogged work for the Digi:In Deep course that we just finished last week at the Spraground. I still owe 3 templates and 3 layouts… and I also owe 4 layouts for our Spraground challenges. And I’m dying to create new stuff for you too!!! So look out for that this coming week! 😀

May Photo-A-Day

The fun never ends on our Spraground. Jessica is soooo awesome at keeping us all entertained!

If you haven’t yet checked out her blog, you should run there right now, believe me! Her latest Photoshop Friday tutorial is wonderful! (And if you haven’t signed up for her blog newsletter yet, carpe diem!!! 😀 )

Jes has also begun a challenge for May, for everyone! Called Photo-a-Day in May, we just take a photo a day –uhm, you absolutely guessed that, didn’t you? heehee–for each day in May. Then we post our photos on the special gallery that Jes created just for this challenge… and everyone comes to look at your photos and leave love on them! It’s a great Spraground we play in! (So if you’re just stumbling upon my little blog porch today and you’re interested in joining, please do feel most welcome!!! You need to be registered on the Spraground in order to post your photo on our special Photo-A-Day gallery, but no worries!–registration is free! And if you just want to look around… well, you’re welcome too! You’ll be awed my the masterpieces my Spraground sistahs have been hanging on the walls of the Photo-a-Day gallery… and in all the other galleries, too, for that matter! )

So here are my photos that I took for the first four days of May.

01 May – Breakfast Sunshine

Description: Took a photo of my breakfast to bring a taste (pun!) of my country to our galleries, haha! This is called suman sa latik. Suman is glutinous rice cake, wrapped and steamed in banana leaves, and latik is a kind of sweet sauce made from freshly squeezed coconut milk and sugar. Taken with sweet, juicy mangoes, this is virtual breakfast heaven!

02 May – Poetry in Bloom

Description: went walking around our homegrounds with 2 of my sons, looking for some photo-ops, and saw this beautiful flower (one among many) gently moving in the breeze… sometimes little things like this make you stop and catch your breath and remind you that God writes poetry with his Creation. Sigh. What beauty and perfection. 🙂

03May – Symphony in Ebony & Ivory

This is a pretty straightforward photo, but one that carries meaning for me. I grew up in a home where the piano played a great big role: I still remember my mom playing for us, and even much later on, when our mom had gone, my brothers and sisters and i would continue to spend many nights gathered round the piano singing and bonding with each other. I knew I would only find my home complete if I had a piano in it; so when dh and I moved to our present home, I spent all my life-savings-as-a-single-woman on this beloved piano (with additional help from dh 😛 ). Hubby and I both grew up with pianos in our homes, so it amuses and delights me to know our sons cannot imagine a home without a piano as well. (And yes, we do play music on it all the time!)

04May – That Look

Bright eyes shining with purity and innocence, an expression brimming over with earnestness and trust: this is the look I see on my son’s face each time he talks with me (which is like, uhm, the entire day 🙂 ). The eyes of a child: what a precious thing to behold!

CREDITS: I used Mike Brewer’s Frame Action to frame my photos. I take my photos in RAW format, so I definitely do some tweaking to them, most specifically in terms of White Balance and Curves. Other than that, the photos I take are pretty much how they are at the click of the shutter. 🙂

PS. I’m also attaching the gallery descriptions for the photos.

Okay! I guess that’s all for today, folks! Need to get some backlogged layouts done… Will be back again soon, so I hope to sit with you in a couple of days! Have a great day, my friends! (((hugs))))

Coming Up for Air…

Friday, 2 May 2008Friday, 23 May 2008 / LivE / 10 Comments

Whoa!!! It’s been sooo long since we last sat on this porch swing together! I hope you haven’t forgotten the path that leads here? (If you have, I’ll send you a map immediately! 😀 )

So… I finally DID. Did DID. heehee. We just wrapped up DID (Digi: In Deep), the advanced course for digital scrapbookers at our Spraground, taught by my dear friend, Jessica Sprague, in a way that only she, the divine digi-godess can! It was a marvelous, exciting ride with signposts all the way saying “Full Speed Ahead!” (And yes, I was the one among many friends running after the speeding train with mouse, tablet, and keyboard in hand 😆 WOW! What a ride!!! And as usual, all of us DID’ers are eagerly awaiting the next courses! ).

(This, you realize, is my very subtle excuse for being absent from this dear blog porch of mine). But I’m back!!! Even if I still have some backlogged DID work to do, I just couldn’t stay away much longer 😛 There is sooo much to catch up on, so I promise you I’m going to be hanging around this porch pretty much. 😉

My Very First (Completed) Mini-Album

Probably one of my happiest DID moments was being able to actually COMPLETE from scratch my very first mini-album. Woohoo!!! This was one of the projects that Jes gave us to do, and I was so excited that I jumped in from the first week with templates of my own for the pages I did, using Jessica’s first four templates as jump-off inspiration points. I’ll post each page here daily, but wanted to show you (heehee, like a proud mama) my very first themed-album baby. (So I’ve completed albums, but never a themed one. Remember my Daily December album from last year? I have the photos, but I’ve completed the layouts only till December 24th. I know, I know… hopeless = me. hahaha!)

So last night found me on my compy-cum-work desk, with cutting board, cutter, cutting mat, metal ruler, and glue dots in hand, happily working on the album. Another victory for me was dipping into my hoarded stash of paper scrapping goodies (accumulated over the years and never used) and discovering the perfect 6×6 Provo Craft album whose cover coordinated perfectly with the color scheme I used for my pages! (I sooo love these serendipitous moments!

A little confession: I only had A4 matt photo paper available, so (revealing a dash of cheapo tendencies here, hee!) I resized my layouts before printing them so that I reduced them to 5.25×5.25 inches… and therefore, I was able to print out two layouts per A4 page. Woohoo! Nothing like maximizing materials! 😀 Then, of course, I had to find cardstock to mat my layouts on, and in one of my scrapping drawers, I discovered the perfect shade of brown/tan thick cardstock! Another Woohoo moment!!!

(And then, of course, there was the thrill of thinking to myself, as I held the glue dots, the cutting board, the cutter and cutting mat, and the metal ruler in my hands, “hmmm. Now could it actually be said that I’m doing hybrid?” heeheehee. What a thrill. (I should explain: I was always curious about doing hybrid, but never felt confident enough to jump into actual HANDiwork, know what I mean? hehe)

So enough of my babbling and onto the photos! 😀

Here’s the front cover:

Here’s the first page:

The quote on the cover page explains the title of my quote book.

It’s a quote from William Wordsworth:

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

🙂

And here are a few sample pages:

CREDITS:

ProvoCraft 6×6 Album; Kraft Cardstock (I can’t even remember whose product this was, because it’s been soooo long in “hoard-dom”–lol!) AND

All papers from Meredith Fenwick’s Cowboy Baby kit; Katie Pertiet’s LetterBox Overlay, Heart Sticker, Staple Pair; Jan Crowley’s Beautiful Evidence Overlays; All templates by me (inspired by Jessica Sprague); Fonts: Porcelain, ProblemSecretary

Cool, huh? If you’ve made a mini album of your own, or if you’re one of my DID-mates who has printed her album as well, do link me up in the comments! I’d love to see what you made of your project! 😀 Isn’t Jes’ project just soooo cool? 😀

Tagged!

I was tagged by my friend and SpragueSistah Tina a few weeks back, in the middle of DID, and (how totally embarrassing!) I’m only getting around to doing my part of the tag! Sorry, Tina! But here it is, finally! 😀

ALL are invited to join in The Links MeMe fun!
PLEASE just follow the rules!Lara’s Place is the meme originator. (an active link is appreciated)

Just copy paste THIS and everything below up until my Five links:
I thought it would be cool to have a meme where we post links. We can post up to five. Then we tell five more people to share their links. If we all share who tagged us, our links are sure to be seen!
They can be business links, favorite sites, affiliate links, whatever you want…

There are Five Rules:
1. MUST be clean. No R rated sites.
2. Only FIVE links.
3. MUST tell 5 people.
4. A link back to the person who tagged you
5.

My Five Links:

jessicasprague.com – Now, was there any doubt that this would be the very first link I’d list? heehee. This is my virtual home, my second home, my home away from home! I love our Spraground! This is where I discovered my passion for all things digital. Jes is more than the very best teacher and the digital godess, she is a wonderful, compassionate, generous, amazing person, and an awesome friend as well! And you could double that, times two, because Jared is just as awesome as she!
DesignerDigitals – The very best digital shoppe in my opinion. Katie Pertiet and her team seriously rock with their designs, and they are also ultra-generous!
MeredithFenwick at Scrapbook-Graphics.com – Absolutely GREAT designs by a wonderful person! Not only is Mer a great designer, she’s also a fabulous and generous friend! My CC gets into serious action when I see Meredith’s designs! 😆
DigiFree – The first blog freebie search engine that I go to… and I never leave empty-handed. 😆
MarthaStewart.com – I just love the colors of the MarthaStewart magazine, love the great photos, love the clean and simple look. So when my creative muse needs a little push, this is where I go. Just looking at the bedsheets or the garden stuff or whatever is in there gets my mojo flowing. 😀

Ha!!! NOW, I get to tag my poor friends! heehee

My Five Tagged Friends:

I am tagging my dearest friends because I love them! 😀 heehee

Veevs – because I promised her everytime someone tags me, I’d tag her in turn (stop groaning, veevs! get to your blog now! 😆 )
Lisa – because this is my way of getting her to post on her blog again 😉
Joscie – because she tagged me and then it turns out she tagged me invisibly (hahaha!)… so here’s me tagging you, my dear friend! 😆
Dawn – because she also needs to post on her blog again! haha! 😉
Kel – because she’s so talented, her card was featured on the SBG blog, and we at the Spraground are all proud of her! 😉

Can I tag more? 😆 just kidding.

Tired

Okay, so I need to go to sleep now as it’s almost sunrise… but I am contented as a cat stretching in the sun since I’ve finally sat on my porch with you, my dearest friends!

I’ll be back tomorrow with more, I promise… for now I need to snore! 😆 Have a great day/night! ((((hugs))))

Well, hello there…

Saturday, 5 April 2008Tuesday, 14 October 2008 / LivE / 26 Comments

…good old friend(s) of mine… (are you singing along with me? :P)

Man, it’s been AGES! I am soo soo sorry for being absent from my porch swing… I’ve gotten a number of emails asking me why I’ve been quiet… I’ve been wanting, panting, hankering to come here and post freebies but ~sigh~ life has just been moving at full-speed ahead!

The kids are out of school, with summer officially here for the past month… and you who have school-age children just know how that means mom is also officially the Boredom Buster and Head Entertainer and Day Planner. It’s a total pleasure and it’s really my first job description (being wife and mom, hehe), so “working” on the “peak period” of this job has been keeping me busy… 😛

Then of course, there are the fabulous courses at our Spraground! Now that’s what keeps me on my Summer Mom toes! WHAT FUN!

We just finished up with the March run of the Up & Running beginners course… and I love that we have a lot of new Spraground family members who are joining us on the Dark Side! heehee! (And that includes my own sister and her three friends! Whoopeedoo!!! 😆 ) I have to say I looove moderating because nothing beats the pleasure of working with the incredible tandem that Jes and Jared are, and being able to helping others and being part of the incredible A-ha moments! It’s totally awesome to be part of the learning journey of new (and some old) friends, to see them grow in their Photoshop skills, to marvel at their creations and to be privileged to see them enjoy telling their life stories… the joy is just so overwhelming.

Right after wrapping up the U&R course, we began (and are now heading towards the end of the first week) of our beta Digi: In Deep, my dear friend Jessica’s advanced course for digital scrapbooking. I have to say, each day, when that email comes into my inbox, I am floored by the AWESOME activities and lessons that Jessica has planned for us! It is just so FABULOUS, so wonderful, and geez, I could run out of all the superlative adjectives, and still that wouldn’t come up to describing how much I love this course! Wow!

It’s an action-packed course, and I love every minute of it! But it also means that no matter how excited I am to design new stuff for you (got a whole list of things I want to create for you!), it’s going to have to wait a little bit till I’ve gotten hang of my time management. (Yo, that big compound word that really just mean I-would-give-anything-for-more-than-24-hours-in-a-day 🙂 )

We’ve also come up with our Spraground Weekly Challenges, which are open to everyone who’s registered at our Spraground (registering is free; come play with us!) We’ve been seeing a whole load of awesome layouts coming up on our galleries, and, really, nothing beats playing AND learning at the same time!

As if to tease me for my long absence, I open the door to this little place of ours on WordPress, and I am astounded. WHOA. This is totally rocking! A whole new face, beautiful clean colors of cool blues, greys and whites, a totally modern interface… WordPress is ROCKIN! Whoopee!!! 😀

Anyway, today I’ve pushed aside all other pressing matters to sit with you a while… because I’ve been suffering withdrawal symptoms from not having been with you for what feels like forever!!!

I do want you all to know that I have been keeping you in mind and missing our porch conversations for the longest time! So I’m so glad to be with you today!

Layin’ It All Out

Here are some layouts I’ve come up with since the last time I posted:

Jammin’ in My Jammies:

CREDITS:

Lisa Whitney – ArtsyFartsyPaper ; Katie Pertiet – StarGazers Flourish; Michelle Coleman – Glow Gold Dust Edge ; Chere Edwards @ digiocd.blogspot.com – Scribbles Alpha

Home

This was done for our Spraground Weekly Challenge Designer Spotlight, where our designer was none other than our fabulous Jessica Sprague! The challenge required us to use nothing else but her Home Away from Home kit, which is fabulous, and the theme “Home”. You can get it Jessica’s fab kit for free on her blog! (Link is on my right sidebar!)

CREDITS:

Jessica’s Home Away from Home Kit (papers slightly recolored); FONTS: Zapfhumnst BT, Tagettes

The Magic of a Child

This was done for our Spraground Weekly ColorLift Challenge, where we are required to do a scraplift (this one by heathert at DD) using a particular color scheme. Totally had fun with this one! (Then again, I have fun with each one! 😆 )

Journaling (Quote by Francis Thompson):

Know you what it is to be a child?

It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear. It is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul.

CREDITS:

One of my few top favorite designers, Meredith Fenwick’s AfternoonSerenade Paper & Antique Paper Swirls; Jen Wilson’s ExtraSmudges (recolored) & Variety Alpha; NatashaWhiteley’s DiffusedGlow action (used on background curtain)

Simple Joys

This was done for our Spraground Merry Go Round Challenge, which required us to use photos that were taken in available light:

Journaling:

everyday you teach me the beauty of simplicity. you reveal to me the treasures that hide within the smallest things. you run free and carefree, the afternoon breeze playfully tussling your soft hair, the crunchy grass embracing and cushioning your little feet, the warm glow of the sun bouncing on your chubby cheeks. you teach me that true happiness doesn’t cost a thing. it’s found in purity and innocence and, yes, simplicity. you need nothing more than empty space to frolic in to have the time of your lives. and i need nothing more than simply being with you for my heart to be filled with pure, unadulterated joy. ah, true happiness at its very best… yep, it really is that simple.

CREDITS:

Meredith Fenwick – EasySilence apple paper; TwilightDreaming Butterfly, JapaneseTree; CrazyBeautiful-PaintedFrame (recolored) & Alphabet
Annie Manning/Paint the Moon: Charmes d’Antan – Butterfly (altered) & Butterfly Wings
KimChristensen – Spelling101 Kit: Black Inked Overlay

DID I Say…?

Here are the two layouts we worked on for the first week of DID… Absolutely ROCKIN course!!! 😀

Lesson 1A: Of Friendships & Brotherhood

Journaling:

how totally wonderful to see the three of you working together, helping each other. one minute your faces are scrunched up in intense concentration; the next minute your eyes crinkle delightfully as you brust out in silly, boisterous laughter. today you build sandcastles; tomorrow you’ll build even greater things. what i hope remains the same is the spirit of love and friendship that you have for each other as you work and play together. because, my dear sons, more than any tangible thing, you build best when you build bridges of love.

CREDITS:

Everything from the DID Course Materials by Katie Pertiet, Jen Wilson, Trish Jones, Linda Gill Billdal, Nancie Rowe Janitz, Mary Ann Wise, Lynn Grieveson. Fonts: Texas Hero, One Fell Swoop, Problem Secretary, English111 Presto BT

Lesson 1B: My Everyday Miracle

We had to create our own layout from scratch, using the techniques we had learned in Lesson 1. Here’s what I came up with:

CREDITS:

Meredith Fenwick-GrungyBaby papers(blended);Cowboy Papers; CrazyBeautiful-stitched eyelets/Paint-the-Moon Annie Manning-TheNaturalsRibbons-LeavesTie&Shadow/ Dani B-BlackFriday Button/Mary Ann Wise-AlaMode Flourish/Fonts: Porcelain, BeautifulES, SandraOh

As you may have noticed, I am very into Meredith Fenwick’s stuff… that’s because she just re-opened her store at ScrapbookGraphics.com and when I went to get her grab bag (among others, hehe) that celebrated her return (man, was that AWESOME!) Mer was soooo generous that I got an additional 50-off coupon to go crazy with in her shoppe again! Woohoo!!! Of course I got all that I could manage to get my itchy digi hands on. hehe.

I asked Mer if I could show you here the items I bought from her SBG shoppe, and she said YES! So… here’s what I’m totally loving right now!

From her Posh Collection:

I also got her Everyday Inspiration collection, her Grungy Baby kit, and her Legible Notecards set. They’re all as wonderfully textured and beautiful as the Posh collection you see here!

And since you made it this far…

and because I’ve been gone for so long, I have a little something for you! I’m sharing with you the circle template that I created for our DID Lesson 1B class. It took me a huge amount of time trying to translate what I saw in my mind onto my monitor… but I am so thrilled that I was able to get it done!

This is a very simple template: I have not added strokes to any of the items (because it’s better to add the stroke after you’ve pulled in your papers and photos to clip on), and I’ve left the drop shadows out so that you can have absolute freedom in deciding where your light source is. I’ve also left the entire thing very basic so you can choose which accents you want to add into your own layout. I hope you find some use for this, and thanks for the love you leave right here on my blog! 😀

Here’s what you’re getting (the layout I made with it is above):

And you can click here to get it!

EDITED on October 14th:

I’ve received word that the old link is no longer valid. I’ve re-uploaded and changed the link upon request… you may now click on the image of the template to get the new link for it! 😉

Now I really need to get back to my work on the DID course… so I hope to see you soon!

Have a great day, my sweeties!!! I promise I’ll do my best not to stay away so long again! 😀

Back to Life…

Friday, 14 March 2008Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 17 Comments

… as I knew it before the past two weeks. But much better. Much, much better now.

By now you’re all probably aware (unless you haven’t been to the Spraground) that I’m out of the apprentice program. I won’t say much about it except that I believe everything happens for a good reason, and when you do your best and still what you worked on slips through your fingers, it can only mean that there’s an even better opportunity out there, waiting in the wings.

And so there is. 😉

I’ve gotten so much more than I ever could’ve had I gone farther than the second week. And what I have received is worth infinitely more than anything in the world. I have been overwhelmed again and again by the overflowing love, affection, loyalty, and support of my sistahs on my playground… and when you have that, how can you not feel that you have won so much more? I do. I have treasures beyond compare, and they have names. I play with them everyday on the playground. They are my friends. They are my family. I may not have had the opportunity (yet) to hug them in person… but they know that I’ve sent a kajillion hugs over the oceans and clouds, a kajillion hugs for each one of them.

I am so blessed. So happy. So contented.

And THIS, this is the life I have wanted. I went on this adventure and learned a lot. But my most important gains were not in the area of design. They were in the book called Life. I have never, ever waivered in my devotion to my home-away-from-home aka Spraground. And I was not happy being away from my friends there, which was what happened while I was working on my entry kits.

This is probably where I have to say that I am still and always will be grateful for the opportunity I was given by Little Dreamer Designs. I am not bitter nor sad nor angry about the elimination because I know that I gave my best and I made decisions that I thought of thoroughly. I could’ve opted to make really simple designs and thus ensure that I could go on to the next round, but I chose to be experimental and to push my limits, and to not take the easy way out for me. I made judgment calls, and those judgment calls were part of what got me eliminated… but it’s fine! Because I made those judgment calls myself! They were my decisions. And I stand by them. So I’m happy! 😀

And because I know I’ve been true to myself, there is nothing that I can possibly be bitter about. Besides bitterness only zaps energy, and that’s never a good thing. I truly believe, too, that we get what we give out, so I only want to give out good vibes. Good juju is good. 😆

And really, if you have the Spraground sistahs in your corner, how can anything go wrong? How can anyone be sad? The only tears I’ve shed are those that have quietly rolled down my cheeks as I’ve read messages of love, support, and affection from the girlies (and guy-ie :D) who mean the world to me.

A very very good friend of mine–one of the most awesome people I have ever met–sent me an email with this quote, right after I had told her that I had been eliminated. This email of hers was what brought to my eyes the very first tears–I cannot even begin to describe how she totally touched my heart. I want to share the quote part of it with you here:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knowcking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that hHe is building quite a different house from the one you thought of–throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Beautiful quote. Beautiful email. Beautiful person.

And beautiful messages and beautiful cards from beautiful people! (And I mean beauty of the heart!) ~ God is so good. He has blessed me with so many gifts. You. My friends. Precious, precious gifts.

So now I’m back, and I’m extremely glad to be right where I belong, surrounded by all your beautiful hearts. Ahhh. Always so good to be back home.

Soooo… thank you, thank you all for all the affection and the support (and the really funny things you were saying: you really made me laugh! And I loved that too!)

And the Creative Muse Plods On! 😀

And because I love creating, here is what my muse has come up with for you. (There’s more bursting to come out, inspired by all of you whom I love more than I can ever express in words… so expect a whole lot of freebie gifts coming up for you soon!)

I promised the paper I used for the preview of the ElementaLove kit, but I didn’t want to give just one piece, so I created more stuff… My creative muse is still in that experimental mode, so I have a torn and curled rough paper border, four grungy & textured papers (three solids and one patterned), a grungy photomask (pull in your photo onto the layer above it, hover your mouse on the dividing line between the photo layer and the mask layer till you see a snowman-looking icon, then click and you have your clipping mask!), a fabric mat with built-in buttons to attach it to your layout (can be used for journaling or as a photo mat), and a simple ribbon strip.

PS. The arrow on the photo mask in the preview is only there to show that it’s the mask I used with my photo… 😀

Here’s what the additional stuff looks like:

{Click on image for larger view}

And here’s where you can snag the ElementaLove Add-on Kit!

Okay, I’ve got to do some rounds on the galleries to leave love, because I’ve been away for so long and I am just soooo excited to see all the masterpieces my friends at the Spraground have come up with!!!

I’ll see you soon! Have a great day, my sweeties! ((((((((hugs))))))))

Coming Up for Air…

Monday, 10 March 2008Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 21 Comments

… after being on a self-imposed exile for the past few days, working feverishly on getting my Round 2 Challenge submission for the Apprentice Program at Little Dreamer Designs done. Thank goodness for a very understanding hubby: “Shhh, J,” he tells our son, “Mama’s working hard…” Priceless man! 😆

And thank God for not letting me come down with the virus that hit my 5-year-old dearie 3 weeks ago and that, hopefully, is on its way out our door 2 weeks after hitting my 2-year-old honey. I lost my voice for a day and felt really sick for about three, but other than that, I’ve just been sooo grateful that I haven’t had to lie down and nurse the illies. (Totally helps that I’m also downing really strong vitamins like an addict, just to make sure I can function well enough to do all that has to be done).

Actually, I kind of feel like I could give the Energizer Bunny a run for its money. 😆

So… I just finished uploading my kit and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I make it through the next round. I’m just counting on making it through each round alive. 🙂 This sorta reminds me of the relationships I had when I was young: unlike so many of my friends who used to count (and celebrate!) anniversaries with their boyfriends by the month 😆 I always used to just look forward to just celebrating the days till they eventually turned into years. Call it crazy, but I like living each day fully, and then having the option to look back one day and say, “Wow!!! Those were some ultra-fabulous 365 days!” instead of “That was a great year!” 365 days sounds so much more than a year, right? Hmmmm. (If you haven’t noticed it in the past, by now you should be fairly certain that I have some strange ideas. 😆 )

So… anyway… it’s been an awesome week. Crazy-busy, more than ever before, with the 3rd run of my dear friend Jessica’s fab beginners’ class, Up & Running… (on the 3rd day of the course, there were 400 layouts I needed to go and leave love on… I can imagine how many masterpieces are waiting for me to marvel at!) The galleries at our Spraground are seriously ROCKIN’ too, with all the great great creations of all my Spraguemates… and WOW! Have you seen the LDD Apprentice Gallery??? Man, all (and I’m not exaggerating here, but I mean ALL) my friends who uploaded their layouts there really ROCKED the kit and the gallery!!! And I was soooo happy and proud to find that one of us, dear, dear Carol, was the very first one who won the very first $10 coupon given out by Michelle at Little Dreamer Designs (if you haven’t yet uploaded a layout using any of the apprentice freebies–hopefully, mine! 😆 — in the gallery there, go run! Michelle is giving out two $10 coupons each week for the four weeks that the apprentice program is running, and the only thing you have to do is (1) be a registered member there (it’s free!), and (2) upload a layout into the Apprentice gallery using any of the kits that are there for exclusive download.

Then there are our wonderful Spraground Weekly Challenges, which are really so much fun, especially now that everyone is playing excitedly. I can’t even begin to tell you how RICH our galleries are with inspirational materials! These girlfriends of mine are ROCKIN!!!! I AM SO PROUD OF THEM!!!! (Okay, I had to shout that out, because … the words just aren’t enough, you know??? My heart is bursting with pride and affection for each and every one of them!!!)

It’s also the end of the school year where I live, so you know what that means? Oh, just tons of final exams for each of my 3 kids who are in school. It also means that all the schools schedule as much parental-involvement activities as they can in these last few weeks (probably cramming what they can fit into the remaining few breaths of the school year)… I almost think it’s a conspiracy. 😆 End-of-the-school-year also means entrance exams for kids to enter the next level (my 3-year-old S had to take an entrance exam to enter Kinder, and my 5-year-old J has yet to take the entrance exam for Prep… and then my first two sons have to take summer review programs to prepare for the entrance exams for university and high school)… SIGH! Exams, exams, exams. Thank goodness I’m done and over with schooling! 😆

And then… summer. Kids with me, beside me, around me, by my head, by my feet, by my hips, on my lap… 24/7. Love it. I need to find some worthy activities to keep them busy so that they aren’t tempted to speak the Unspeakable: in our home, the three words that are among the most forbidden are “Mom, I’m bored.” 😆

Then there are a number of other projects as well, which I’ll surely let you know about as they come closer… and … the long-awaited DIGI IN DEEP at our Spraground in a few weeks!!! WOOHOO!!!

But so that I don’t let you suffer further with all my blah blah blah, please tell me that you forgive me for being absent for most of this past week… on the Spraground, on my porch swing here… I do peep in once in a while to say hello, but haven’t had much time to really sit and talk (and regret that GREATLY… if only I could find 48 hours in a day to do all that I want to do!) 🙂

So anyway, forgive me? Please? And let me give you all a HUGE HUG for all the warm fuzzies and the awesome layouts and the wonderful support that you’ve given to me while I am embarking on this huge design adventure of my life! I promise you I will never ever forget this incredible show of support and love: it’s written on my heart forever. And even beyond that. 😉

Speaking of design adventures, here’s the latest!

This is my submission for Little Dreamer Designs’ Apprentice Program Round 2 Challenge:

I can’t say much because it’s all private and propriety information that we get, but this much I can say: I have truly enjoyed slaving away at the challenges… it’s playing, learning, creating, sharing all in one blow… really, how much better can it get?

So here now comes the sharing part!

What you’re getting: a mini-kit of elements in what I called my ElementaLove (the love is there for you, you know. 😉 )

1 glitter foliage accent – in two versions: one without shadows and one with its own shadow… I chose to apply the preshadowing to this element because I felt it was the hardest to do a shadow on… the other elements are easier, but with this one, I did my best to apply a drop shadow so that various parts of the wildflower seem to be at different heights from the paper base

1 shiny chrome / metal photo corner – there’s one png file, but you can use it to put two on either sides of your photo or journaling block, or you can use all four, or… 😉 Just flip and rotate and have fun!

1 stitched border – a little trivia: this took me the longest to create, because I made my own new stitches and stitch holes from scratch, experimenting a bit here and there and playing around with Photoshop… I worked on the first set for roughly 48 hours. I went to sleep at 6AM, with the sun just about to rise, last night/this morning… and when I opened my kit on my compy to get ready to upload it at LDD… I took a look at the stitches and decided I didn’t like them much. So it was on to creating a new set of stitches and stitch holes from square one… experimenting some more… and this time I came up with something that I really liked. So I hope you like them too. And you know what? I have even greater appreciation for all the designers who put stitches in their kits: let me tell you, these little bits of thread are not easy to make. 😆

1 metal and glass triple-frame – I’ve included instructions in the download folder on how to work with this in the easiest way. If you’ve downloaded and used my pocket page from the first Apprentice Round Freebie submission, it’s pretty much the same technique you use… easy-peasy! 😉

All items have no shadows (except for the pre-shadowed version of the foliage accent, but you also get the shadow-free one, in case you want to apply your own)… so that you have absolute freedom in deciding where and how you put it on your layouts.

Here’s the preview, in case you haven’t seen it yet on Little Dreamer Designs (click on Apprentice Gallery Round 2 if you want to leave love… there are some awesome kits over there! Have you seen the company I’m in? Man, seasoned designers and newbies, all in one room! It’s a GREAT mini community we have going there for these next few weeks!)

Okay, enough talking! (See what happens when I don’t see you for ages? I’m unstoppable! 😆

Here’s the preview:

{ Click on image for larger view }

And you can download it HERE.

PS. The preview paper isn’t included in this mini kit, since our challenge for the week was all about elements… but if you want it, leave me a note in the comments, and I’ll upload it here for you in the next few days. Just give me a few hours to get my lost hours of sleep back, hahaha! 😉

Thanks for passing by, and thanks for your continued support, thanks for all your warm fuzzies, thanks for keeping your fingers, toes, arms, legs, and eyes crossed that I get as far as possible in this adventure… and just, wow, a million kajillion bazillion THANKS. From. The. Bottom of my bottomless heart.

Have I told you that I love ya? I have? I’ll say it again. I do. 😉

YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Monday, 3 March 2008Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 14 Comments

If you will allow me this one little toot…

I made it! 😀

I made it to the first round of the LDD apprentice program!!! WOOHOO!!! So so so happy!

In the acceptance email that I received from The Dream Team, they informed us that there accepted 40 out of the “over 130 applicants”… so I am truly glad that I was lucky enough to make it through the first round!

I need to give a huge SHOUT OUT to all my sistahs at the Spraground –and all of YOU who left such kind words of support… I can’t even begin to describe how MUCH you mean to me. You inspire me, my dear friends. Truly. THANK YOU.

The freebies are exclusively available for download at Little Dreamer Designs… so if you’re interested (and I hope you are, fingers crossed!), you can hop on over to Little Dreamer Designs; click on Freebies in the top menu. Scroll down and at the bottom right you’ll see the Quick Jump dropdown menu. Click on the triangle beside it and choose the category Apprentice Round 1 Freebies and click Go. The submitted kits are arranged alphabetically, so if you’re interested in mine, please scroll to the 3rd page and you’ll find it there. 😉

Also, Michelle left a note on the forum that they would love to have you upload any layouts that you’ve created with the apprentice freebies on their gallery, with the added sugar cube of being able to qualify for a $10 coupon to their shoppe, which they will raffle off to those who’ve uploaded their layouts. (They will be giving two $10 coupons for each week that the apprentice program is running). I would LOVE to see what you create with my kit, if you use it!

To upload your layouts, choose the Apprentice Layout Gallery.

To those of you, my sweet, sweet friends, who have been asking me how the program goes, here’s the way I understand it:

There will be four weeks of challenges, with the first one beginning this week. At the end of the 4-week program, 5 finalists will be chosen by the Dream Team to submit a full-size kit to sell in the shoppe. Each kit sold is equivalent to one vote for the designer. The sales generated by the kits will count for a little over half of the final score of each applicant. The person with the highest score wins the coveted option of selling kits in the LDD shoppe.

Or something like that. 😆

Wish me luck, my sweeties! It’s your support that carries me through!!! 🙂

CREDITS: stock photo from stock.xchng

Spraground Fun!

Monday, 25 February 2008Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 22 Comments

Before anything else, I’d like to give the most HUMONGOUS hugs to all my friends who’ve left love and prayer wishes for my son here on my blog and on our playground… I wish I could put into words how infinitely grateful I am for the time you took to send a little note to heaven for my little one. He’s still doing the meds and the nebulization rounds, but as of yesterday his coughing fits have significantly lessened and I attribute the improvement TOTALLY to all the prayers of my dearest friends — that’s right, YOU — all over the world.

Hand on my heart: I love you all. Thank you soooo much.

(These words don’t come an iota close to expressing the extreme gratitude and affection I have in my heart for you… but it’s all I have now, unless I can clone my body and come to you one by one to give you the greatest, warmest hugs).

Please continue to keep him in mind till he gets over this health hump. Thank you again!

And now… for the fun part:

Next week our Weekly Spraground Challenges begin officially… in the meantime, we’ve been continuing the excitement and fun of playing on our playground! For this week, we will have a template challenge (read all about it on our Spraground!).

Here’s what the template that we’ll be playing with looks like:

Download the template here. (Thanks for joining the game, and thanks for the love you leave!)

Been quite busy…

taking care of a million and one things. Not really different from the rest of my friends on the playground, who seem to be quite swamped with the demands of real life as well (funny how 2008 really just shot off like a race car wanting to set a huge lead ahead of the rest, huh?)

So I won’t stay long today… have yet to continue work on my LDD application kit (yesterday I played around and came up with around 20 papers and I was happy with… ONE. 😆 So I really need to play some more. Isn’t it funny how self-imposed pressure can make everything seem not good enough? 😆 )

Also need to care for my little sick duckie. So I’ll catch you around again soon, okay?

(((hugs)))

Of Heads and Hair

Sunday, 24 February 2008Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 15 Comments

I’ve got a splitting headache. I think it might be because I spent the entire day yesterday sorting and fixing my paper file notes (in a sorry attempt to put off working on my LDD application kit, hehe)… and now I know I have no more excuse to procrastinate. 😆

Or it may be because these past two days I’ve been quite worried about my five-year-old son who has a terrible cough (I’ve taken him to the doctor who says that he’s most probably got a really bad viral infection, possibly a relapse from his cold virus that he had a week and a half ago). I really think it’s the shift between warm weather and rain these days. So he’s on antibiotics again, a whole bunch of medications, nebulizing around the clock, and antitussive lozenges thrown in for good measure when the coughing fits get really bad. Each time he coughs, I get really stressed with all the worrying that floods through every cell of my being. Makes me totally want to reach into his throat, pull out the cough germ, and stick it into mine; just so that he wouldn’t have to cough anymore. The other day, after a particularly drawn-out coughing fit, he said “Somebody please take me to heaven!” I think my heart dropped on the floor and broke into a million little pieces. My poor boy. So please, take a minute and say a prayer for him please? That he gets well real soon? Thanks, honeys.

So… yesterday I was looking at myself in the mirror and I saw FIVE strands of white hair staring back at me. Mind you, I didn’t even run my fingers through my hair to search for more. I’d seen enough. Adding to the possible headache culprits: I saw in the mirror not just the five offending white strands of hair, but even worse, looking back at me was a really groovy-looking girl with hair that was threatening to turn into a real 80s mullet. Ugh, ugh, ugh!

So I called my hairdresser and made an impassioned plea for a haircut appointment.

I’m happy to report that after 3 hours spent at my hairdresser this morning, I now look human again. Almost. 😆

Perfect Moment Take Two

So… given that my headache is threatening to take over my entire body, this post won’t be lengthy. I just wanted to share with you this long overdue Part 2 of the Perfect Moment Plopper Parts that I promised I’d give you a few days back.

{ Click on image for larger view }

What you’re getting today is a grungy textured background paper, a .psd file of the trame with stapled tag (there are just 2 layers in the file: the frame and the photo mask), and a grungy lined journal tag with distressed edges. I decided to give the frame as a .psd file so that it would be easy for you to put the photo behind the frame. Just target the photo mask in your layers palette, pull in your photo (it should come up under the frame layer in your palette), and then do a CTRL-G if you’re using Photoshop Elements, or for any version of PSE or Photoshop CS, hover your mouse on the line that divides the photo and the mask, hold down ALT and when your cursor turns into a snowman-looking icon, click. Voila!

You can download the Perfect Moment Plopper Parts Set 2 here. Thank you to mexikids of stock.xchng for the stock photo of the adorable baby I used for this preview. Thank you’s for the CU-OK items I used can also be found in my TOU! I hope you can find some use for these plopper parts, and thank you in advance for the love you leave in my blog!

Orton Effect

Over at our Spraground playground, my girlfriends and I have been keeping ourselves busy by indulging in weekly challenges (Our official Spraground weekly challenges will begin in March, barely a week from now! WOOHOO!!! If you have ever lurked over at our playground, now is the time to come out and play! 😉 )

This week, we played with the Orton Effect which we took from our playground-mate kimi’s blog (Thank you, kimi!). The Orton Effect was first used by Michael Orton, and it’s a technique of sandwiching two images where one is in focus and the other is out of focus. Originally this was done with actual slide film, where the original (sharp) image was overexposed by two camera stops, and the second (out of focus) image was overexposed by one camera stop. What results from this technique is a wonderful glowing photo. With the amazing Photoshop, we can now do the same thing right on our computers!

I had a pretty difficult time with this challenge, not because the technique is hard to do: on the contrary, it’s unbelievably easy. The difficult part for me was finding the perfect photo to do the technique on (because I found that it fits some photos much better than others… ). Here’s what I finally ended up with:

{ Click on image for larger view }

CREDITS:

Jesse Edwards’ FallingAllOver paper (recolored) and Michelle Coleman’s GrungyBoy paper & Grungy Edges Overlay; Mindy Terasawa’s Little Explorer Notepaper (altered); Graphics-Illustrations brushes FONTS: Susie’s Hand (background text); RomanSerif

This is a photo I snapped around a month ago while we were on an out-of-town trip. Dh and I were sitting outside on the verandah of our unit when I looked out into the sea of green trees and saw this tree. I immediately thought of Shel Silverstein’s book The Giving Tree… except what popped in my mind was the opposite: The Ungiving Tree. 🙂

Did I ever share…

with you what I excitedly gathered (like one gleefully picks wildflowers in a huge field of flowers) from Annie Manning’s store? Remember the Oscraps Designer Spotlight Challenge that I joined and uhm, had the great luck of winning? Well, here’s what my prize was! (A coupon which allowed me to choose anything from the fabulous designwork of Annie Manning aka Paint the Moon)! (Oh and did I already say how fabulous Annie is as a person? Totally sweet and adorable! The icing on the cake of my winning this challenge is getting to know her as a friend! Wonderful!!!)

{ Click on images for larger views }

This is Annie’s Charmes d’Antan Mega Kit:

Her Chloe’s Treasures Kit:

One of her Funky Flowers sets:

Her Smooth as Silk Ribbons In a Knot:

Her Really Random Ribbons:

and her Vintage Frames and Corners:

If I could buy her whole store, I would’ve (except I wanted to leave some for another shopping trip! Gotta space these things out, ya know? 😉 ) In fact, she has a new kit that I am sooooo lusting after: it’s called Boxed In Set One, and if I really want to push back what I need to be working on right now, I think I might just hop on over there and snag it! 😆 I am so hooked on Annie’s stuff (all that wonderful, delicious texture!) that I can’t stop wanting to make layouts with them! Go check her out at the Oscraps shoppe (link is also under Shop Till I Drop over there on the right side >>>)

Time’s Up!

Well, okay, I know, I’ve dilly-dallied too long. There’s just no more delaying what I really should be doing now; I really must get my mouse pointed in the direction of my design work! 😆

Speaking of my mouse (what’s the plural of a computer mouse: computer mouses? computer mice? And while we’re on that topic, if the plural of mouse is mice, why isn’t the plural of house, hice? Or spouse, spice? Hmmmm. Wait a minute. That could work too. 😆 )

Anyway, speaking of my mouse, mine is driving me crazy! It’s so sticky! Every now and then, I have to keep lifting it from the mousepad for it to move; otherwise the cursor just sits there, unmoving, daring me to shove it into place. What could be the reason for this, would you know? Is it time to replace my dear old mousie? (I love the scroll button, waaaaah!!)

Well then. Enough of my delaying tactics. I really must be off to work. 😆 Thanks for passing by, and do come around again soon! (Sssshhh… I’m working on an alpha freebie for you which I hope to finish soon! 😉 )

(((((hugs))))) , my sweeties!