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. 😉

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!

Monday, Monday, Monday!!! :D

Tuesday, 23 October 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 5 Comments

Happy, happy, joy, joy! Monday is here! Our Now We’re Rockin’ with Photoshop course over at our playground at Jessica’s has officially begun!!! How totally wonderful superb awesome fantabulous rockin’ly great!!!

Woohoo!!!!

Here’s another woohoo:

For dinner tonight, my sons and I had crabs. I hate eating crabs in a restaurant because… well, there’s just no refined way of eating crabs, right? I mean, you have to don those bibs and use your fingers, and then after eating you’ve got the crabby smell on your fingers and no matter how strong the soap you use to wash your hands is, that crabby smell still lingers faintly on your hands… and there is just no way to look refined given those circumstances! 😆 Thank goodness we can let it all hang out when we eat at home. hahaha.

But we were speaking about woohoos, not crabs. 😆 The woohoo part is… around 10 years ago, when hubby and I were in London, we went to this wonderful store called Conran Shop (my absolute favorite store in London), which belongs to Terence Conran, a furniture designer, restaurateur, and style maven, who began this shop to show off his home designs. Lovely place. I could spend an entire day there with all the goodies. Anyway, ten years ago, we picked up this amazing thing , which is a metal teardrop-shaped thingie that you use to wash with. You’re not supposed to use it with soap. Just wash with it like it were a soap bar (and it’s got this thin metal edge at one end which you can use to get to those things stuck in your nails, if needed)… and the smell is gone miraculously in a few seconds, leaving your hands smelling clean and fresh! Then you wash with soap… if you still want to. How cool is that, huh??? 😀

Ten years after, I still praise the heavens for finding this jewel of a gadget. I use it all the time for all kinds of stubborn smells (like garlic on your hands after you’ve cooked). Love it! So woohoo for the guy who invented that, and woohoo for the Conran Shop where we picked this up!

Third woohoo for today is… I have the second set of Swing Out Sistah!!! Yay! I have so many things I want to add to this kit, so it looks like this is going to go on for quite a number of sets. 😀 But in between I think I may insert a Halloween kit or a fall kit, or both (for you, Deb! and for all the rest who want it!) because if I wait till the SwingOut Sistah kit is done, Halloween and Fall might’ve been taken over by Christmas! 😆

So anyway… here’s the 2nd set of SOSistah!

{Click on image for larger view}

There are four more papers in this set: Dusk (teal) and Citrus (orange) are slightly textured solid papers with slightly grunged edges. Sunshine is a slightly textured printed paper with very faint floral designs. And DuskSwing is a printed paper with several purple swings (for you, Jana!, and for all who like purple! 😀 ) I also made 10 plastic buttons… I decided to keep them simple so that they don’t “fight” for attention if you decide to use them along with the swing papers. There are 5 round buttons with stitches and 5 floral buttons also with stitches, all in playful colors! The preview shows the buttons at actual size (no drop shadows included so that you can apply them to your layout with your own personal drop shadow preference! 😀 ). You can download Set2 here. Zip password is woohoo! (yup, with the exclamation mark!)

ETA: Sorry, link is no longer available.

Just want to remind you to type in the zip password instead of simply copying and pasting it. In the past, some of my friends have experienced problems with the password when they copy/paste it: there’s a risk that stray spaces or letters get pulled along into the copied password so then the zip refuses to open. When you type in the password instead, there’s less possibility of pulling in a stray item when you attempt to unzip the file.

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave some love, my dearies. All your comments give me the warm fuzzies always! And thank you too to those whom I don’t know personally, who come from the digi freebie search engines, who take the time to leave some love. I truly appreciate it. (My dream is that one day the number of comments will equal roughly the number of downloads made on a freebie. hahaha).

I am yawning like crazy now so I think I need to hit the bed before it hits me. 😀 Have fun now and I’ll see you soon for the next rounds of freebs!

Hugs to all! 😉

WOOHOO!!! Freebie At Last!

Sunday, 21 October 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 16 Comments

I am soooo happy!

I have finally begun the freebie kit that I’ve always wanted to work on, in celebration of the friendship and family I have found in Jessica’s awesome playground! This is for all my girlfriends at jessicasprague.com–my darling sistahs from the June class, and our ever-growing family now including our August and October little sistahs! WOOHOO!!! This is for you, my sweeties!!! (And for all those in our worldwide family of digiscrapping addicts as well! 😆 )

This kit is called Swing Out Sistah! and I’d like to thank my dearest friend Jana for saying that she fell in love with a paper-scrapping paper (ha! Is there such a word???) with swings that she saw. Naturally, the wheels in my head started turning. Thought process: hmmm, I’ve always wanted to make a kit in honor of our playground family, and I’ve always wanted to do one with swings ( we always sit and play on virtual ones, right, Deb? 😉 Mine’s the red one and kimi, is yours the yellow?)… so this must be the kick in the butt I need to just go ahead and do it!

I got kicked, and this is what came out of my playtime today:

{Click on image for larger view}

This first offering has 3 playful papers, all textured slightly. The blue one, Pond, is just a wee bit grungy on its edges. The green one, Grass, has some grass stains on its sides and a vine design (an image gift from my sis, a bonus for my work on their brochure). The swings you see on the green paper are not part of the paper; they’re actually part of the wordart that I placed on top of the paper. So you get a green medium-solid paper (because its pattern is limited to its perimeter). And the patterned paper below, Swing Out Loud, is a light blue textured paper filled with different colored swings!!! I was trying to decide between wooden swings or tire swings, but I kind of think tire swings, hanging from tree branches, are more reminiscent of those lazy afternoons when the breeze wafts through hair warmed a bit by sunshine… and many stories and secrets are shared among girlfriends amidst giggles and cool lemonade. Aaaah. Such wonderful happy days.

But I digress. Back to the other parts of this freebie. I included a wordart, just one quote, but in three versions: a black-and-white version, a colored version, and a bevelled colored version which you see in the preview. It’s about 6 inches wide but you can resize it easily. Special thanks to Cindy Doerksen and SweetMade for their commercial use items and to haloocyn of stockexchange for the photo inspiration.

This must be one of my absolute fave freebies, though I really can’t tell, because I just love making freebies… so I suppose I like all my freebs, but this one has special meaning–along with the pink ribbons (such touching comments I received for those, I loved reading them)! Download the first set in the SOSistah freebie here. Zip password is 4myGFs Please let me know what you think of it, as this is the first time I’ve ever come up with something so colorful and playful. Any comment you leave, whatever love you leave, on my blog is always, always so appreciated!

ETA: Sorry, download link is no longer available.

Have a great day! And I’ll be back soon with more freebs, so do visit soon!

Now, off to work on my layout for this week’s challenge at Stand Up & Scrap. Have not done a single bit of work on that one. hehe.

PS. My 5-year-old son looked at the preview as he was passing by and said “mom, those look like doughnuts! Or cereal loops!” Yum. Good enough for me. 😆

Ahhh! Home at last!!!

Tuesday, 9 October 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 6 Comments

It feels so good to be home! Just came back from a three-day work weekend in Hong Kong, which was a load of fun combined with a load of work (on the Big Project) too! We brought the kids with us; while hubby went around taking care of the Toys R Us trips and the five mouths to feed, I was busy walking with my 4 friends (the Main Man, the layout artist, a co-publisher/friend, and his brother/soon-to-be-part-of-our-other-projects friend) all over Hong Kong. Well, actually we walked and took the metro and a cab to get from the Kowloon side of Hong Kong to the Hong Kong side, where we had to search for the specific place we needed to do our work in (not very easy to locate when the signs on the buildings are not always in characters we normally see in daily life :D).

I don’t think I ever walked so much in my life. And in such sweltering heat. I don’t know if this is accurate; after all, I live only an hour and a half away from this country, but it was just so freaking hot walking in the streets that the blast of the airconditioning systems of nearby stores with open doors truly felt like oases in a long and winding desert!

This is the last phase of the Big Project. Still doing some last minute work, back here at home (Murphy’s Law: Just when you think it’s all done, there’s more)… but the end is near in sight, with the launch of the Big Project scheduled for the end of November. Wow, can’t wait for that time! It is so exciting! This is something that’s been 19 years in the making, so to see it come to fruition finally is really a much-awaited event! More about this soon, when the coast is clear to remove the tape from my mouth! 😆

So anyway, since I was gone for 3 days (spent either imbibing more caffeine, or feverishly working on the Big Project, or yawning), I was not able to connect to my playground or to my regular haunts (sob!) So I know there’s a lot of catching up to do. That’s the one thing that I hate about traveling: it always steals so much of my regular routines that it takes me forever to play catch-up when I get back. But the trips are always fun, so that’s fine. 😀

I finally have the last piece/set of Pinky Promise up… so sorry for the delay (if you haven’t forgiven me yet, read the entire post above again and again till you feel the stress and rush and hectic pace of my 3-day-work-week last week… which by the way just ended late last night as our flight was delayed by a good 8 hours. Which may have been a good thing as it allowed me to go to Toys R Us with my kiddos and let them indulge in those coin-treat machines, which my kids and I are total suckers for. Hahaha). With luck on my side, you may start to feel empathetic or, even better 😉 sympathetic, and forgive me for being absent for a few days! 😀

So without further ado, here is the latest (and last set) of the Pinky Promise kit.

{ Click on the image for larger view }

There are 2 textured, striped papers with inked edges… plus an alpha (all lowercase letters only with a few basic punctuation marks)–if you’ll notice, it’s exactly the same as the first Pinky Promise alpha I released, except for the style. The first one was chipboard and grungy; this one is cleaner and has a metal-carved look. I hope you find some use for it. I also threw in a tag as well, because I wanted to experiment using a brush that I made with more than a few days’ worth of blood, sweat, and tears. Hahaha. Hope you like it. Download it here. Zip password is pinkdrawer

ETA: Sorry, download link is no longer available.

Please note: drop shadows and the safety pin were added only for preview purposes. The set doesn’t come with them. J Also, Pooja, if you’re reading this, your request is next on my to-do list of mini-kits! And Deb, I’ve already taken some photos of the kids’ teddy bears… now I just have to think of what to do with them. LOL!!!

Good day, everyone! I’m off to doing more work again! Till next! Stay happy!!! And thanks for dropping by!

Threebie Freebie!!! :D

Thursday, 6 September 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 7 Comments

Freebie time, friends!!!

So sorry for being remiss in keeping my blog updated these past few days… have been all tied up with design work (which is sort of related to scrapping but not really 😉 , if that makes any sense), trying to complete layouts challenges along with my darling U&R playmates (thanks, Lisa, for leading the pack!!!), doing some moderating duties, and well… all the kazillion things wives and mothers do in their real lives. 😀

But you, my friends, are always on my mind! So here, to make up for lost time, are three freebies rolled into one! 😀

The first is one that I actually made for my Photoshop Challenge layout. If you haven’t tried Jessica’s Photoshop Friday tutorials, you’re missing half of your life! Click on my link to her blog over there on the right —>>> and go to Photoshop Index and play, play, play!!!

The other two I just made because… well, have I told you I love words? I have? Okay then. 🙂

So here they are, all in black and white (as the comments I’ve received tell me that you prefer B&W wordart), 300 ppi, large-sized (about 6inches across) so that you can downsize as you wish. Here’s a tip that I tried with the thicker letters of the wordart… if you zoom in reeeal close, you can actually use the paint bucket tool to color the letters to your own liking. 😀 That way, you can change the colors of the individual words! Pretty neat, huh? Note that the font letters must be thick though, or the paint bucket will fill up your whole layout. Eek. 😕

Download the threebie freebie HERE… Zip password is quoteme Hope you like it and have fun! Don’t forget to leave some love on my blog! Thanks in advance!

ETA: Sorry, link is no longer available.

PS. I’m preparing a nice little new kit for you… stay tuned!!! 😉

PS. Couldn’t resist the play of words in the title “Quo(te) vadis” 😀 It’s Latin for “whither thou goest?”

Spree Me! Freebie!

Sunday, 2 September 2007Wednesday, 24 September 2008 / LivE / 7 Comments

Temptation, quit hounding me and spree me from thy clutches! 😀

Last night my darling friend J and I were having another one of our regular fun chats. For the life of me, I cannot remember how the topic came up (certainly it had a connection to Labor Day weekend and all the sales sprouting like wild mushrooms–the operative word here being WILD, hahaha) but we both decided our mantra for the night would be When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping! 😀

I should have recognized that portent and heeded its warning. Because today as I was cruising the boards at Jessica’s playground I happened upon a thread where some quickly-getting-digi-addicted ladies (my kind of ladies, really!) listed wonderful digishops with special sales. Sound bite: Oooh, get me away from those! Take my credit card and lock it up, quick! Threads like this are so dangerous to financial health! LOL! I mean, really, who doesn’t love shopping? (okay, you got me… groceries can be a real chore sometimes, but I’m not talking about groceries here, honeys, I’m talking DIGI-SCHTUFF!!!)

Yum, yum, yummy!

You know how it goes: you tell yourself oh, I’m just going to check out the stuff. I promise I won’t buy. This is just going to be a case of simple window-shopping. So you click on the link to the site (and yes, it just happens to be in your favorites). And you look, and you click on View larger, and you salivate, and after a while your “hmm, I could use these” magically turns into “man, I need these!” And then ka-ching! You wake up from your delusion not-a-few dollars poorer.

Empty wallet. But happy.

I don’t know about you, but I looooove digi schtuff!!! (Okay, admit it, sista, you do too 😀 ).

So while I was reading this enabler thread with my left hand struggling to block my right hand from getting anywhere near the sites’ links on my favorites, this song kept playing in my head: (it’s not a favorite song of mine, so I have no idea why it was lodged in my subconscious… maybe something to do with the beat and a vision of my friends and me on a shopping frenzy, snagging all the goodies we could get our hands on? LOL!!! 😀 )

[ Warning: This is unabashedly sooooo eighties! Kim Wilde’s hair, her dance moves… man!!! Be prepared for a total blast from the past! ]

Now what happens when you get engrossed in all this talk about shopping and sales and great prices of digital goodies? Your adrenaline starts flowing. Well. Mine did. I had two choices: go crazy shopping or distract myself by doing something that didn’t involve opening my wallet.

Guess my choice? (Hint: it was a wise, albeit difficult, one :D)

Here’s the answer: ( I’m delighted to announce that I still have a modicum of self-control left. :D)

Click for larger view

Bar code labels, girlfriends!!! You can download them HERE. (They’re quite big, at 4×2 inches… but I like big elements because you can always downsize them without sacrificing the quality). They’re PNG files, so they’ll take on the background of whatever you’re putting them on.

ETA: Sorry, link is no longer available.

Hope you like them! Oh and the zip password is… what else? shoppingspree

Enjoy! and have a great Labor Day weekend, girlfriends in the US! 😛