Too Awesome for Words

Tuesday, 23 September 2008 / LivE / 8 Comments

There is no way to put into words what an immensely wonderful experience our recently-concluded Type+writer course has been. Funny how a writing course can leave one speechless… but that is exactly how I’ve been for a good part of the course. Speechless with awe and admiration and amazement at the incredible response from each one who took the Type+Writer ride with Jessica and me!

Every single Spragmate who took the course was incredibly terrific. Our class gallery is filled with precious layouts that tug at the heart, make you laugh, make you smile, make you weep. These are not just photos and words on pages, they’re hearts and souls laid bare on the pages. I am so honored to have been witness to this wonderful journey of heart and soul and photoshopping fingers!

I had the most awesome two weeks of my life working with my dear friend Jessica. Just when you think that she’s so awesome and that she can’t get any better than best, she just ups and surprises you by being even more awesome than the minute before! Gotta say, this lady is one of my most favorite people on earth! What a total gift it was to be able to work hand in hand with her on this course. This is certainly an experience that has carved itself on my heart forever.

To all my darling Spraggirls/Spragguys who’ve left love on the forum and in my inbox: Jessica and I love you guys. We really do. You are just incredibly awesome.

HUGE hugs and squeezes to each of you!

And for those who missed the Type+Writer beta course, stay tuned… I hear it might be coming back early next year! 😉

So now that the course is over (and happy me, I still have a couple of weeks to marvel at each and every layout in our gallery!), I am suffering from withdrawal symptoms… I’ve been getting too much sleep since last night! 😆

Triathlon Update

Just when I thought the Olympics had all but covered the momentum of our excitement, our triathlon photos finally came out in the newspapers last September 9th. Woohoo! Because of the limited space, we each got only one photo of ours published instead of the original bunch that we were told the newspaper originally planned to publish… but hey, who’s complainin’? 😀

Our triathlon photos, published! Woohoo!

And the first paragraph of the article was about us, too! Cool!

Triathlon Writeup

One of these days, I’ll probably resurrect my Flickr account and upload the triathlon photos I took… I think if I were a triathlete, I’d love to get my hands on any photographic evidence that my body is still a lean, mean machine, eh? 😆

(Can you tell I’ve got time on my hands? 😆 )

I Want

I’m a firm believer in the saying, When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. 😉 (Shopping also keeps me awake and on my toes and totally inspired, so don’t ask me how much digi schtuff I bought in the last couple of weeks… ‘course I’d use any excuse to buy those yummies, right? hehe)

Bad habits are hard to break, so since I’ve been awake with not much to do these past couple of days, I’ve been surfing… Tsk, tsk. This is dangerous stuff, surfing. You see things that you never thought you needed, and suddenly you find yourself chanting (softly at first, then increasing in volume in tempo): I want, I want, I want!

Here’s my latest “I want”:

I want you, Bind-it-all 2.0!

I’ve been resisting this for the longest time (and good thing, too, because they just came out with the 2.0 new improved version!). I have my beloved Cropadile, and I’ve been convincing myself that I really don’t need another gadget, since I can punch holes easily through most of the material (and more) that the Bind-It-All can… Sure, those wires are so cool, but surely there must be substitutes for those wires?

However. During one of our chats, I asked my dear friend and guru (and shoe-shopping enabler) Jes what the difference was between the Cropadile and the Bind-It-All (and yes, I kinda figured that the Cropadile is a glorified puncher and eyelet setter, but what a glory it has! 😆 ) and she gave me the link to Zutter’s vid that shows the BIA at work. I must confess I was a bit distracted by the vid (hehehe) but I did feel the rumble of a “want, want, want” chant beginning inside… And of course, it didn’t help in the dissuasion department that Jes herself has a BIA and says it works in the most awesome way!

So. This is the latest gadget(object) of my affection. The only annoying thing is that, since I need to have it shipped it over so many miles, I need to predict what supplies I’ll be needing so that it all comes in one big bulk. (Yum, don’t you love FedEx?).

Sooooo I need some advice from you sweeties. Tell me, do you have a Bind-It-All? Do you love it? Do you find that you buy less scrapbook albums off the shelf and instead spend time indulging in your creative manual labor with this delish machine and the accompanying wires and chipboard covers? And the million-dollar question: what O-wire rings do you use most often? (I can’t decide which ones to get!)

End my misery (by telling me) or enable me (by telling me)… either way, I’d love to hear from you! (And when you do drop me a line, I’d be most grateful for your assistance in turning this I want, I want, I want into I have, I have, I have !

More later…

I’m off to work on some more freebs for you sweeties, so I’ll see you later with more news! Till then, have a happy, scrappy day! 😀

Where We’re At (and other W’s)

Monday, 25 August 2008Thursday, 25 September 2008 / LivE / 25 Comments

Technorati Tags: digital scrapbooking,freebies,Type+Writer

This is where we’re at right now… in other words, this is what you’ll see in any given room at any time of the day if you walk through our home:

Wall-E & Friends

In fact, even other toys are transformed into Wall-E Wannabe’s: (Sound byte: “Mom, look! I made my own Wall-e!” )

Wall-E, Version 2

(That’s actually a toy that can be transformed into virtually anything, but its basic parts allow you to create dinosaurs and vehicles. Cool toys. We only had Lego when we were kids. hehe)

Work

I’ve been totally wrapped up in work on Type+Writer, our up-and-coming first-ever journaling and typography course on our Spraground! I’m extremely excited to be team-teaching the Type+writer course with the ever fabulous Jessica Sprague!

Type+Writer at http://www.jessicasprague.com

If you love making layouts but struggle with putting down the words to go with the photos, this course is for you! If you love writing, and journaling on layouts comes easy to you, this course is also for you! If you want to explore new techniques for getting those words onto your layouts with Photoshop’s awesome arsenal of tools, this course is for you! If you’ve taken any of Jessica’s online courses, you’d know that she is the absolute Best at everything she does, and you wouldn’t want to miss this latest course that she’s teaching! (Yep, in other words, you, you, and you… we’d love to have you in our course! 😀 )

So if you haven’t heard about it yet, read all about our Type+Writer course here! Registration will be on September 1st and our first day of class will be on September 8th! Jes and I promise that it’s going to be a fun-filled, very inspiring, creative two weeks that you’ll be spending with us when you decide to sign up for our course! So come, hop, skip, jump, run to the Spraground on September 1st and be counted among the beta Type+writers! 😀

Where Is He?

My sister left a comment asking me where the photo of Jun was on my blog… the one that he loved, the one that he said he’d use for all publications that request a photo of him. Well, sister dear, this is for you 😀 :

The Photography Master

The Photography Master, Take 2

Wow, It’s About Time!

I’ve been wanting to release a freebie for the longest time… I took a break (a mental breather) and found some time to design a little paper pack for all you sweeties!

These aren’t the usual kind of papers that I normally make, but it’s always nice to push the envelope and explore horizons, right? (To my friend, Veevs, if you’re reading this, I hope I’m not too far off the mark when I say that I think these would be the kind of papers you might want to use! 😆 )

So here is a mini paper pack for all of you: highly saturated and textured, for all those layouts that need an extra punch!

LivEdesigns Wild Grafix Paper Pack

Click on the image to download.

Thank you so much for the love you leave on my blog as you download! I totally love reading your comments! 🙂

Well, that’s all for now, folks! It’s back to the saltmines for me! 😆

Have a happy, scrappy day, my sweeties!

Preparations and Promises

Friday, 18 July 2008Thursday, 25 September 2008 / LivE / 46 Comments

What’s your current state of mind right now?

Mine is one of pure excitement! hee!

I have been working on a class that my dear friend Jessica and I will be teaching on our Spraground come September! (What an honor to be teaching with the digi-godess herself!) It’s called Type+writer, and it’s going to be a class on journaling and typography (Read all about it on the Spraground!)

A few weeks ago, I was browsing through the bookstore and picked up this book:

A Broom of One's Own by Nancy Peacock

A Broom of One’s Own: Words on Writing, Housecleaning & Life by Nancy Peacock

I wish I could say I bought it knowing that I would definitely find something in it that would inspire me for the upcoming course that I would be team-teaching with Jessica, but the truth is, it just called out to me from the bookshelf, and I am all weak-kneed and soft when it comes to resolve in bookstores. (Can never go in and come out without something in my hands).

When we digiscrap and when we edit our photos, we always talk about workflow. You know, what process do you normally go through when you scrap a layout? When you edit your photos? Well… ever thought about your workflow in a bookstore? 😆 I’d love to know!

Here’s how I go from the shelf to the counter in bookstores.

I naturally seek out the areas that interest me. That would be… uh… probably everything. LOL. I can go from cookbooks (even if I don’t cook–there are great photos in there, and besides, hope springs eternal! 😛 ) to interior design (love looking at house designs and room designs–you never know when you’re going to want to redesign your room or your kids’ rooms, right?) to the business books (for some smart reading) to the children’s books (oooh! lots of deliciousness there, and often deep wisdom disguised in very simple phrases too!) to graphic design/photography/photoshop books and writing/writers’ books and general interest books (these last three are where I spend the largest chunk of time browsing and turning pages).

I used to read fiction once upon a time, I’m sure. In fact, it’s all I read from the time I was a kid up to when I was in college. I don’t know when the shift occured, but lately I’ve had no interest in most fiction books (think I got more than my quota early on? 😀 ) and so it’s the nonfiction ones that have me totally absorbed.

But I digress.

We were talking workflow, right? 😀 As I go to these areas of the bookstore, I pick up a book, my attention called initially by the book’s title and subtitle. First thing I do is turn it over and read the blurb at the back. If the blurb fails to catch me, back to the shelf the book goes and I’m off to get my interest hooked elsewhere. But if the blurb passes my initial test, then I open it to the first page and read the first couple of lines. If I fall in love at that point, the book never makes it out of my hands… it glues itself to my hand and walks up to the counter with me, where the salesclerk goes ding-ding-ding, and a few minutes later I’m a happy woman taking home a new paperback or hardbound friend.

Funny how those first few lines matter. Even funnier, I’ve secretly caught my kids applying the same litmus test to the books they buy (Flip to first page, read first lines, good? Good! Sold!) 😀

So anyway, back to Nancy Peacock’s book. Normally, my cousin (who is a published poet in the US and my childhood constant companion and co-book-lover) will send me her latest recommendations about the best writing books and when this happens, I know exactly what to look for on my trips to the bookstore. But this time, last week, I went on a nice, not-looking-for-anything-specific kind of book shopping spree, and this is what I ended up taking home.

I love it. I don’t get much time in a day to read, what with my never-ending and ever-growing list of to-do’s that are screaming for attention, but once in a while you sit down with a book, and it’s just like having a cup of coffee with a new friend whom you’ve just discovered is such a warm, easygoing, interesting, funny person to be with, and you talk and talk and talk, and the one cup of coffee turns to three while the sun sets in the horizon…

Well, this book was that kind of friend to me. 🙂

And wow, guess what? It has inspired me further with my work on the Type+writer course! How much better does it get, huh?

PS. I discovered with no small amount of joy that the author’s favorite books as a child were the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. That immediately made her my virtual best friend. 😆 Nothing like finding out the books you loved as a child are regarded with as much holy affection by someone else heretofore unknown to you! I always think that’s an awesome thing! (Yeah, I have cheap thrills, hehe) 🙂

So… if you’re in a bookstore, and you like reading a book that absolutely sounds like your best friend telling you stories about her job of cleaning houses while she effortlessly blends in her views about writing which happens to be her other job when she’s not housecleaning, then pick up this book. Not many books compel me to read till the last page without putting it down, but this one has. And it’s not even something that contains incredibly profound, earth-changing truths… it’s just such a joy to read.

Cover Page Done!

Speaking of having tons of stuff to do… I haven’t made a layout in soooo long, I was getting withdrawal symptoms! Not for lack of desire, no… just a total lack of 24 more hours in each day!

But! I finally finished the cover page of my May Photo A Day Album! Whoopeedoo!

Here’s what I created today:

LivE_May Photo-A-Day Album Cover Page

Credits:

LivEdesigns-ExtraordinaryDaysAlbum-CoverPageTemplate
Meredith Fenwick – The Day Dreams Collection – Wildest Papers_Paper1
Katie Pertiet – Black Black Paper Pack_Paper1
Kim Christensen – Spelling101-BlackInkedOverlay, RedStampedOverlay
Photos by LivE

Oh! By the way, if you downloaded my multiphoto cover page template, don’t forget to save often because there are 31 photo masks in there, and when you pull in your photos, you don’t want to lose the file in case Photoshop struggles with its memory requirements! 😉 (Or merge the photo layer to the mask layer to save memory, if you’re absolutely sure you’re not going to change it later on). I’m just sayin’… 😀

PS. I kept my photos in their original size and let some details of each photo peep out of the squares, just to add interest to the cover page. I love the idea of guessing what each photo is like, and having to get to the inside pages to find out what each one was, and then maybe flipping back to the cover page to match the full photo with the photo part that shows on the cover. Hee!

Maybe it’s related to my love for the World-National Geographic Magazine for Kids, which I had a subscription for back when I was about 8 years old. I loved flipping over to the back cover (what is it with my fascination for back covers? hahaha!) where there were always about 9 detail photos… and the reader had to guess what they actually were (answers were on the inside part of the front page, upside down… bet it was their way of making sure we didn’t cheat by reading them first before we got to the back detail photos! heehee).

And now, with the cover all done and those detail photos peeping out, I’m all excited to work on the inside pages!

Freebie Promised, Freebie Delivered!

And speaking of inside pages… I finally got these ExtraordinaryDays Album inside page single-photo templates zipped, loaded, and ready for sharing!

And just because I love ya, I decided to include separate png files of the swirl and circle cluster accents that I used on the psd files… just in case you want to use them on your other layouts as well! 😉 Note that glass accents are the most difficult to add drop shadows to, because … uh… because glass behaves in a funny way, right? (Try putting a glass of something in the sun and you’ll see what I mean 😀 ).

So, because I really believe in keeping things as simple as possible, I decided to give you the glass accents with drop shadows applied already to them. If you wish to apply your own shadows further, you can… but note that this will make the black glass take on a darker, less transparent shade (and if that’s the look you’re going for, then it’s all good! 😀 )

So here’s what I’m sharing with you today!

LivEdesigns ExtraordinaryDays Album Inside Page Templates & Accents

Click here to get the Extraordinary Days Album Inside Page Templates and Glass Accents.

THANK YOU SO MUCH for the love you leave on my blog! (I love the fuzzies you leave on my 4shared account, but the love you leave on my blog will last forever, whereas the fuzzies on 4shared disappear once I unload the files )