Layout: Monday

Just a fun everyday layout with Studio 68’s newest very cool alpha. :)

For some reason, even though you have more honors classes this year, most nights have been lighter on homework than they were last year. It's not unusual right now for your only homework to be sax practice. With your sax needing some pad replacements, after a quick trip with Dad to drop it off at the shop, you were free the rest of the evening to grab the laptop and play a little Dragon Fable, a weekday rarity. Gotta love a Monday with no homework.
January 23, 2012

- by Studio 68 at Zig Zag Scrap -
alphas: Wired Up Alpha, Messy Stamped On Alpha
kit: Azul
- fonts –
CK Ali’s Hand Official, Misproject, Libel Suit, Georgia

That’s it! Short and sweet! TFL! :)

Layout: State Fair of Texas

Hope you had a wonderful holiday season and your new year is off to terrific start! We had a lovely visit with family over Christmas, and then a not-so-lovely round of stomach flu to end 2011. :b We seem to be on the mend though, so fingers crossed for a better 2012! :)

Studio 68 is hanging out for another month of guesting at CatScrap, and has a fun new set of multi-photo templates. I used the most loaded one to put together this fun page with shots from our trip to the State Fair this past October… Big Tex, the bottomless barker, cotton candy, fun houses, swan paddle boats, the giant ferris wheel, and bumper cars. But I think the kids had the most fun just playing in the fountain. :)

- by Studio 68, guest at CatScrap -
template: Kickstarters 13 by Studio 68
kit (partially recolored): IQ collab by Studio 68 and Lynne-Marie, Border Madness {IQ} by Studio 68
- other –
font: Dirty Ego by Misprinted Type

That’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by! :)

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes in store

In November it was decided that my digi design home, ScrapDish, where I have been selling my products for the past 5½ years, would close its doors at the end of this year. After the closing was announced, a wonderful, amazing thing happened and a buyer stepped forward. I’m so thrilled that ScrapDish will be staying open! I’m sure the new owner will do an absolutely fabulous job, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what she has in store. (No pun intended.) But after my head stopped spinning from that emotional rollercoaster, I decided the time was right to go forward with the closing of my store. It’s so hard to believe that happy ScrapDish logo won’t be a part of my daily life anymore.

I wish I had taken screenshots of all of the different site layouts over the years. I do have this one of the main page from when I first joined the store. Unfortunately, I shrunk it way down for my blog configuration at the time, and I don’t seem to have the original size.

I still remember how excited I was to be invited to join the store. If you dig way back through the history on this blog (which I don’t advise, unless you want read lots of rambling about my issues with minor illnesses, computer viruses, and laundry), you’ll find that my designing began as one portion of my duties on the RAKScraps creative team. I didn’t have aspirations to design when I applied to the team, much less sell my designs; it was just part of the gig, which back then was an all-in-one everyone-did-everything kind of a deal. I just loved the community at RAKS and wanted so much to be a part of the team… as well as getting my hands on all of those amazing sponsor kits they got to scrap with! :)

How awesome it was for me that the owner of the site at the time also owned ScrapDish and eventually invited me to join! She’d actually been trying to convince me for a while that I needed to find a place to sell my designs, but I wasn’t interested enough, and didn’t have enough confidence in my designs, to pursue it until the opportunity was thrown in my lap. :)

Designing has become such an integral part of my life now that it’s hard for me to imagine what I would be doing with my time if I hadn’t found it. I still get a rush from being inspired by some random object or photograph and seeing it turn into something to be used to help capture memories or express the feelings of a moment. I love seeing my designs used on a layout and going “that’s exactly how I pictured that being used” or “wow, I never would have thought to use that piece in that way”! The creativity never ceases to amaze me. :)

So all that said, I do plan to keep designing, but for now, I’m having a closing sale to say goodbye to my home at ScrapDish…

I've placed everything in my store (except collabs) on sale at 50-75% off! Many of these products may never be sold again, so if there's something you've had your eye on, make sure you grab it now!

My first two collabs with Kate Hadfield, Srsly Stoked and Audaciously Awesome, are also on sale at 30% off, so this is a great time to pick those up as well! Hurry over to ScrapDish and shop now! My store closes December 31st!

Layouts: Sugar Geek Genius

Studio 68 is guesting at CatScrap this month, and she has some fabulous new products there! I scrapped some shots of Kaylee with “The List”. Gorgeous kit, I barely scratched the surface of it!

That’s my Kaylee... sugar & spice, a little bit naughty, a whole lotta nice. :)
kit: The List by Studio 68, December guest at CatScrap.
fonts: Pea Anderson (Kevin & Amanda's Fonts for Peas), Baskerville Old Face

Then I have two layouts using “IQ”, a series of collaborative products between Studio 68 and Lynne-Marie. First up is a look back at my college photos…

Journaling: My friends in college were almost all engineering students, although in a wide variety of specific majors - electrical (aka "double E", like me), aeronautical, computer, chemical, mechanical, industrial, ceramic, nuclear, and civil. My roommates, classmates, and even the members of the fraternity where I was a little sister were all engineers in the making. Looking through my photo albums from those days, you'd never know just how hard we all worked to get our degrees. None of the hours of classes and lectures and labs, group study sessions at the fraternity, last-minute papers, or cramming for exams are captured on film. In those pre-digital days, the cameras mainly came out only for the parties (especially the costume parties - there were lots of those!), football games, and general craziness. The standard joke around campus was that you couldn't spell 'geek' without 'double-E', but obviously spelling wasn't our main concern. ;) I'm glad I have all the fun photos that I do, but I wish I had more than a transcript and a diploma to prove that I actually did crack open a book now and then. Journaled 12/14/11
kit: IQ collab by Studio 68 and Lynne-Marie, available at CatScrap
fonts: A Little Pot (ge0rgia), Pea Cari (Kevin & Amanda's Fonts for Peas), Verdana (Microsoft)

And then a simple blended page featuring a favorite photo of Matthew from last year…

IQ collab by Studio 68 and Lynne-Marie, IQ wordart by Lynne-Marie, Border Madness {IQ} by Studio 68, all available at CatScrap.
font (date): Letter Gothic Std (Adobe)

That’s it for today! :)

Decked Out for Christmas with Kate Hadfield!

Kate and I have teamed up once again – this time with a fun Christmas kit! When I asked Kate what colors she wanted to work with, she said "bright and lots of them".  I think we've accomplished that! :)  Deck the Halls is a super colorful collab, packed with beautiful papers, handmade elements and doodles, and LOADS of festive cheer!

Check out these wonderful layouts from our creative teams!

And here’s a closer look at mine. :)

Journaling: You won’t find an elegant, coordinated, carefully arranged display of magazine-ready ornaments on our Christmas tree. Ever. Instead, you will be assaulted by an explosion of color and mismatched styles, with baubles and trinkets and keepsakes stuffed into every possible crevice of every inch of our sturdy 9-foot artificial tree. Mark says that we don’t have to hang every ornament every single year, but I just can’t bear to leave any of them off. There is the set of almost neon-colored plastic sugarplums that my parents bought me for my first Christmas. There are the crudely crafted school projects made lovingly by our children each year, with handprints, or photos, or just lots of glitter and glue. There are the dozens of winged creatures that represent my days of obsessively collecting anything angel related. There are ornaments that were gifts from friends we have long since lost touch with. There are adorable, beautifully crafted felt creations, carefully stitched by my mom, replicating the ones that always adorned our tree as I was growing up. There is the set of oversized stuffed versions of the animated characters from the classic Rankin Bass Rudolph TV special that Mark and I have probably both watched every year since it came out (well for me, every year since I was born). There is the glass Green Bay Packer ball, given to us by my dad, which hangs bravely in this blatantly Dallas Cowboys household. There is the assortment of ornaments bought on clearance after one of our first Christmases as a couple, just because we liked them. Each and every one of these is a memory that brings a smile and a reminder and a connection to the past. This is one of the most wonderful parts of Christmas for me. Ornament overload? No way. There’s always room for more joy.
kit: Deck the Halls by Kate Hadfield and Kim Jensen
fonts: Rockwell (Monotype), Dirty Ego (Misprinted Type), Pea Anderson (Kevin & Amanda's Fonts for Peas)

This weekend only, Deck the Halls is on sale 25% off! The sale ends this Monday, November 28th, so hurry over now and save!

Thanks for reading! Happy scrapping!