New In-Colors!

Next time you log into My Digital Studio, you will get some new colors free in your update!! 

And, your colors will be arranged in a pretty new color spectrum.

 

 

 

Progressive page for May

I have mentioned the Progressive Page challenges at SplitcoastStampers.com a few times. If you are unfamiliar with what a Progressive Page is, it is were you add a bit to your page each week, based on the weekly task you are given. These are really fun and sometimes the weekly task works great with what I've got going on in my photos and sometimes they don't, and that's OK, you can alter if needed.  I don't think I altered anything this month, but I did cheat a little :)   I didn't start the challenge until the third week, so I did all three tasks at once!  Then I only had to do task 4 this week, which was the title and journaling.    If you are ever stuck for an idea, why not look through past challenges and gain some inspiration there?  Here is a link to the scrapbooking challenges at SplitCoastStampers. 

MDS Monday #16

It's a card sketch this week on MDS Monday! And the added challenge was to use the coloring tool to add multiple colors to your stamp. 
Here is the sketch...

And here is the card I made with the sketch...

 

The Stamp that I colored was the "Just for you" stamp.  To do this I just added the stamp to my project page and clicked on the coloring tool.  When your coloring box opens up you can select brush size and color to color your stamps.  I went simple and just added a line of each of the colors in my card to make the just for you multicolored.  If you need to, you can zoom in on your stamp to do finer detail work.

 

Check out the MDS Monday blog to see what the other designers did with the sketch!

  Don't want to make a card?  That's ok, play along and make it a scrapbook page instead.

 

My card and page both use the Playful Polka dots ensemble, and the Decorative Overlays Quatrefoil Stamp in white with the opacity reduced to 14. 

 

 

Monogram note cards

It's MDS Blog Hop Time again!!  We are showing off what we are currently working on in MDS.   I have been making a bunch of Notecards!

Monogram note cards are so fun and easy in MDS.  I wanted to make a personal gift for my mom for Mother's Day, and I thought that some note cards would be just the ticket.  And, because I put things off too long, I needed to make them somewhat fast :)  My Digital Studio makes it so easy and fun to make your own stationary.  I made 16 note cards for my mom, 4 of each color.  I liked them so much I made some for myself as well!



 I printed the cards directly onto designer paper that I trimmed to 8 1/2 by 11 to make the paper fit into my printer. 

  I opened the software and chose the 5 1/2 by 4 1/4 size greeting card.  I wanted to just print the card fronts and attach them to card stock bases.  If you are making them all the same, you just need to design the first panel of your card.  Then when you go to the print options, you choose the last option called 4 UP Card Front.  





 Here is my one panel designed.

here is what you get when you choose the 4 Up Card Front option in your quick settings.

If you want all to make different designs, you can design on all four panels of your card.

Then choose the Greeting card Four panels option in your quick settings.  You will notice that some of your panels are upside down.  This is because in this setting, you can make a card and fold it so that it reads correctly, with a front, back , and inside greeting.   In this case though, I am going to just cut the four panels apart and glue them on to card stock. 

I don't have a great printer at home, just a multi-function office printed in my husbands office, but for solid colors like this it worked like a charm.  I added a piece of designer series paper that I cut down to 8 1/2 by 11 into the printer.  I also printed some out on the new Cantaloupe paper.  Pretty!

Here is what I got...

I then cut my panels apart and adhered them to Soft Suede card stock.

Some got ribbon, some got punched flowers or rhinestones or both. 

 
 


I left some super simple.  Now I am all stocked up.  They were really fun to make though, so I am sure some people will get getting monogram note cards for their birthdays. 

Thanks for stopping by!  Now check out what the rest of the Blog Hoppers made!

 

1. Amber Meadows 2. Jeanna Bohanon 3. Julie Leblanc 4. Rochelle Gould 5. Aly Schilling 6. Kimberly Van Diepen 7. Holly VanDyne 8. Erica Shaw 9. Cindy Schuster 10. Beth Rush - guest blogger!

InLinkz.com

MDS Monday #15!!

Yea!! It's my turn to host the MDS Monday Challenge this week!  I came up with a sketch challenge that I hope you find fun.  Here is a link to the challenge.  And here is my sketch...
What do you think?   The extra large photo box is perfect for your favorite photo, or that posed photo from an event.  Then hang your smaller photos from the event underneath.  Use some fun things from your embellishments to hang the smaller photos.  In my sketch I used push pins from the "stay on track" download.  On my actual page I used tags with bows.  Check through your embellishments and look for fun things like clips, pins, staples, stitching, or digital tape. 
Here is my finished page.
Go to MDS Monday to see what the other design team members have come up with!!  

Super cute free backpack template

The downloads on Tuesday were really cute this week.  I liked the Father's Day download a lot, lots of cute phrases.  The papers and embellishments in the "You're so nice" kit are cute too.  I am using the word cute a lot today!!  And I am going to use it again because the free "Packed for you" download is super cute too!  and did I mention FREE? Print it out, put it together and there you have a super cute teacher gift or gift for a new grad or end of school or first day of school or.....  you get the idea.   It is item number   Packed for You download 134687

"Because I'm the dad" download item number 134685

Faces I love swatchbook template item #134595

"You're so nice" kit item #134688 

Progressive page finised

So on April 2nd I started a progressive page and then never finished it!!  SplitcoastStampers hosts a progressive challenge most months.  A progressive page challenge is where each week you add a new step to your page.  Well, I did step one, and then step two, but never finished.  Step two was to make a word bubble, which is really fun.  There are even online programs to help you do this.  I chose to make my own.  I used words that went with the event, and picked colors out of the background paper.  I stuck with the same font and size for each word, but you could change fonts, sizes, angles, and more.  Then the page ended up with only one photo and I wanted to add Jillian into t he page, so I extended my frame to fit two pictures.  In the end I did not quite follow the progressive challenge, but that's OK, I got a cute page out of it, and tried something new--the word bubble!! 
here is where my page started...

The frame was an embellishment from "hello there" digital kit.  I really liked the stitching around the frame.  I tried to just edit the frame by stretching it, but the stitching didn't work out because I was changing it to a rectangle from a square, so the center stitching got very long, while the ends stayed short.  I did not like how this looked so I decided to try to crop it into two halves, then stick them together.  This worked perfectly.  Here is how that worked...

I added the frame to the page...

I clicked the crop button...

This is the crop box...

I kept all but the end of the frame...

When my cropped frame was added to my page, I copied and pasted a second one to the page...

I clicked on the Mirror button to get the mirror image of the frame...

Then, I put the two ends together to get one rectangle frame.  You can use your align button to make sure they are just right. 

The papers on this page are from "Celebrate Easter" and the frame and label and heart are from "hello there" kit.  There are SO MANY great kits on sale right now!! Don't forget to take advantage of these great deals!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Card Sketch

MDS Monday has decided to add card sketches every other week, in addition to our scrapbook page sketches.  You still have two weeks to participate in the challenges, but a new one will be posted each week, instead of every other week.  Make sense?  I don't explain things very well, so hopefully you follow me :) 








This is the first card sketch challenge, MDS Monday Challenge 14.  Here is the sketch...

 

This is a great sketch, you can do so much with it! I did a couple tricky things with my card.  I cropped and recolored the ribbon, and I cropped the stamp. 
Here is how to crop and recolor the ribbon...

 Apply the ribbon to your project, then click the crop button.  You will then get this box.  Click the crop shape button to bring up your punches.

I chose a forked flag shape punch to crop my ribbon with.  click the punch, then apply.

Now my ribbon has this cute cut end.  Next I recolored my ribbon by clicking the Recolor tool.

I chose a blue that matched the school colors.

Yea! Now my ribbon is blue!!

I also cropped my stamp, it originally looked like this...

Click your crop button to bring up the crop box.

Highlight the area you want to keep.
click OK.

Now I have this stamp.  I copied and pasted it 7 more times.  Then I changed the opacity down 10 points each time, so get that faded look as the words go down the card.

Here is the opacity button.

That's it!  You could use the school colors instead of black, or the school name or mascot instead of "congrats".  And if you don't have a stamp you like, just use a text box. 

Thanks for stopping by today!! I hope you take part in our challenge!!