MDS Monday ~ A day in your life

We have a new sketch at MDS Monday today!  This time we are doing pages based on the idea of the Day to day events.  My page is not so everyday, it was a special day, but it works :)  Head over to the MDS Monday main site to see the sketch from Heidi, and read about how to do a "daily" page. 

Hope you play along!

Kiddieland

If you grew up in the Chicago land area you might remember Kiddieland.  It was a small amusement park with retro rides and cotton candy.  I remembered going there as a kid and when I heard it was closing permanently I had to take the kids just one last time.  It was loads of fun! 
This page was a sketch challenge on an MDS Facebook page called MDS Virtual Digi Crop.  If I've said it once I have said it a hundred times, the way to get good at using My Digital Studio is to use it.  And the best way to do that is to take part in challenges.  Just do it.  Even if you don't ever print them out, you will get practice.  And then when you do print them out you will love them and so will your family It's great to look through an album when friends and family are over.  They are great ways to go down memory lane, or to start a conversation. 

Favorite part of this page...
Zachary's expression!  He really thought he was taking some tight corners.  He was really into the driving and let his imagination run wild. 











This is a really simple sketch and I just used photo boxes filled with paper, nothing else.  The background is a designer paper too (from the "stay on track" download).  So basically there are 4 photos and three papers on this page, and 2 text boxes,  nothing else.   I was trying to think of more to add but I just didn't like anything else on the page.  Sometimes simple is best.
Thanks for stopping by today!   

MDS Monday #101

Hello my Digital friends!  I just realized that my post for yesterday did not go live so it is MDS Monday on a Tuesday!

Hi everyone!  It's Monday and we have a new sketch this week at MDS Monday!  This time the sketch is brought to us by Tami and it is a really cute one.  We are putting the focal point on a tilt, and the best way to do this is to first line things up nice and straight, and get group them to put them at an angle. Tami has included a nice video tutorial for us at the MDS Monday blog.  I used some fun photos from this past October.  We showed our out of town guests some fun spots around our home and stopped at the Conservatory.  There is a nice little pond inside the green house and pretty plants, but the thing everyone liked best was the large kaleidoscope that used real plants for its focus.  Super pretty!  
Here is the sketch!!

We hope that you will play along with our sketch this week!  Looking for more sketches?  check us out on Pinterest and Facebook is even a "past sketches" tab at the main blog.

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Digital stamp with a watercolor wash

I love to print out my digital stamps to make cards.  This week I cut my 12 x 12 Kraft paper into 8 1/2 by 11 so that it could fit into my printer.  Then I printed out a page of stamps to color.

 I used my Aqua Painters and Baked Brown Sugar to color the images.  You can get really nice tones of deep color and also just a shadow, all with just the one color.

I added Baked Brown Sugar and Old Olive to this one.

I painted some others to use for later.












I hope that you give this a try.  The tone on tone color wash is really pretty and I think would be great on masculine cards.  Or maybe even enlarge the stamps even bigger and make a nice piece of art for your walls!
There are a lot of great digital stamps that would be great for this technique.  Take a look in the digital stamp library and find some great line art style stamps.
here are some that I think would work nicely...

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Countryside Stamp Brush Set - Digital Download

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Look Up To Father Stamp Brush - Digital Download

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Lovely As A Tree Stamp Brush Set - Digital Download

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The Earth Without Art is just "EH"

Hello Everyone!  Hope you had a fabulous weekend.  It's Monday again, and that means MDS Monday!  We are celebrating our 100th sketch at MDS Monday! WOW!  For this occasion we are running our sketch challenge for two weeks, and We are giving out prizes!! To celebrate 100 sketches we are letting you choose one of the past 100 sketches to use for your project.  There is a tab on our home page with some past sketches, and there is also a Pinterest page with all of the past 99 sketches!  click here to see the Pinterest Page.







For my page I decided to go back to the very first sketch I made for MDS Monday.  I joined the team at sketch #15 and here is my original sketch.  I had meant for the top to be one BIG photo, with smaller photos underneath.  For the page I made this week I decided to make the top one big focal point, and then the smaller photos co-ordinate with the theme of the main image.

 Do you have tons of artwork from your children that you are not quite sure what to do with? Or some of your favorites are starting to see the wear and tear of time?   That was the thinking behind this page.  My children take art classes and create so many things, there isn't possibly enough wall space for all of it.  I do hang things for a long time, but I have to shuffle them sometimes to give equal time to all three.  In case some get misplaced or damages in storage, I thought I would photograph them as well.  I will add this page to my Jillian scrapbook so she can see her art progress as she grows.  I used papers from  "Sunny Day" download, as well as various fonts.






I used a poster from Stampin' Up! as my inspiration.  I know the quote is not original but I am not sure who it comes from.

Here is my page from May 2013.








I hope you will join in on our two week challenge!  you could win a free Stampin' Up! digital download or a fun MDS Monday key chain made with MDS of course!   Click here to see the main challenge page for all the details!

The MDS Monday design team is linking our blogs this week so that you can see all the fun pages we made and also read a bit about how we created them.  Next up on the hop is Cindy Shuster.

Label your work

Do you participate in swaps?  I do, and I have found that I often have to make recipe cards or product info cards to include in my projects.  My Digital Studio is perfect for this.  I opened a new project page in  8 1/2 by 11 size.  I called it "card info".   I created a basic owl design, to match my blog headers.  That part will stay the same each time.  I also added a text box with my name, email address and blog address at the very bottom.  Then I added a third text box with the details of the card I just created.  This text box will change with each project, but the owl and personal info will stay the same.  I then copied and pasted the info as many times as would fit on the page, in this case 6 times.
 Each time I need to make a new swap recipe card, I just need to open up my "card info" project, and change only the details of the specific project in the text box, very simple.  





Then I just need to print out as many sheets as I need for my swap, cut them apart,  and I am good to go.

I have another version for just my personal info.  I use this when I create cards for craft fairs or other things like that.  It has my blog info and contact info.   
















What other ideas can you come up with?  Customize some return address labels for your catalogs or personal mail, print them out on address label stickers when ever you need them.   There are so many ways you can use My Digital Studio besides scrapbooking or card making. I use it for flyers and display board headers all the time.  Do you sell items at craft fairs>  You can make up a variety of price tags and print them up as needed.  Punch out with the tag punch from Stampin' Up! for cute and quick price tags. 
Hope I have given you some ideas! thanks for stopping by. 

MDS Monday sketch #99

Hello everyone!  It is time for another sketch challenge.  This is sketch challenge #99 for MDS Monday!  Cindy has brought us a sketch using circles and stripes.  I choose to use papers from "12 days of Christmas".

I think this sketch lends itself nicely for a celebration!  Think of some birthdays or baby showers.  I'm sure you have something to celebrate. 




I hope that you will join us in this weeks sketch.  Take a look at what the rest of the design team has come up with by clicking here to go to the main MDS Monday site. We hope that you will link your sample to our page.  You can upload from your blog, but if you don't have a blog you can upload to other free sites such as mydigitalstudio.net or splitcoaststampsers.com, both have galleries that anyone can upload photos to.  Need help exporting your project to one of those sites, contact me and I will help you figure it out :) 

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