Challenge 4a Completed, YAY!

Ok this challenge . . . what should I say? I felt it had to be hard angles, because we're talking Legos here. Those are hard angles! Have you stepped on a Lego in the middle of the night or the middle of the heel? Anyway, it ended up very utilitarian looking. But it gets the job done.

Challenge 4a complete.

The only interesting element is the border. I used the Stampin' Up notebook edge punch (or whatever it's called) to make it. I punched along the paper, then cut it into a strip.

Rude!

If I had money to just throw around here's what I do with it today. I would buy the front page of the Oxford Leader. The headline would read, "The Rudest Woman on Earth Appears at China House." The article would say something to this effect . . .

This goes out to the woman who entered China House Take-out Tuesday at 1pm. What under God's Green Earth gives you the impression everyone at China House was interested in listening to your obnoxious voice, your obnoxiously loud abrasive voice? You come bursting through the door, on your cell phone and begin pacing back and forth as you give your "cell friend" the details of your doctor's appointment. From the top of your bleach blonde Bozo styled hair along your leathery tanned body to the tips of your knee-high, black leather, four inch heel boots you are a beast!

Retirement!

Grandma Shenfeld's Calendar

Every year I do a calendar for Joe's mom for her birthday. I'm finally getting around it, and I thought I would use it as a learning project. OMG! My head's going to get so full of new stuff it's going to pop.

Challenge 3a

Not my favorite, but completed.

Page 1

1. Using a white background, I laid down a torn piece of Scenic Route patterned paper
2. I put two photos together to make a big picture. It kind of cracks me up. It looks like a giant staircase with three sets of twins.
3. Wrote around the photos things we saw that day.
4. My great creation for this page was the word "them". I used the Cricut Monogram cartridge and cut the inside out with the X-acto knife.
5. Stuck on the tickets.
   

Page 2

1. This page was just all about cut and paste, jigsawing. Mounted on a 12 x 12 card stock.
2. Labels are layered paper

Going Digital

Since so many people had such good questions about the digital page I thought I would share what I've learned so far.

I am not using a packaged scrapbooking program. I thought it would be to limiting for me, but I think there are a great ideas for someone not really interesting in completely learning how to re-invent the wheel. Hallmark, Creating Keepsakes, HP and hundreds of other companies have scrapbooking software. If you want to just take it for a test run, without a lot of time investment package deals are probably the way to go, and pretty cheap. Here's a link to a review of Top Ten scrapbooking software: http://scrapbooking-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

Our old computer had Corel Paint Shop Pro on it which I updated to Paint Shop Pro X. Our computer died and we got a new one, so I just finally re-loaded the software. In the download there was a download available for Lynda Tutorials. Thought "I really need to learn how to use this thing." So I downloaded them too. Very helped with the basics, this is where they hook ya, but I really wanted more, so headed to the tutorial, website at http://www.lynda.com/. Great website you can sign up for a year or just a month. I get the month package, it was $25.00. What I've learned so far is worth way more than $25.00, and I'm only a week into my subscription.

I'm using Paint Shop as my editor, art studio. It comes when a few scrapbookish thing, but I've been getting things from several different websites. Here's a few I like: http://www.littledreamerdesigns.com/ and http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/digital.asp. There's tons more, but right now I haven't needed to wander. They've had anything I needed. You purchase via download: papers, fonts, and elements (ribbon, brads, staples). There's packages for things that all work together. Imagine walking into your favorite scrapbook store and there's a bag full of everything you need to complete a page and everything matchs. Same thing, just digital. Now the fun part for me in Paint Shop is I can make the elements, fonts and papers. For instance the glittery dead fish at the top of the blog is actually a cardboard thing I bought from JoAnn's. I took a picture of it -- I could have scanned it too -- digital cut it out and altered it, changed the smile to a frown and drew "Xed" out his eyes and flipped him. Here's the original picture.

Of course I'm weird do I had a total blast doing all of this. My point is you can make anything an element for you scrapbook pages.

After completing hat last scrapbook page, "Beach Bum" I uploaded it to Costco and had it printing out in 12 x 12 ($2.99) and 8 x 8 ($1.49ish). I wasn't sure what this thing was going to look like. It looked better than I expected.

I created the new title and background paper the blog with Corel Paint Shop also. I needed to use an outside source to figure out how to do the background paper, www.cutestblogontheblock.com.

That's what I know so far. I'll update as I learn and grow. :)

Playing with HTML

I'm having a blast learning all the cool things I can do on my blog . . . so you're probably going to see some crazy things over the next few weeks. Hopefully, they'll be fun. Hang in there . . .who knows what I'll come up with next.

Like the new backgroud . . . I made it tonight . . . pretty girlie for me!