Crop, er CHAT, till you drop ... and other fun news

I'm slowly sneaking back to the computer after more or less taking today off. Yesterday I woke at 5:45 a.m. with Jacques' hunting alarm and immediately realized that an all-day scrapbooking chat at Designer Digitals was set to start at 6 a.m. Do you think I could go back to sleep knowing that? Nope ... not a chance. So I settled in with a couple hot cups of coffee and chatted away, all the way until 10 p.m. last night.
The last time I did this, I could not figure out how people chatted AND scrapbooked at the same time. But this time, I took little mini breaks from the chat screen and in the process, completed five layouts in response to the various chat challenges. It was tons of fun, even though my eyeballs were sore, sore, sore by the end of the day. Here are the layouts I did for the challenges & a little info about the "rules" of each little contest...
First challenge: Use the word art provided in a layout. Here's what I came up with...



Next: Cassie's 30 Minute Masterpiece Challenge
The rules: 1) Use only one photo; 2) Use at least 3 of the items provided in the freebie download; 3) Use punctuation elements as part of the title; 4) Use a non-frame element as a frame; and 5) Tell a story about the photo ... all in under 30 minutes!!! Here's my result ...
 
Next challenge: Template challenge
The rules ... use the template provided in the freebie as a starting point for a layout. Here's mine...
 
Next challenge: Use the word art provided in conjunction with a photo of my hands. This took a little brainstorming first, but here's my page...
 
The last challenge I did was probably the one I was least excited about the result. The task was to take the template provided and use a scrapbook page by someone else that was based on that as inspiration for my own page. I think by this point in the day, I was too tired to feel very "inspired," ya know? This isn't my favorite layout, but it's okay ... and I do like the photos!!
 
All in all, it was a fun day and I'm already looking forward to the next all-day chat, which is scheduled for early November.
My other fun news is I have recently been given the opportunity to do something I've been wanting to do for a while now and that is be a member of a digital designer's Creative Team (CT). Even better, I have been asked by not just one, but THREE individual designers to serve on each of their CTs! That means I have full, free access to all of their digital scrapbooking products - including their newest releases before they are made public - in exchange for helping to promote their products by creating scrapbook pages featuring those products and then posting them in various online galleries.
Fun, fun!!! I have spent the last several days downloading lots and lots of goodies. Now I get to poke through my new wonderful stash and make lots of new scrapbook pages to share. I am already enjoying this immensely, as you can imagine. Here are the first couple layouts I did in this new role, creating almost entirely of products by "my" three designers ...
 
 
All three designers that I am a CT member for sell their products at Two Peas in a Bucket. Check out their individual products and/or blogs by clicking on their names below...
Mary Ann Wise
Jen Allyson
Carina Gardner
I'm excited about this new opportunity ... and you can expect to see lots more pages here and everywhere else I post as a result!! :)

Summer's End ... Take 3

So I just keep playing with potential contest entries for the Summer's End contest. I went out and took some photos Sunday of our crabapple tree, which is probably my favorite subject in our yard to photograph year-round. It's beautiful in all seasons ... my favorite, of course, is when it flowers. But right now, it really looks like the first sign of fall with its little apples.
Anyway, here's my current favorite ... what do you think?

Loving this new digital world...

I had a blast this weekend in the chat room at Designer Digitals (DD). Spent way, way too much time on the computer judging from my sore eyes and shoulders, but it was soooo worth it. The occasion was the quarterly sale & all-day chat/challenge sessions at DD, my absolute favorite source of digital scrapbooking "stuff." Starting at 6 a.m. my time on Saturday and going all the way until after 10 p.m., it was a great chance to get in on some really inspiring, educational, oftentimes hilarious, and just plain fun chatting with a whole lot of people who enjoy digital scrapbooking as much as I do, not to mention a freebie digital kit every single hour. And in my neck of the woods, that kind of interaction with digital scrappers just doesn't happen. In fact, I do not know one single person outside of DD that scrapbooks digitally. Heck, I hardly know anyone who even scrapbooks. So it's a lot of fun to have a whole bunch of people with similar interests to visit with, including people from Norway, the UK, Australia, Spain, Canada... all over the world, really. I only missed one chat... the very first one. Just couldn't drag myself out of bed quite that early!!
It's a good thing the all day event only happens every three months, though. Jacques was very cooperative and took care of the girls all day for me so I could indulge. But I know I couldn't do that very often - and my eyes wouldn't let me even if I could. Thinking I need to invest in a glare screen, for starters... That and some new software - I took a lot of heckling for still using Photoshop 7.0!!!
With all of the chatting, I hardly did any scrapbooking. There are challenges every hour with prizes drawn from the list of people who complete layouts. But that was just too much multi-tasking for me. I was pretty content to just sit and talk. But I did get LOs done for two of the challenges, which I've attached below. One was for DD and one was for a sketch challenge for a birthday celebration chat at another site I discovered recently ... Get It Scrapped! (GIS), which offers lots of classes. In fact, I was pretty lucky this weekend, too. I won a free pass to a class at GIS, plus a free softcover 8x8 album from Shutterfly during one of the DD chats. So, it was well worth my time, even if I hadn't had so much fun!!


Anyway, now I'm back in the "real" world and have lots of "real" work to do, so I better get to it. Thanks for visiting ... and have a great day! :)

Making progress.

I can check two projects off my list. I finished my gangster layout yesterday ...

and I also created a sixth layout for the Designer Digitals contest.


If I happen to do another page I like better than one of the six I already submitted, I may swap one out. But if not, I've completed the contest requirements, so at least I'll have a shot at being considered!
The other items on my list are much more time-consuming, but eventually I'll share when I get them completed.

My current projects...

1. A "Day in the Life" album. 


I spent last Thursday taking photos all day and jotting down our activities so I can make an album depicting a typical day in my life. Turned out, it wasn't entirely typical - Jacques came home a little early and took 3 of the kids with him to the 7C basketball tourney, leaving me with just the baby and a few hours of (somewhat) free time. 


The album will still be a pretty accurate glimpse into my life at this stage, though... I have all of the photos (136+) on pages and now just need to go back and do the journaling and some embellishing.
2. Scrapbooking my uncle's 60th "gangster" birthday party.




It's not every day that I see my parents dressed up like a scene from The Godfather! We had fun celebrating my uncle's 60th birthday with a theme party in Great Falls this weekend and of course, I took lots of photos. I sat down last night to put together a fun page with some of my favorite shots - when I get that finished, I'll be sure to share...
3. Planning a layout (or 2) highlighting memories of my gramma's house.



My aunt & uncle live in the house that was my grandparents and I always loved visiting there. I took several photos this weekend of that house so I can incorporate them into some pages about my memories of the house - and my grandparents, too. 



I used to always say that my Gramma Stephens was my "favorite person in the whole world" and have been wanting to document some of my memories of her for quite a while now. Hopefully this first step will help me get that done...
4. Deciding what to do for my final entry for the Guest Designer contest at Designer Digitals.

I decided to go ahead and give this contest a try. DesignerDigitals.com is my favorite digital scrapbooking site, both their store and their gallery. I upload all of my pages there as they are completed and most of the digital goodies I buy are from that store. They are currently running a contest where you upload 6 layouts during the month of February, with the chosen "guest designer" winning the opportunity to be a guest on their design team for 8 weeks, during which time they receive all of the new products for FREE. I've submitted 5 pages so far, including the one above, and have one left... still deciding what to do for that.
Wish me luck!!
5. Working on a little gift album. 
It's a surprise, though, for the recipient, so I won't be sharing details of that until later!! :)

First challenge entry

I've never paid much attention before to the "challenge" contests on the digital scrapbooking websites, but I was inspired last night to go ahead and do one at designerdigitals.com. The task was to create a page centered on "love" using only designerdigitals products. I LOVE their stuff, so this was not a problem. And I've been wanting to do something with this great photo of the girls, so this seemed like a good time to do it. Here's the page...


In case you're interested, the challenge winners will be based on the number of times each entry is viewed and the number of comments. The winner(s) will receive a free iPod. So, if you want to help me out ... take a look at my page here.  If you visit, be sure to leave a comment!
Thanks!! :)