Another page

Just made this page tonite. I absolutely love it.

Credits can be seen here.

Adobe PSE

I finally purchased Adobe PSE 5.0! Now I can get back to digiscrapping again. I finally used up my trial periods - hence, no scrapping since November. But, tonite I purchased it and I have already created three new pages.

I made this page regarding us coming home from Puerto Rico in October 2005
This page that is the only picture of my father when he was a baby being held by my grandmother
And this page of some pictures we took last April when Kalonji’s father was visiting

This weekend, I plan to continue working on the book I’m doing for Kaleya’s 2nd year of life, as well as hopefully make at least two new pages for my brother’s wedding scrapbook. It would be nice to do at least one genealogy-focused page as well. We’ll see…

Oh the joy!

My Next Scrapbook

I’ve decided that the next scrapbook I’m doing is going to be one for my brother’s wedding from this summer. So, I started a new online album just for those pages. Here is what I want to use for the front cover.

I’m scrapping…really…

It’s been a few weeks since I posted, but I have been scrapping during this time a little bit. I had a business trip to DC that lasted a week, followed by a weekend in Alabama to visit family and now I’ve spent the last four days at home in NC for the Thanksgiving holiday. Busy times! But, a couple of days ago, I did a scrapbook page as a keepsake for my brother’s wedding. Borrowing an idea from Shalini, I decided to do a page 11 x 14 and put it in a frame. I think it came out rather well!

Credits can be seen here.

The book is finished!

Well, after a few more days of reflection, I can’t think of any other page that I feel absolutely has to be added to Kaleya’s baby scrapbook, so I think I am done! I can’t wait to get it printed. It will be cool. The page is a quickpage by Lauren Bavin called Hippie Chick.

And today, I made a page for her as she was looking way retro

It’s Been Awhile…

but I’m making up for lost time. Since we moved (exactly one month ago), I was very limited with my internet access at home, so could not post pics as I wanted to. Last week, we finally got up and running with our cable connection, so I am good to go now! Since Sunday, I have made around 8-9 pages for Kaleya’s book. I am trying to make a big push to finish it before the end of the week so I can finally get it printed! I have about three more pages that I can think of that I want to scrap — her first teeth and her one year birthday (which will probably be a 2-3 page layout.

So, I won’t post all the ones I’ve done, but here is a link to a couple of my favorite ones that I’ve done over the past few days…

E is for Eskind — several of my co-workers at the Eskind Library came to visit Kaleya during her first week.

Yelling - scraplifted this b/c the sentiment was perfect for a picture I had of her yelling.

In the course of doing all these pages, I have learned some new t hings. I finally took the time to learn how to work with a layered template, and I continue to explore the features in Adobe Photoshop Elements. Fun!

I Just Had To Do It

I just had to do it…stay up until I finished organizing my files. Well, they’re done!! Then, of course, I had to play around and see exactly how effective this would be for me — so I put together this layout. Kaleya loves Dora (and every other Nick Jr/Noggin show there is). Eventually I’d like to do a couple of pages of her favorite TV shows at this age - what I find the funniest is how she can sing along to them. But, this is the first Dora page… It is a bit more chaotic than I’ve been doing, but I like it! Pieces from everywhere! Credits can be seen here.

And I Am Still…

…organizing. Yes, that’s right. Two days later and I’m still organizing my digifiles. However, I am EXTREMELY satisfied with the outcome thus far. Thanks to Gina for sharing how she does it, for I find that this works so much better for me! It is taking a long time b/c I have so many things I’ve downloaded, plus, I am making a concerted effort to make sure each file name is appropriately labeled.

Let me share a few pics!

As Gina, I have an overall list of folders with titles such as Alphas, Kits, Numbers ,Elements, Punctuation, etc. Then, within each folder, I have subfolders. I have the view customized so that I can see the preview page (if appropriate) or the first letter of the alpha/number set, or just several images of what is in it.

This is the view of my Kits folder. I am loving this. I can see all my colors right away and this gives me my initial inspiration. I keep all the pieces together in these folders.

I then make a copy of each piece of the kit and file it in the appropriate place. For example, within my elements folder, I have sub-folders for the different types: brads, tags, ribbons, staples, stitching, overlays and more:

And then, for viewing what I have in each subfolder, I switch the view to “Thumbnails” so I can see everyting. I have a Papers folder that has categories such as Patterned Paper, Solids, and Textured paper, as well as folders for various paper kits that I’ve collected:

And, this is a glimpse into my Word Art subfolder:

Again, credits to Gina for sharing her method!

DigiScrap Organization

Last night, I was catching up on Gina’s blog and read a post of hers where she described how she recently organized all of her digital stash on her computer. I love her system! I initially purchased DigiScrapRoom, but found that it did not work well for me - I was just not effective in using it and I wasn’t quite happy with how it operates. So, I have started getting all my folders organized and looking pretty and I am so, so happy!

Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0

I am in love with this program! I just downloaded a tryout version and I love it! I have up until now been using a program that is very similar, as I didn’t think I could afford PSE. However, now after having tried it, I’ll have to fit that in my budget somewhere and soon!

Regarding my layouts specifically, I have been trying to learn how to do more advanced features. Over the weekend, I learned how to type text vertically and I also learned how to rotate images. I think I need to pay more attention to the tutorials that I see here and there, so that I learn more!

Here are some pages that I made over the weekend for a couple of challenges — each one for the book I’m doing for Kaleya. Credits can be seen in the Kaleya DigiScrap Album link on the sidebar.