Happy Halloween

I was hoping to have a halloween gift for everyone, but I didn't get a chance. Sorry. I will tell you that you can get an unreleased kit on Saturday at Scrappers Zone for free. We are going to be having hourly happy hour freebies all throughout the day. You will never know what kit is going to be free and you are going to have to look for it. Here is a preview of the kit that I will have for free on Saturday. Head to Scrappers Zone on Saturday if you want this kit for free. It will go into the store after than, although it will be a bigger kit in the store. For those of you that get the kit for free and want the additional papers and elements, I will be making an add-on of all the new stuff I add to the kit. There are also going to be lots of sales in the Scrappers Zone store. I hope to see you all there.

Here is a LO that was done with this kit. I actually made this kit in response to a search someone was doing for a kit to scrap her daughters first haircut. I am pleased with the way it turned out.

I have received some wonderful blessings in the past few weeks that I want to tell everyone about. These blessings confirm to me that I am suppose to be doing this (becoming a designer that is). I posted about getting CS3. I was also gifted a Digiscrapdesigners subscription from my MIL. Last week, I posted at DST looking for some inexpensive or free custome shapes for photoshop. I had several people tell me I should get a subscription to ActionFx. I posted back that I could not afford that because of my health issues and not being able to work and paying a lot of money out in medical bills. I wasn't looking for a hand out, but just explaining why I couldn't get the subscription. I got a private message from a designer gifting me some of her png shapes. There were LOTS of them. I am so grateful for her generosity. This weekend, I got 2 gift subscriptions to Action Fx. They are both 2 month subscriptions. I was blown away and overwhelmed by these acts of generosity. I emailed Al, the owner of Action Fx and explained to him that I had 2 subscriptions going at the same time. I requested that they be active one after another so I had 4 months. He emailed me back and said that he gave me a one year subscrption since the price was close to t he one year subscription. I am just so filled with gratitude for all those that have been so generous to me. I am also grateful to my Father in Heaven for sending these people into my life.

A big sale

We are having a big sale at Studio Style Design. This sale will take place the 30th of every month. Select things will be 30% off. Today, my entire store is 30% off. This will not be the case every month. Some months, I will only put select things on sale.

Things have been crazy busy around my house for the past week. Now that I am finally well, we took Andrew out for his birthday dinner last night. His birthday was September 29th. We took him to Gatti Town. We take him there every year for his birthday. His favorite food is pizza, and he loves to play video games, so Gatti Town is perfect for him. The hardest part was that the doctor wants him to lose a little bit of weight. He is the only one of my kids that isnt' super skinny. He needs to lose 13 pounds. He had to limit himself on the amount of pizza and eat a bunch of vegetables. The doctor said he can't have soda at all. I allowed him to have 1 soda last night since it was his birthday celebration. We don't drink a lot of soda anyway.

Today, we are painting pumpkins. We bought a few pumpkins at Sweet Berry Farms that we wanted to paint. They are small pumpkins, a little bigger than a softball. Tomorrow, we are going to carve our other 2 pumpkins. We have found in previous years that they start to mold in about 24 hours, so we usually carve them on Halloween day, or sometimes the day before.

TGIF

It's Friday. I have a freebie for you today. Here are some metal hearts I made just messing around. I thought they turned out pretty good. I love putting hearts on things. Even on a little boy page, they show the love you have for that person. I hope you all find a use for these.

download here

Even though it is Friday, it really isn't any different from any other day of the week. We have no big plans for the weekend. My husband is going to work for a few hours on Saturday. We will probably watch the UT football game, or at least part of it. Andrew is going to a friends house over the weekend. The boys have their yearly program for primary at church on Sunday. We are having the missionaries for dinner on Sunday. There is our entire weekend in a nutshell.

I have to finish up the boys Halloween costumes this weekend too. Jeremy is going to be Harry Potter. We found a great costume, but it is too big for him to I have to hem it up. Andrew is som sort of Pokemon. I have to sew some green balls to the back of the costume and sew a red sash.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

A Great Weekend

This weekend, we did a family trip to Sweet Berry Farms. It is about an hour outside of Austin. They have a pumpkin patch this time of year. In March, you can go out there for strawberry picking and you can pick blackberries in May/June. The kids loved it. We did a hayride, the kids and the husbands did a giant maze that was cut into a corn field. We made our own scarecrow. I need to go get a pole today to put it up in the front yard. They had some great pumpkins out there. They are way better than at the grocery store. The kids bought small pumpkins and they are going to paint them today during school time. We did this outing as a celebration of my daughter turning 15. Her 2 best friends came out with us and her cousins and her aunt. She is really close with Aashlie who is 13 (her cousin). My best friend met us out there and they all did the maze together. I didnt' do the maze though. I have some mobility problems and I wasnt' sure what it was going to be like in the maze. I got lots of great pictures while we were there. I took 118 pictures in 5 hours. Niether my best friend or my SIL brought a camera, so I was the group photographer. It was so nice to have a family outing like that. It has been a long time since we have had a day like that.

Here are some LO I did yesterday of our trip. These first ones are done with Kim Cameron's kit Pumpkin Juice. It is a perfect kit for those pumpkin pictures. It is so full of elements that you can use it on a lot of LO.

This is my family. From left to right, we have Andrew, Rachael, Jeremy, Patricia and Stan.

These are my daughters favorite cousins and her best friends. From left to right, there is Jessica, Aashlie (cousins), Rachael (my daughter), Amira and Megan (DD BFF).

This is my SIL and her kids. From left to right, there is Aashlie, Travis, Margie, Brandon, Megan and Jessica.

Here is a LO I did with my own Halloween kit. It is called Going Batty. My kids think some of the elements look like the bat symbol from Batman . You can get the kit at my stores: Studio Style Designs and Scrappers Zone.

I have decided I don't really like to scrap with my own designs. After I finish the kit, I am kind of tired of seeing it and I don't want to look at it again. Maybe if I was doing a LO 6 months after I made the kit it would be better. I just finished the kit last week though.

Dropping out

I decided last night to drop out of the contest. I was getting so stress out by it. I was hating everything I was designing for it, I wasn't sleeping and I was getting grumpy with my family. We got the next theme and I almost cried when I saw it. I thought and thought about what I was going to do with the theme and finally came up with a subject that I liked. Through a conversation that took place on the private contestants forum, it came out that my subject would not be accepted for the theme. I couldnt' bare the thought of having to do a kit with a theme I didnt' like. It was hard enough last week doing a color palatte I didn't like. I got into designing because I love doing it. I was not loving it over the past week and I was really questioning my decision to become a designer. I feel such a huge relief now that I have dropped out. It was a hard decision for me to make. I am not a quitter and I usually finish what I start. I'm glad I make the decision to drop out though. I am trying to explain all this with out giving away the contest theme, so I hope it all made sense.



I don't know if they are going to delete my kit from the contest forum, so I thought I would post it here so if you still wanted to get it, you could.

Get it here

I did decide that I was going to continue making the kit that I was going to use for the contest. I love the subject I chose. I will post a preview of it when I am done, as well as a link to where you can buy it.

My daughter Rachael turns 15 today. Time sure flies. She is excited to be learning to drive this year. I'm not, but that's ok. She is a joy to have in my life and I can't imagine life without her in it.

Round 2 uncovered

Here is my round 2 kit for the design contest at Just for the Scrap of It. Our theme was little boys age 3-7. My son is 5, so perfect. He loves Legos, so I chose that as my theme for this kit. My daughter initially suggested I do cars. Jeremy loves the movie Cars, and he loves Hotwheel cars. I am so glad I didn't do cars. A lot of the women did a car type theme. The site owners has asked that we link everyone to our gallery on JFTSOI rather than straight to the 4shared link. Later in the week, after the voting is done, I will put up the 4shared link. I would love everyone that likes this kit to register at the site so you can vote for me on Tuesday and Wednesday. Leave me some love it you like the kit.

get it here

I will put up a reminder tomorrow for everyone to go vote.

Voting results and a freebie

I made some pretty chrome frames for everyone this week. I hope you enjoy them.

get them here

Now for Round 1 voting results. After torturing us for almost 2 days while the votes rolled in, they told us that everyone will be moving onto the next round. This was a decision they made before the contest even started. They wanted the first round to be a trial run only, but they didn't want us to know because they wanted us to try our best. I am now hard at work on my next kit. The theme is a little bit harder this time. I have a great idea for it that I think lots of people will like. I am not thrilled about the color palatte though. I like some of the colors, but 2 of the colors in it I don't care for. I guess that is part of what makes it challenging.

Studio Style Designs is having a Grand Re-Opening tomorrow. Everything will be 25% off. There will be lots of freebies. This is my second store and I am trying really hard to get it stocked before tomorrow. I will be uploading things all afternoon. I hope to see everyone there.

Voting has started

Voting has started in the "So...You think you can design" contest. I don't think I am going to be able to go to the forum until voting is over. It is making me have butterflies in my stomach. Please go over to the forum and vote. My user name on there is poppymom. If you like my work, please vote for me. Here is the link to the voting forum .

The promised freebie

Here is the freebie I promised you. This is a mini kit I made from my kit Yummy Yummy. You can get it at my store if you like it and want the whole thing. My store is here .

Get it here

Voting for "So..You Think you can Design" contest at Just for the Scrap of It starts on the 9th. If you haven't signed up at the forum, please do so. There are some great kits available and they all coordinate together. You can find the round 1 gallery here .

Photoshop CS3

I have Photoshop Element 5.0. I love this program. It is a great scrapping program. I can do a lot of my designs with it too. For my birthday, I got a subscription for DigiScrapDesigners . This site does not do specific designing tutorials for photoshop Elements. They are all for the full Photoshop. Some of the tutorials I could not figure out an alternative in Elements. For example, to put a selvege on a ribbon, the instructions say to go to the "stroke" feature in the layer menu. Elements doesn't give you that option. A friend of mine is letting me borrow CS2 while his computer is down.

This does have a point, I promise. I was telling my mom that I want to save the profits from my sales to get my own copy of CS2 or CS3. On Thursday, she offered to buy it for me until I told her it was $650. Yesterday, she called me and told me she was going to buy me the program I wanted. She said that my step dad had offered the money he had in savings for me to get this program. So, last night, I ordered CS3 from Adobe. I am so excited. I am going to continue using my Elements to scrap with though until I get used to the other program. I think it will be a while.

Stan (DH) and I were talking about this last night. Everything is just falling in my lap. I am meant to be a designer. I don't know that I am ever going to be rolling in dough from it, but I hope that I can eventually make enough to contribute a little to the house hold income. I don't know if I will ever go back to being a nurse. I don't know what is going to happen with my neurological problems, but I can tell you they aren't getting better. I also don't want to live on disability income. I am not that kind of a person. I am independent and I want to make my own way. I also don't want to fight for it like so many people have to. If I ever get to the point that I can't design or do anything else to bring in income, then maybe it is time for me to look into disabilty. For now, it isn't for me.

Now for some CT news. Here is a LO I did with Kim Cameron's kit Pumpkin Juice. The name is a link to the kit in the store. This kit is so cute. I love all the pumpkins in it. I wish I knew where there was a pumpkin patch around here. This kit would be great for those pumpkin patch pictures. I am going to have to google search pumpkin patches to see if there are any in the Austin area.

Here is the kit. Isn't it great?

My other CT news is sad. I got an email from Landi LeRoux telling me she was retiring from designing. I love her designs and will miss being able to CT for her. She wants to spend more time with her family. I can definitely understand that. I wish her the best of luck. She promised she was going to stay active at Snap and Scrap. I am really glad for that.

Now, I know that I promised a freebie the other day for my Yummy Yummy kit. I haven't forgotten. I have been busy trying to get my store stocked. Plus, yesterday, I finally felt better so we ran some errands. It was nice to get out of the house again. I have been cooped up for weeks. I am going to get the freebie ready today and try to put it up tomorrow. Will you forgive me?

Yummy Yummy and a freebie

I have a new kit that I just put in my store. I love bright colors and a lot of my LO will have bright colors in them. I designed this kit with the thought of making a recipe book. It is a very full kit with lots of things to make your recipe LO. It can be found in my store at Scrappers Zone. Check back later and I will have a mini kit from this kit.

For now, I do have a special treat for you. I am getting ready to put a kit in the store entitled "I Miss Summer". This kit will be perfect for scrapping all those pictures you took during your summer vacation. I made a mini kit from this kit and I have that for you today.

get it here

I hope you enjoy this kit. I would love to see any LO you do with my work. Also, if anyone has any wishes, let me know. I am still a new designer and really want to know what people want.

Alta

Alta is my grandmother's name. She is 94 years old. She was my inspiration for the first challenge in the So You Think You Can Design contest at JFTSOI. Our theme was heritage. I can't help but think of my grandmother when I think of heritage. My grandmother loves to spend time in her flower garden. She loves to talk about her flowers and take care of them. Now you know why there are flowers in my heritage kit. Check back here later as I plan to offer an add on pack for this kit. I don't want to do it until after the first round is over as I don't want anyone to think I am buying votes (against the rules, plus unethical). I would appreciate if any of you that download the kit would go to the website and vote on the 9th and 10th. You don't have to vote for me. Vote for the person you think deserves it most. There are close to 30 of us in this contest. We are all using the same theme and color palatte. That is going to be one massive kit when they are all put together. Definitely worth a look. If you go to the gallery for round 1, you can find the links to the kits that have been uploaded so far. We have until the 7th to upload them, so keep checking back for more enteries.

get it here

I announced in my last post that I was going to be a new designer at Studio Style Designs. I got notification this morning that I have been accepted as a designer at Scrappers Zone. I have gone through close to 15 rejections. Each time, I tried to improve my work and find resources to learn new techniques. I guess it has paid off. I'll be putting link to my stores up as soon as I get products in them.

Short and sweet

The design contest has started at Just For the Scrap of It. We were given our colors and our theme. The theme is heritage. The colors are beautiful. I am still working on mine, but hope to have it finished by Thursday so I can get some LO done. I am getting behind in my CT duties due to the illness I am still recovering from and the contest. I'll post here when I am done.

I have some BIG news too. I am going to be one of the new designers at Studio Style Designs. I CT for Aimee and she sells over there. She told me they were looking for designers and that I should put in an application. Vickie looked at my work and told me the same day that I was in. I am so excited. The store is down for maintainence right now, so I don't have any kits there yet. I'll let you all know when the store is open.

I am still battling a migraine, so I am going to go lay down and watch "The Biggest Loser". I hope everyone has a good day.

Scrappin' Pink LO

Here are a few LO done with my Scrappin' Pink kit. They were all done with special women in mind.


This is my LO of my MIL. She is fighting breast cancer for the second time. She is a stronge and amazing women.

This one was done my Denise at Make It Scrappy. This is a friend of hers that was diagnosed earlier this year.

This one was done by alicia+jess at Make it Scrappy. I thought it was cool the way she used the velvet paper as if it were a picture.

If any one has a LO of a special person fighting this horrible disease, I would love to see it.