Digital Scrapbooking Challenges- Open Book Challenge

Doesn't everyone love a good challenge. I think challenges are one of the things that have helped me grow creatively and push my skill levels the most. If I loose my mojo or am stuck in a rut I can always count on a challenge to help me overcome that.

Recently Audrey Neal of Be Audacious designs put out a message looking for some ladies to get involved with a new challenge that she was putting together. I admit that I was more than a little excited. I first worked with Audrey on the 2peas digital creative team and I love her work. She creates interesting and meaningful pages and she had some very cool digital products that she now sells at her shop at design house digital. These challenges are called the Open Book Challenges.

The Open Book Challenges are a series of bi-monthly scrapbooking challenges based on the books we've read and loved. Each challenge will have multiple prompts, both design- and content-based. The great thing is that you can use just one prompt, several prompts or all of them together!

I created a Layout for the first challenge based on the book The Help. The prompts I used were, the color scheme, using birds on my scrapbook page and using a scallop edge to hold my title. The prompts for journaling were also really cool and introspective but instead I felt that I wanted to journal about the role that reading has taken in my life.

I also thought that since I haven't put out a freebie in a long time that I would include a layered PSD template from the above Layout. Feel free to use it for the challenge or for any Layout you feel like creating. Just click on the preview to download.

Credits: Track Team Kit by Kerry'd Away Designs at 2peas in a bucket, Cherry Blossom Kit by Kerry'd Away designs at 2peas in a bucket and Cherry Blossom Frames at 2peas in a bucket.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

Hello happy Bloggers. I hope you are all having a fabulous Valentine's Day. It's sunny and warm here today and it feels almost like Spring. Weird that it is so beautiful and the city is now full on Winter Olympics (Winter are you kidding me Winter Schminter!) I am enjoying the Olympic coverage so far. I wish I could go to an event but sadly I have no funds to spend on any of the events. It is neat to watch and know that it is MY city! Vancouver is a spectacular place to live and I love it here.

It has now been almost a month since I started designing for Scrapinsider.com. I love designing. I have been overwhelmed with the support and words of encouragement from so many friends and fellow scrappers that I wanted to share the love! I created a mini kit called Love Bug that you can download for FREE! here on my blog just click on the preview below. I hope you enjoy it. It was super fun to create.

I am really loving Adobe illustrator. I am so glad that Jen Alysson of Design House Digitals encouraged me to buy it and take Carina Gardner's illustrator class at Jessica Sprague.com

Have fun. What did you do for Valentine's Day? Did you go out with your sweetie? Did you do something with your family? Maybe you did some cool scrappy projects. Tell me, link me up. Enquiring minds want to know.

Freebie Friday

I so like the sound of that... I wonder if I should make that a regular thing. I've been so busy this week I wasn't sure if I would even be able to finish the design I was working on but I did find time to get it done. So without further ado here is my next design:




Click on the preview to download.


There are 6 3.5x 5.5 and 2 11x11 Christmas Word Overlays/Frames. They could be used on a digital scrapbook page to pretty up a page or a photo. They could also be used to frame up your journeling. I should do some hybrid projects with some of these, so that any of you traditional scrappers could see how easy it is to add a few digital items to your page.

December Daily Freebies

I have been so excited and inspired by the idea of documenting my holidays day by day that I created some dated chipboard pieces. I think they're pretty cool and decided I'd like to share them. They could be used for any digi project whether a Dec Daily album or just individual pages over the holidays. They could also be printed out and then you could use a round punch and then use them on a hybrid or paper page. Either way I hope everyone enjoys creating over the holidays.


Hi again just editing this to let any of you who downloaded my Chipboard pieces this morning (Nov 18) that I had to replace the file because the PNG had a white background instead of a transparent background. I fixed it all up now! Sorry about that to many LATE nights! I'm still paying for it.

Lest We Forget

Click on the preview to download the papers and click here for the extras

When I was a little girl we loved to here stories about my Grandad's experiences serving as a pilot in World War Two. The one often retold was his final flight in S for Sugar and how it was shot down over occupied France. While he was thankful to survive, I know it always bothered him that he was the sole survivor. He was able to parachute out of the disintegrating plane and somehow made it safely down in the middle of a potato field. (We often teased him later that this is why he loved potatoes so much.) My Grandfather spoke very little french, but with the little bit that he had learned in high school he was able to communicate with the Farmer. They courageously kept him hidden at their farm for several months until they were able to acquire some forged documents to smuggle him back out of the area. My Grandfather was one of the lucky ones, he came home, married had children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. He lived a long productive life and passed a few years ago.

It wasn't until I grew up that I realized that it was never my Grandfather that told this harrowing story, it was always recounted by my Gran or my Dad. Even my Mom could tell the story. I of course have told my own children about my Grandfather and the men that sacrificed their lives so that we could have a better present. In fact my daughter told the story of my Grandad (her Great Grandfather of course) for an important school speech competition. Not only did my Grandfather not retell this story, he hardly talked about the war at all. He would sometimes reluctanly talk about his plane S for Sugar and the men that were with him that fateful day.

The one thing that seemed most important to my Grandad is that no one forget the men who had fallen or the sacrifices so many made. Every year my Grandad dressed in his uniform and attended the city's Remembrance Day services. He never missed a year, even the year that he was diagnosed with cancer and he was thin as a rail from the chemo treatments. I admire my Grandad's steadfastness in keeping the memory alive and I feel that I need to do my part in keeping his story alive for my children. I want them to know how lucky we are to live in a Country where we can have our own opinion and that we can feel safe from violence. I miss my Grandad terribly and it is at this time of year that I think of him the most.

Above I have posted a Freebie mini kit that I created in honour of my Grandfather and to all veterans all over the world.

Happy Digital Scrapbook Day

Hip Hip Hooray! It's Inter-national Digital Scrap booking Day. To celebrate I have another freebie for you. Click the preview to download.

Celebrating with a Freebie

Wow the last few days have been a whirlwind for me. I have been overloaded with this crazy learning process. Html codes, interfaces, zipping, pdf's, and uploading are just to name a few of the things that I never really thought I'd need or even want to know.

It has been very exciting and at times frustrating. Should I even mention the fact that the one thing that I think will take me 5 minutes to finish has ended up taking the better part of my morning. Now I'm set, I know more today than I did yesterday.

As I've mentioned before I've been dabbling around with my own personal designs for digital scrapbooking. Last night after spending my evening watching my dd at soccer practise I felt inspired to create some sport overlays. Originally I had planned to include a digi scrapbook page with them but I was so excited about how they turned out I just want to share them right away. So in honour of my new journeys and projects I want to make them available to you. If you wish to download them for your own personal crafting/digi project just click the preview for the download. I hope you enjoy them and if you use them in a project let me know, I'd love to see it.

Do What You Love & Love What You Do

I have resisted the blogging phenomenon for a long time! I guess I felt that since the web is already filled with many musings and meanderings why add any more to that unless I had something worthy to share.

Now I have something that I want to share. I hope to be able to share my knowlege, my passion and my designs with you in the coming months ahead. I have scrapped for over seven years. The first few years were grounded in paper scrapbooking and then two years ago I began digital scrapbooking. In that two years I have served on several creative design teams and have now begun creating my own designs. I hope you love them as much as I do. Very soon I will set it up so that I can share some digi freebies with you.
Cheers Kerry