June 2011 desktop calendars

I have a choice of June 2011 desktop calendars for you. Calendar choice 1 is made using Tamaso Fantasy by Wacky Winnie Designz. Calendar choice 2 is made using Fairyland by Wicked Princess Scraps.

Enjoy

whole buncha tagging goin on

Shani has been busy making kits - I can't keep up! Check out her blog & definitely check out her section at Twilight Scraps right now - she has a BOGO (Buy One Get One) sale in conjunction with the store's anniversary celebration.

So a hacker has sidelined my laptop til I can get it into the shop & my desktop keyboard is still suddenly going into all caps without any move on my part - driving me nuts. In addition, the arthritis in my hands is making typing painful. I hope nobody really minds if I just post a bunch of tags without accompanying tutorials.

My basic tag making is:

1. Set your software program to show a bounding box around an element when hightlighted in the layer palette, so you can resize the element by manipulating the corners of the bounding box (some people refer to these boxes as 'marching ants').

2. Try to start with a mental picture of what you want your tag to look like; choose your papers & elements accordingly. Copy, paste, resize as needed, & position as desired. The visibility toggle can help you decide if an element is working or not without backtracking multiple steps.

3. Never be afraid to play & experiment with things like opacity, effect, styles. I don't like using templates & I have yet to figure out the best way to use masks, but eventually I hope to figure it out.

4. Most important is to have fun & end up with a tag that you like.

So, in this post I will share tags made with 3 of Shani's latest kits - Lil Bo Peepers, Nature's Tea, & Ride a Cowboy.

With Lil Bo Peepers, I made a simple tag for all the girly little girls out there. In childhood, I had both a tomboy side & a girly girl side which some adults found strange. I still love tea parties, playing Barbies. The poser is CIZ-Candy4 by Creative Intentionz.

With Nature's Tea, I made a tag, & then experimented with what I had the poser hold & it made the tag look very different. The poser is Shea 4 by Luscious Digi Dolls, aka Luscious Scraps.

With Ride a cowboy, made a tag & a quick page freebie for you. I couldn't resist sticking a photo of my cousin Mark's baby boy into the quick page - he is so cute! The poser in the tag is cowgirl2-1 by Sinful Mindz.

If any of you have a specific question about how I made a particular tag, leave me a comment.

Enjoy

May DSO colour challenge - Puppy Love

My mojo has not been itself this month. I am struggling creatively. I stared at this month's colour swatch at DSO & nothing really came to mind for a kit, so I settled for a quick page that uses all the colours. I put a picture I took of a friend's puppy into the page.

Enjoy

Charity Kit Now Available

Blue Skies & Butterflies collab is now at The Creativity Box.The kit is in memory of Mandy's mom, who asked for memorial donations to the North West Air Ambulance in lieu of flowers. An air ambulance service means the difference between life & death for many critical patients, so it is a good cause. I am proud to be on the TCB creativity team, & I consider the cause to be so important, I contributed one of my mega kit efforts - 20 zips worth, & I made sure it was a fun kit with many uses. Check it out.

My portion is 36 papers & 447 elements - I was having so much fun creating it was hard to stop! Plus, it was a labour of love. In my country, air ambulance service is crucial to many geographically remote areas - a reality proven to the world when actress Natasha Richardson died because there was no air ambulance service available in Quebec at that time (the government of Quebec has since rectified that unfortunate situation). Please consider purchasing this collab. Mandy & I will both appreciate it.

May 2011 desktop calendar

argh - 3 days ago when I was too sick to be at the computer more than 10 minutes at a time I had ideas for ct work, but now my mojo is mo-gone - lol

so I decided to actually work with my own newest kit - I made the May 2011 calendar from my Spring Wishes

Enjoy

Spring Wishes

It's been a hard month for me, I am so sick of being sick. Plus someone hacked my laptop & it is completely out of commission until I can get it fixed. I've gotten very little accomplished. I have to get my taxes done, usually something I would have taken care of over a month ago, but it's hard to concentrate when you're sick.

I did get my portion of the Blue Skies & Butterflies collab done & when the whole collaboration is up in stores I'll give you more information about it & show you the preview for my portion.

Both the Studio & DSO had colour challenges with interesting pallettes, but I just wasn't sure I could get anything done. I don't have the knack for mini kits - I get going with,"do this, this & that" & then the creative part of my brain nudges me "this, this & this would go great in this project'' & then my creative conscience gets into the nagging "you'll be shortchanging people if you don't put these things in". By the time my rational half finally manages to put the brakes on my creative half - I've got a mega.

Well I completed a kit for the Studio challenge - 13 zips worth (25 papers, 240 elements & 3 posers). The colours made me think of my mum's garden this time of year with tulips, crocus, & daffodils. There aren't any flowers out here yet, so the kit is called Spring Wishes.
The individual zips are in a main folder on mediafire. easiest way is to right click on zip01 & select "open in new tab", so a new tab with zip01 download opens, leaving the main folder tab open to go back to for zip02 & so on. Hope you like it. Please leave a comment, it helps me to keep going & making these kits available.

Enjoy

Easter Teaser - cute alert

I'm working on a charity kit contribution, but when I saw the preview for PSP Girl's new tag kit Easter Teaser, my brain immediately kicked me with ideas & wouldn't let me be, so I quickly did 2 quick pages & a simple tag. It's a kit suitable for more than just Easter layouts. When your brain is really fired up pages & tags seem to fly up onto the screen & I really love the pages I came up with, just need pics of the new baby in my extended family (HINT).

I used Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite, with 'show transform controls' enabled.

1. Open a new canvas 700 pixels x 700 pixels, use the circular selection tool to create a circle, & fill with background of choice (paper 9).

2. Choose your elements (1,6,11) & copy, paste, resize as needed & position as desired. I also applied a bevel & emboss effect & inner glow to each element. I did the same with my poser of choice (ws-nixie gown 2-3) from Wyked Soulz.

3. I used Arial 3 for the tag information, & Chopin Script 14 for the rest of the tag, with a style from Harold designs (christmas style7) applied.

4. Save in both your program's default format as well as in a web compatible format.

Enjoy