Diamond's Designs

Mojo

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:48:00 +0000

I think there is a chance I might get my scrapping mojo back. I just did my kids' pages for the in-laws' Christmas Calender. It was fun and I enjoyed making them.

Both were made with templates from Andrea Gold and paper and elements from Becki Kress.

Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:03:00 +0000

The Man With No Name's co-worker directed him to the BEST gluten free recipe for banana bread. It was perfectly dense, moist and delicious.

I was directed to a divine sounding* recipe for coconut banana bread with lime glaze.

*sounding - because I will never actually make the recipe to know if it tastes as good as it sounds.

And so I used both to make our own Gluten Free Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze recipe. And our version makes two loaves!

Yes, there was only half of one loaf left to take a picture of.

We really did consume it that quickly.

Gluten Free Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze
adapted from Gluten Free Mommy and Our Best Bites

Ingredients
1/4 C Quick-Cooking Oats (I just ground some old fashioned oats a little)
1/4 C Almond Flour (I used the pulp left over from making almond milk, dried it and ground it down to powder)
1/2 C Sweet Rice Flour (aka glutinous rice flour - which contains no gluten)
1 C Tapioca Flour/Starch
1 C Rice Flour
2 Tbs Flax Meal
3/4 C Brown Sugar
3/4 C Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Xanthum Gum
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt

6 Tbs Butter, melted and slightly cooled (to avoid cooking the eggs)
2 Eggs, whisked
1/2 C Yogurt, Plain or Lime flavoured
1/4 C Milk or Lime Juice
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla
3-4 Bananas, mashed

3/4 C Shredded Coconut

Topping
4 Tbs Shredded Coconut

Glaze
3/4 C Powdered Sugar
2 1/2 Tbs Lime Juice

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients. Add wet mixture to dry mixture until just combined. Stir in the 3/4 c coconut.

Pour into two (2) greased/sprayed 9 x 5 loaf pans. Sprinkle each with 2 Tbs of coconut for topping. Bake for 55-60 minutes, covering after 40 minutes when the coconut topping is toasty. Cool the bread for 10 minutes in the pan than remove.

Whisk together powdered sugar and lime juice and drizzle/pour over both loaves. Cool another 15 minutes. Slice and devour!

No Jump Start

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:02:00 +0000

As anyone can tell, the card did not jump start my scrapping. I got a job I can do at home using my PhotoShop program. It's great, because it has paid for the program and the new computer we bought. It is also going to cover our Christmas last year and this year. It's not so great because it takes up my PhotoShop time, and I don't want to fiddle with my settings while I am working on a specific project. When no work is coming in I am ready for a break from PhotoShop.

To add to my list of excuses, in my last move I lost my scrapbooking list. That's my list of the specific pictures/events that I want to scrap, and then cross off when I have. It's gone and has left me feeling a little lost.

I have managed to make some wallpapers for "the man with no name" I can share. He has two monitors and likes to use them as the picture frames on his desk. I like to make them coordinated.

September Sun by Laura Alpuché Designs

February's Visiting Teaching Message

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:02:00 +0000

I haven't scrapped in a long time. To get back into the swing, I made another Visiting Teaching card.

Digi Keepsakes by Monica Evan

I do have hopes of getting some more scrapping done. I have a dream of a couple Shutterfly books, or whatever company I choose to go with. Of course, I have to make that decision first so that my pages are a perfect fit.

Visiting Teaching Card

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:25:00 +0000

Just a little something I made for the ladies I Visit Teach.

credit: Doreen Stolz' One Moment in Time
crown by LJD

And ACTION

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:40:00 +0000

This week I designed my own page. I don't mean I made the layout or chose my own elements. I mean I DESIGNED my own page.

Inspired by the colours the Little Gunner was wearing,

I chose my colours from the site I mentioned last week, Big Picture Scrapbooking. Using the shape tool in PhotoShop I created a grass and a tag.

Using 11 of the actions available from Atomic Cupcake, I created this!

Credits: ME!!

See what a little pristine chipboard, torn vellum, simple tear, fabric, old brass, stitch, cardboard, tea stain, sketched and painted, cutout, and crinkled action can get you? Thanks, Atomic Cupcake.

Have no fear. I do NOT intend to become a designer. I much prefer to use designers' kits for their colour combinations, paper designs, and element choices. I even like to use other people's layout ideas when I don't have any of my own.

Have you ever used an action?

Words

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:20:00 +0000

The Princess Pea is 3 and has an extensive vocabulary. She also makes up words to pretend she is speaking another language. When asked what her gibberish means she will give a translation. Yet, some words she never gets right, even after we say them. I told YTBN (yet to be named) that we would want to remember these so we wrote an email to ourselves. I lost the email and realized we needed a better way to remember. This is one of the reasons for scrap-booking.

The words on journaling strips was an easy decision. I also envisioned a profile picture of the Princess Pea and journaling explaining how she confused these words and couldn't even understand why we were correcting her and would often correct us. I choose the snazzy title, "The Things You Say." A google search got the better of me. I needed to know if there was a word to define what she was doing. When I saw what a nice definition it was, and how well it explained all of my journaling, I knew this was my new title. With the title placed I could see that a picture would clutter the page. It wasn't her face we were remembering anyway. It was the words. Therefore my page became one of only words. I think it worked very well.

credit: Cars Go Beep Beep by Becki Kress
staples by Traci Simms - Summer Shabby

I have an online friend that went camping, but forgot her camera. Using a camping kit, she made her scrap page anyway, with no pictures in the frames or on the mats. The journaling explained the events, including the missing camera. It was a wonderful layout that was fun to look at and preserved the memory. It demonstrated what scrap-booking is about.

Have you ever tried scrapping a picture-less page?

Pick a Colour

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:45:00 +0000

This week I have been helping my yet to be named on this blog husband with a logo for his new company. I am not an artist or graphic designer, but have had a lot of fun finding the font that looks right and placing the letters for the company name where they look best.

It is very similar to scrap-booking. Finding the right elements and finding where they should go. Choosing the right font for the title, choosing the same or a different font for the journaling. Except there is one big difference. When I scrapbook, I use a designer's kit. The designer has already chosen colours, including the coordinating colours.

As Andrea Gold said in the January 18 GDS News, "I work and think best in shades of gray." Working on the logo, I worked everything out in shades of gray. Now I had to choose colours on my own.

I'm sorry

My yet to be named on this blog husband wanted bright and bold. After making such a painful attack on the eyes, I realized I needed some help. Where do I turn? I checked out my digi-scrapping bookmarks online. I remembered a site that provides scrapping inspiration with a quote of the day and a colour combination for the month.

Another important feature of the page is the image that provided the colour combination and a description of why the colours work well together.

Unfortunately, my "client" had an idea of the colours he wanted to use and none of the archived combinations were what he envisioned. A simple google search of "color combo" turned up this site.

http://www.colorcombos.com/

Entering the main colour he wanted (orange) we were able to scroll through seven pages of colour combinations trying our favourites using the provided colour code/HEX numbers until we found "The One."

Isn't this much nicer?

How do you find or "see" your colours?

Scrap-book Galleries

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 16:29:00 +0000

The online community of digital scrap-booking involves posting your layouts in galleries so that you can share your pages with others and view other digi-scrapper's pages as well. In other-words, to inspire and be inspired. But, what happens when it becomes intimidation? I recently asked this in Go Digital Scrapbooking's forum. Click on the title below to see the discussion that followed my comment:

Inspiration vs. Intimidation?

How do you avoid being intimidated by some of the amazing pages in our galleries?

I am seeing all of these great pages, and it really hit me with the ST IV contest, when we all used the same kit at once. The amazing and innovative things people did! I just want to scraplift them all. But, then I don't feel it is MY page. Others that I love seemed so specific to the picture that I couldn't scraplift it anyway.

I want my pages to be creative and beautiful. But I am not an artsy or creative person. I don't think my page is creative if I'm just copying someone else.

How do you do it?

I received some wonderful and encouraging responses from the great gals in the Go Digital Scrapbooking community.

Do you visit any online galleries? How do you find the inspiration without becoming intimidated?

A Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Go Digital Scrapbooking has begun the first round of their Supreme Team IV Contest. I was only one of the 164 to sign up!

We were given a great looking kit by Andrea Gold. All deep purples and blues. The colours were gorgeous! The elements beautiful. Only one thing, being called Winter Frosting you can imagine a lot of snowflakes, mittens and a snowman. Not very helpful here in Florida where we are decidedly snow free.
The pieces that called to me at first sight were the cardboard paper and the knotted ribbon. Once I had downloaded and unzipped the files I opened my 6x4 page and placed my favourite paper, adjusted in size and rotated. Because the challenge is about using the kit for a layout I did not concentrate on pictures. Instead I used two blank rectangles placed on my paper to 'place-hold'. Using my other favourite element, the knotted ribbon, I began wrapping the portrait picture. I wanted it to squish, like this:

image from NBC

After playing with the liquify tool I had to admit defeat. I wasn't getting it. Instead I used the wrapped ribbon provided in the kit. I also put the matching ribbons behind everything.

I chose two background papers to mat my pictures. I didn't want them to frame, just stack. This is hard for me because I love symmetry and balance, but feel scrapping should seem natural. The transform tool let me find that look as I adjusted the size. With the themed ribbons and mats, my page looked very purple.

Using the eyedropper on the colour swatch provided, I painted over the torn cardboard with the color replacement tool to make it a coordinated blue.

To show the judges my creativity I wanted to use a snowflake as something else. One look at the paper snowflake and I knew it could be photo corners, just by clipping it into quarters. Looking back, I should have changed my picture to a square and used the flake as is. By layering a copy of the flake above and below my picture layer, I was able to erase the top flake where I wanted the photo corner to poke through.

I used one of the provided tags for my, undecided, title. I made a hole in the picture so it would appear to be punched together with the eyelet. I also added staples and the paperclip to look as though they were holding everything down. After the difficulty of selecting my pictures, a title was easily chosen. Drop shadows added were the final step, and here is my finished layout.

Posting my layout in the gallery I join all those waiting to see if we go on to the next round. Whether I move on or not, I have a scrapbook page I enjoy.

Messy

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:07:00 +0000

I have been wondering about "messy" pages. The kind with a lot of elements all over; stacked on the picture, under the picture, around the picture. Messy, except they make a beautiful page. Random, so all the pieces looked like they were naturally strewn on the page. I wanted to try this.

Becki had some sparkle swirls that would be a wonderful chance to simply fill a page with elements. I envisioned a wreath made up of the swirls, all entwined, and a circle shaped picture in it, on it, or feathered behind it. I would figure out the single picture after I had my messy elements.

I started with four of the coloured swirls: silver, gold, green and red. I placed them together and rotated each one ten degrees more than the one before it. The plan was to copy these four layers around enough times to create my circle of swirls. By the time I had four sets that went all the way around I realized that they looked nothing like a wreath, and were looking too patterned for the natural look I wanted.

Instead I layered and rearranged the sets so they were different. Starting with the top swirl I erased where I wanted it to be under the other three swirls. Each layer had one less layer it could swirl under, making each step faster. In a short time I had four unique yet intertwined vines.

Since they would not form a circle on my rectangular page, I chose to have them come in from the corners. Then I could tell which picture to use, and how I wanted it to go on the page. I also realized that a title would be too much for me to deal with. If I just put it on the page I would lose my entwined mess. If I entwined it, the title would probably disappear. There would be no title on this page.

credits: Becki Kress - Sparkle Swirls

And this was the result. While it is almost nothing like I planned, I like it. It has a feel of the Princess Pea walking in a tangle of vines, in the woods, as Little Red Riding Hood does. Without a title or journaling it lost the feel of a scrapbook layout. Instead, I see it as a beautiful picture.

How messy do you like your pages? How do you keep track of all of the layers?

Introducing Diamond

noreply@blogger.com (Diamond) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 21:08:00 +0000

I am a stay at home mom with a great husband, yet to be named on this blog, and two children, the Princess Pea and the Little Gunner.

This is my blog to show off my newest hobby. Digital Scrapbooking. Most likely there will also be posts about my family, my other favourite hobby-knitting, and eating gluten free. I have galleries in a few of the digital scrapbook stores, but this will be a place to share my thoughts on my pages. Please note that I will be blacking out names and the faces of my children's friends from the scrapbook pages I post here.

My earliest photo editing attempts began in 2005. I began using the Adobe PhotoShop Elements 2 that came with our digital camera, bought in 2002.

A sampling of Halloween
an amusing sequence
and a year-end collage
of the Princess Pea for her pages in the "Grandchildren's Calender" for my Mother in Law.

Not very impressive. I had to paintbucket a colour behind the pictures or cover all the space with pictures, otherwise there was nothingness and I didn't know how to handle that.

Except the next year, I did it anyway.
I didn't want to overload the page with pictures, and I didn't want to overlap too much of the pictures. I also found the cool button that shaped the text like a fish. And so I chose nothingness behind everything.

I started Digi-Scrapping in February of 2007. I was so excited to learn about digital background paper. Suddenly it wasn't nothingness or a blah colour.

Sadly, I was distracted by extractions and didn't know how to do them well.I'm happy to say I became better rather quickly. I began to use more of what I call the "scrapbook look." I learned about drop shadows, adding a whole new dimension to my pages.

And the rest you will see as my blog continues.

I apologise to the designers of the four kits used for the layouts I posted today. I did not keep records of the designers when I started, so do not know who to give credit for on these. This is what happens when you don't understand how the community works. I never thought others might want to see my pages, or that I would want to share my pages with others. I was simply making a brag book for the Princess Pea.