I always Dodge & Burn it to make the tape “jump the edge” of whatever I’m taping down. It makes me feel better about life. It makes me trust the tape.

I’m all about trustworthiness on my pages, afterall.

In case you want to be nutty about washi tape (or any semi-opaque tape, really – I’m equal opportunity tape!) I put together a quick video tutorial on how I do this on my layouts in case you’re not familiar with the Dodge & Burn Tools.

It takes less than 30 seconds to do this on your own page, and it’s completely worth it.

So it goes without saying that when she asked me whether I would like to collaborate with her to celebrate the opening of her new store, a little voice in my head was screaming something like “GET. OUT. You did NOT just ask me that, Vinnie Pearce.”

I think I managed to play it cool, though. I’m sure I said something that oozed confidence … like “ZOMG! Yes! Yes! No takesies backsies, we’re totally doing this!”

I’m really thrilled to be able to tell you that Retrouvailles is now available in my store, and you can save 20% through 1/30/2011.

Try not to totally spaz out like I did when you check it out. Keep it together, you.

Layout by Me

JOURNALING ┊ No one else gets you quite as wound up as she does. You’ve always been the type to desperately fling yourself at another person trying to engage them in some sort of physical battle, and she’s one of the people who is always happy to oblige. I never thought I’d be the “not fun” mom giving lectures on the merits of keeping your hands to yourself. I especially never thought I’d be giving that lecture to my own mother, the self-professed Queen of Stop Having Fun. I remember entire road trips where Cynnamon and I had to maintain as much distance as possible from one another in the backseat of the car after “angry mom” showed up and informed us that we were having entirely too much fun. I know that deep down she’s reveling in it, soaking up all that payback she hoped would come around one day. Seeing her once-a-total-spaz daughter walk into a room to say things like “Stop. Tackling. Grandma.” I never once tackled my grandma, so this is just fighting dirty. All those years I was just the heir apparent to the Stop Having Fun throne, along with your aunt Cyn. Believe me when I say one day you will be warming this seat, too. And you’ll be just as unhappy about it as we are. For now there’s nothing I can do, my lectures fall on deaf ears to begin with, and whatever you manage to absorb is forgotten the next time she walks through the door and you launch yourself in her general vicinity. Then I reprise my role as the abolisher of all things fun and you two will roll your eyes at me behind my back. Because this is your thing, the thing that the two of you do to rebel against me – against the loud and crazy kid from her past and the rule enforcing mom from your present.

MATERIALS ┊ Retrouvailles by One Little Bird and Vinnie Pearce

Inspiration From The Flock

[Show as slideshow]

by Becky

by Beth

by Bianka

by Crystal

by Julie

by Kelly C

by LaRissa

by LaRissa

by Lex

by Margelz

by Nicole

by Rachel

by Renee

by Steffi

For a while now, my Shadow Like Me layer styles have been frustrating PSE users around the world, and with good reason.

Installing layer styles in Photoshop CS involves choosing one of three really easy options – we’re talking ridiculously easy.

Installing them in Photoshop Elements is a totally different game – if you consider getting punched in the face a game. Because that’s what installing them in Photoshop Elements is like.

It’s like someone punching you in the face.

Having never used Photoshop Elements in my life I offered some one-size-fits-all instructions for installing the layer styles in Photoshop Elements versions 7 and up on the FAQ page here on my website. They’ve been taken down now, I re-wrote the guide on this. In a nutshell these instructions involved piecing together some metadata files by altering existing metadata files and hoping that it worked.

Over the past two years I’ve received a large volume of emails from PSE users saying that the term “worked” could be loosely defined as having the shadow styles dumped into this “Show All” category within the Effects panel where every other layer style in PSE resided. And the shadow styles weren’t even grouped together within this list, instead they were creatively interspersed between bevels, glows, plastic styles, text effects and a hundred other layer styles.

Not being fluent in Photoshop Elements, I had asked a few Elements “power users” whether they had any tips to share from their own installation and their secret was Graffi’s Add-O-Matic, a plug-in that does all the heavy lifting for you. I added that link to the FAQ page as another potential avenue for PSE users despite the fact that I felt it was a bit unfair to ask people to pay another $20 to install a set of layer styles that only cost them $3.50 to begin with. Additionally the plug-in is only available for Windows OS, so my Mac PSE users were still left high and dry.

A little over a week ago I received another email from a PSE user who was dismayed at the way the layer styles installed. She mentioned how she had layer styles from other sources where they at least managed to get them grouped together in that giant list and wondered whether I could do that with mine?

I knew that somehow I could do her one better, because that plug-in managed to get the styles into a nice little category of their own in the Drop-Down menu. Surely a tech savvy individual such as myself could figure this out? I knew the answer lived somewhere in those metadata files and I wasn’t going to settle for simply getting them grouped together in the “show all” list – I wanted them corralled into a category of their own!

Lofty goal for someone who’s never set eyes on Photoshop Elements in her life, right?

So I made that poor, unsuspecting PSE user my guinea pig late yesterday evening. Because that’s the risk you take when you email me. You might get sucked into participating in whatever my current mission is.

After she emailed me I had spent some time researching this problem on the Internet and I had managed to write a couple of metadata files that could potentially accomplish my goals. Not being able to test them myself, I sent them to her and asked that she try them on her system. The result?  No dice.

I decided that ignorance was NO LONGER BLISS and I downloaded a trial-version of PSE 10 and installed it on my computer.

Shortly afterward I realized exactly the sort of hell that PSE users go through when trying to install third-party layer styles on their system. Also? How disheartening it was when, after all that work, all the layer styles were still virtually unusable because they were impossible to find.

PSE users? I’m sorry. I understand now. You were right. You deserve better.

I vowed that I would not rest until I solved this problem for you.

At approximately 12:15am CST, after several different versions of metadata.xml files, after sitting through several never-ending “rebuildings” of  the PSE Effects database, I bore witness to this historic event:

Those OLB Shadows categories? GUESS WHO?!

Ever cautious that my mind was playing tricks on me, I sent the most current metadata.xml files to my unwitting partner in crime to see if she could replicate it on her system (PSE 9 on a Mac OS) and I reluctantly trudged off to bed.

I’m not even kind of kidding when I say that I had dreams about Photoshop Elements all night long.

This morning I jumped out of my chair when her email rolled in and she could confirm that I had, indeed, TRIUMPHED OVER PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS.

So what does this mean for you? If you’re a Photoshop Elements 7-10 user and you’ve been holding off on purchasing these layer styles because you heard they were a nightmare to install, hopefully the addition of these metadata files will eliminate that obstacle for you. They’re now included in the download, and installation instructions are available here on my site.

If you’re a PSE 7-10 user who already owns these layer styles and yours appear JUST FINE in the Effects panel, then you can disregard all of this. You’re obviously on top of your game, and you should have emailed me two years ago to tell me how you accomplished this feat. (Just sayin’)

If you’re a PSE 7-10 user who already owns these layer styles and they’re spread all over your Effects panel, then you can visit the brand-new Shadow Like Me PSE Installation Guide here on my site and pick up the missing metadata files at the bottom of the page. Then follow the instructions on that page for your operating system to add these metadata files to your installation of PSE – you don’t need to copy the original .asl files over again, you’ve already done that, just add the metadata files to the same directory and rebuild the database as instructed. Your shadow styles should now have their own category in the Effects panel.

Remember the time I let the fuel oil tank hit empty? (Hint: it was this morning.)

As a kid this was a fairly regular occurrence in our household – all of a sudden the house wasn’t as warm as it was yesterday, cold air was being pushed from the vents, then shortly afterwards one of my parents would be out at the side of the house draining a 5-gallon “emergency supply” into the tank.  Despite the fact that they were divorced and in two separate houses, they both felt as though monitoring the home heating oil level was just another way “the man” was trying to keep us down, I assume. This phenomenon was not exclusive to one household in particular.

When I was a kid I always assumed that knowing the contents of one’s oil tank must require some sort of herculean effort or complex mathematical equation. Imagine my surprise when I bought my first oil heated home and found out that there’s a gauge on there – just like the one in your car. Who knew?

In my adult life 50% of my homes have been heated by fuel oil, and I’ve never let the tank hit empty until today. I noted that we had 1/4  tank (60+ gallons) back in early December and since we have a fairly efficient home I said to myself at the time “I’ll call just after the holidays”. Last night just as I was falling asleep I had a brief moment of panic when I realized that I’d never made that call, but the house … she was warm.

And she on empty when I finally checked the gauge this morning. Not completely empty – the furnace was still pushing warm air out – so at least we won’t have to do anything insane like “bleed the lines” to get the furnace running again because I have no idea how one even does that .. but I’m sure my mom is an expert in it.

In a few moments Tom will be making an appearance in the backyard with our first ever “emergency supply” of diesel fuel to carry us through until Monday when we won’t have to pay the insanely expensive emergency surcharge for an after-hours delivery.

We are now the official owners of a bright yellow “Oh Crap! I let the fuel oil run out!” fuel can that will sit in the garage, taunting me with the fact that my perfect record of proper fuel oil supply monitoring finally came to an end. It’s the end of an era!

What’s next? I let the cable get turned off? (That would never happen – my Internet is on there. If my Internet were fueled by home heating oil then you can bet I would have just made that call in early Dec.)

Links I Loved This Week

1. 2011 Lesson #2: Don’t Carpe Diem (Momastery). A well-written and humorous take on motherhood and the irrational guilt we sometimes feel for maybe not cherishing every single moment of it. After reading this post I made a vow to myself to utter the word kairos to myself every time I leave chronos time  - and to be gentler on myself knowing that the two separate times can and do exist harmoniously.

2. Habitual Scrapbooking (Anna Aspnes). Reminding me that I have to make memory keeping a part of my daily routine – like brushing my teeth or preparing dinner. After a quick back-and-forth with Anna on Twitter, it was decided I need to just stop talking about it and do it.

3. Vintage Camera Night Lights (Swiss Miss). No explanations needed. (Oh how I want one!)

4. Stories To Tell (Daily Digi). I loved reading Katie’s list of stories she has yet to tell – and I’m so curious about a few of them. I recently started making my own list of stories I haven’t told yet and it’s not just a couple! Do you keep lists like this?

Have a great weekend everyone!

Hello, friends! I have a new product for you, a collaboration with Paislee Press and Traci Murphy Designs.

I’m so excited to be able to share it with you and hope that you’ll find it as lovely and inspiring as I do.

Generations will be available for 20% off through January 10th, 2012.

Cage Liner subscribers can save an extra 10% using the coupon code in their newsletters. Not yet a subscriber? Subscribe now and receive a coupon code of your own!

My Page

JOURNALING ┊ It’s a beautiful thing when you’re all together, standing side-by-side, the kids that Cynnamon and I made. When Grandma gathered you up for this photo the common thread was unmistakable – each of you unique in your own little ways but for those smiles. Oh, those little smiles that we see every day when you’re happy, when you’re scheming, when you’re humoring us. And there you are gathered around the source of it all, the Alpha smile to this little gathering of Omegas. It’s a sight to behold.

MATERIALS ┊ Generations by Paislee Press, One Little Bird and Traci Murphy Designs; Stamped by One Little Bird; Photo Edges by Something Blue Studio; Font is American Typewriter by ITC.

Inspiration From The Flock

[Show as slideshow]

by Rachel

by Becky

by Beth

by Crystal

by Dana

by Julie

by Kelly S

by Leontien

by Lex

by Margelz

by Michelle

by Nicole

by Rachel

by Renee

by Sarah

by Sarah

by Steffi

I love when the day’s mail so perfectly reflects my frame of mind.

If you happened to listen to Episode 21 of The Digi Show you heard us talk about projects – from the past, from the present, and our plans for the future. I shared how I was feeling as though I’d gotten sidetracked with regards to what makes me happy when it comes to scrapbooking, and how I was feeling as though I should focus my attention on reconnecting with that rather than taking on projects in the hopes that they’ll somehow streamline or simplify the process for me.

Projects are great for drumming up stories, but I am not in (nor have I ever been in) a story drought.

I am in a scrapbooking drought.

When I was preparing materials for my guest spot at Debbie Hodge’s site, I made the following comment on Twitter:

I wanted to “get back to 2009,” which was a year where I really felt the most in touch with my inner memory keeper. I made sure that I took time to really think about my life and what was meaningful to me in the moment, and then I spent my time conveying that on my pages.

Over the past couple of years I’ve lost sight of that. Instead of carving time out to reconnect with those stories I’ve taken on “projects” instead. Projects that gave me a way to fill my time so that I had the appearance of documenting my memories, but really I was just creating things to document while purposefully avoiding documenting them in a way that fulfills my passion

My passion is digital scrapbooking. My passion is storytelling.

A good bit of my time in 2011 was spent trying new things each week, a project that I really enjoyed but that I didn’t necessarily care to include in my scrapbooks after I had already taken up quite a bit of time writing it out on my blog. I made a choice at the beginning of the year to blog them and NOT scrapbook them and that’s the format I stuck with for time management purposes. Having them preserved here on my site was enough for me, and when it becomes not enough for me I’ll pull off relevant ones and get them into our albums.

I amassed a large storage box full of Project Life supplies and I’ve tucked little bits and pieces of everyday life into the pockets, but I was quickly reminded of the fact that I don’t enjoy paper scrapbooking. Or hybrid scrapbooking. More than that: I don’t feel GOOD at it. I feel like it takes me too much time, that I think about it way too much, and that I wind up settling on getting the pages done rather than actually liking them.

Feeling as though I’m good at what I’m doing, whether anyone else agrees with me or not, is 99% of my happiness when it comes to creativity. I am not good at gluing things down or cutting things out. I am not happy when I’m walking back and forth from my desk to my printer to load photo paper into the tray. I do not like finding little bits of paper around my office. And more than that, I do not like having bins of paper supplies, bins of adhesives, a 12×12 album and things like paper cutters and hole punches in my office. My office used to be a place of zen solitude and it was starting to resemble a crop station at a craft store.

I spent some time in July trying A Week In The Life, thinking that would scratch my memory keeping itch. But as you may recall, the enthusiasm fizzled out for me. I consider myself an “everyday scrapbooker” but that was just way too much information about my everyday. I was on information overload because I could think of something meaningful to say about most of the photos that I took – but all packed into a one week span like that, my storytelling core shut down completely. Within those photos live some stories that I want to tell, but we needed some time apart.

The common thread with all three of the projects was that they kept me really busy – busy taking pictures, busy jotting down notes, busy buying supplies and organizing supplies. All of that busy work made me feel like I was documenting our lives. But they didn’t leave me feeling fulfilled. Instead I felt like I spent my time living up to arbitrary obligations that I’d set in my own head while ignoring what I truly love – which is sitting down at my computer and pouring my heart out onto a 3600 x 3600 px canvas in Photoshop. A photo from last week, a photo from last year, an experience from today or an emotion that happened to flutter through my heart.

That is where joy lives for me.

So my only scrapbooking project for the time-being will be to carve out time in my schedule to reconnect with the process that first won my heart. The organic, free-flowing stream of creativity that ends with my story on a 12×12 digital canvas – because that’s when I remember feeling my happiest as a memory keeper.

Which is not to say that you’re anything like me, or that you find your fulfillment in the same way that I do. It’s not even to say that I’ll feel the same way a year from now, or a month from now.

I’m not always good at examining whether I’m happy with the way I choose to spend my memory keeping time WHILE I’m spending it. I haven’t been asking myself “Is this how I really want to be spending this period of time?” This free hour that I have on a Sunday afternoon – what would I like to completely lose myself in for this hour? Because I have a finite amount of time, and I want to get back to enjoying how I spend that time.

More than that I want to get back in touch with what makes me love this craft; with what inspires me rather than what’s new or flashy. I need to clear out all of the other stuff and get back to the fundamentals for a while.

After all, I have all these untold stories from 2011 that have piled up while I’ve been occupied with other distractions. It’s high time they get their time in the sun.

So my question to you is this – when are you most happy as a memory keeper?