The kiddos stole their cousin’s stroller for a juant around the playground. Thought it had to be scrapped since I have that page from earlier this year of them in our yard with their stroller.

I am very honored for the opportunity to create delightful digi scrapbook pages for Just Jaimee’s creative team.  Jaimee is a wonderful digi artist, check out her shop at The DigiChick and her blog for great tutorials and freebies!

Papers/Elements: Garden Party by Just Jaimee {The DigiChick}
Layout: Shappy Shoppe Challenge 23
Fonts: Janda Apple Cobbler and Teckton Pro

Layout: photos are a PSE Collage, then layered on top of papers and elements.

Kits: Heartfelt and Gracie from The Shabby Shoppe

Font: Milk and Cereal

Here is my page, created after finding all the letters during Design House Digitals; iNSD Blog Hop Challenge.  DHD gave away a coupon code of their kit; Retrospect.  I am loving the fun elements that came with the kit… like the WordArt Label along the bottom of my page, and the ‘I will never forget this moment’ phrase.

I started out attempting to create a page that fulfilled all 26 Layout Challenge prompts found while you are collecting the letters for the coupon code.  After getting through about 10 items… I realized/remembered that one requirement was to use a layout.  Oops.  I truly love how this page turned out, and thought journaling wasn’t needed.  As they say… a picture is worth a hundred/thousand words.

Papers/Elements: DHD Retrospect kit

Font: League Gothic

Want to try your hand decorating this layout? 

Feel free to download the layered PSD file through 4Shared.

{4Shared Download Link}

Layout: The Shabby Shoppe Template Challenge 22

Kits: Heartfelt and Gracie

Fonts: E, Trajan Pro; Script, Vladimir Script; ‘aster’ kit elements.

Here is Week 17 {Apr. 23rd thru 29th} for my version of Project Life.  I really like the project life templates from Becky Higgins/Digital Version, but want to use templates I already have since I plan to do several topic specific pages each month in addition to a weekly overview.  I don’t necessarily plan on doing a weekly scrapbook each year, but with the kiddos so young they do so much new stuff each week that I hate to try and cram it in on only two pages.  Plus, I take way to many photos to try and pick out only a few each month, LOL!

Layout: The Shabby Shoppe Project Scrap 2011 September, Single and Multi Layouts

Papers/Elements: The Shabby Shoppe – Gracie and Heartfelt kits

Flowers and Photo Corners created using Template and these Wakey Wake Styles from Miss Mis Designs

Layout: Shabby Shoppe ~ March 2012 Project Scrap

Elements and Papers: Imagic Reflections ~ Men In Progress Tag Kit

Layout: The Shabby Shoppe – Bundle One, June 

{you can grab their 2012 templates for free from the blog}

Fonts: Milk and Cereal {journaling}, Learning Curve {title}, Myriad Pro {date}

Papers/Elements: The Shabby Shoppe – Plentiful {free} and Gracie Kits

Layout: Yin Double Page Template 253

Paper: Cajoline Scraps Blue Scroll Paper

Open Book Graphic: Karla Dudley, Design House Digitals

Swirl: Delicous Scraps Swirly Doodles

{please note ~ while freebies are a great way to build your ‘stash’ of digi supplies, remember.. these designers have worked hard to create these for your use.  Don’t share them directly or indirectly to others, and share credits and links freely.}

Scrap Layouts/Layered Templates ~ These are great to help you get scrapping quickly.

The Shabby Shoppe’s 2012 Scrapping Challenge ~ a new two page layout each month of the year.

The Shabby Shoppe’s Monthly Easy-as-Pie Scrap Challenge ~ monthly challenge with a layered template

Inspiration and Learning what YOU can do ~ once you see it, you can google how to do it…

The Funky Playground Gallery

The Shabby Shoppe Gallery

Design House Digital’s Gallery

Freebie Sources for Kits and Elements to get you started:

Imagic Reflections ~ amazing amount of fun kits at 800×800 pixles {not print quality}  Play with these until you know what ‘style’ you like, and then buy kits that fit that style.  Rather than buying stuff you won’t end up using.

Design House Digital’s Freebies ~ again… a great way to try something, and see if you like it before investing scads of money or disk space for something you rarely or never use in your scrap pages.

The Blog Train ~ a bi-monthly {every other month} blog hop of different digi designers blogs with freebies at each site.  The freebies are based on a color palatte and theme set ahead of time by the amazing people that organize such a huge event {75 to over 100 blogs}. 

Quality DigiScrap Freebies ~ my favorite person to follow on Pinterest!  This is how I found the Blog Train and keep up to date on what is free over at Design House Digitals.

Delicous Scraps ~ I adore her free element templates, and everything I have purchased from her has been amazing too!

Fonts for Scrapping ~

Fonts for Peas, by Kevin and Amanda ~ Ever wanted to be able to type in your handwriting?  Submit your sample to them to digitize!  Personlly my fav font is Milk and Cereal… I don’t really want my handwriting in my scrapbook, LOL!

You can also download and use fonts off of any free font site.  I have used daFont.com several times, and while it is tedious to look at all the font eye-candy, I like how you can set your text preview to whatever word you want.  Makes all the difference when you are looking for the ‘perfect’ font for your blog title or a signature font.

Looking for how to create something specific… google it {or swagbucks it in my case}.  You will be amazed at how much detailed info is available.  Plus, most of the sites I listed above have forums and tutorials to help you get started or fine tune your scrapbook layouts.

And now so I don’t have a pictureless post…

Here is my ‘re-do’ of All About the Horses page.  I changed up the papers and some of the elements to print quality graphics.

Template: The Shabby Shoppe’s July 2011 template.

Kits/Elements: Heartfelt and Gracie kits from The Shabby Shoppe

This was such an interesting book, and a definite reread. Reclaiming Lily takes you behind the wall into rural China during a reformation when families were ripped apart.

What happened to the children?  What happened to families that didn’t want to give up their ‘extra’ children? How would an older sister reconcile the horrors that happened to her family with her search for trust in God.

Patti Lacy weaves all those questions into this intriguing tale of two sisters separated by more than just distance.

I really enjoyed this book, and I found that I can relate to each of these characters in different ways. Lily/Joy; feeling lost in today’s world, trying to reconcile the faith she once had to the views the ‘world’ tells her are the ‘right’ ones. Kei; seeing the gaps in her life and heart, but struggling to make that leap of faith when looking at the horrors and struggles so many face. Grace; attempting to control her mouth {my biggest struggle too} and letting herself live out what she knows in her heart and mind: God is in control and we are just the hands on the steering wheel… He is the navigator.

Here is Patti Lacy’s blog with a great video trailer for Reclaiming Lily.

 From the Publisher: