Gifts and Wall Art For The Home

Every year I like to give my Sister-in-Law an 8x10 layout with a photograph of our children - all three on one layout and something pretty because she has a home that is lovely and even Martha would approve!    This year's gift was made with my Family Album Big Heritage Kit which is on sale for 35% off through January 2nd, 2012.  Most of my photography work I have printed at Costco One Hour.  They use Fuji Crystal Archive paper, my local one does an awesome job, I can upload from my computer and Hubby can pick it up on his way home from work.  But 8x10 is standard size both for prints and for frames and they can be printed any place that does enlargements.

Because she replaces the photo in a frame I have previously given her, I don't have the frame to show you, but it always looks lovely.  This is the actual print that I propped up on the couch and photographed.  In real life, the coloring is closer to the digital file above, but when I lightened the photo, the colors changed slightly.  My prints come out pretty close to what I see on my computer screen.  You may have to experiment with your monitor, program and/or printer to get the results you want.  For instance, on my laptop, I always need to make my photographs lighter to get them printed because what I see is not what I get.  But, you can see that it makes a lovely and frameable piece of art.

Here is another one I did for my Sister-In-Law.  This is also created with the Family Album Big Heritage Kit and is an 8x10.  This photograph of my Mother-in-Law and her little sister was a surprise find hidden behind another photograph when we removed it from a frame.

Here is the same project printed at Costco into an 8x10 and propped up on my couch.  One thing that you should know in making these types of projects, Is that frames vary on the size of their opening even if they say 8x10.  It's a good idea to leave a little extra space around your design because it could be engulfed by the frame.

Here is last year's framed 8x10.  That one was created with Thankful, which is an Autumn and American Thanksgiving themed kit, also on sale for 35% off through January 2nd.



Here is a little peek into my kitchen.  You can see the white frame on the right - it contains photographs of my Grandma Hopkins throughout her life (including one in her kitchen) as well as her bread recipe, written in her handwriting. She taught me how to cook and it's nice to have her "with" me as I work!

This year I want to work on more wall art for our home.  I have found a few 12x12 frames and one from Ikea that is large but mats down to 11x11" square that will work.  I am also hoping to do some 11x14 layouts that can frame larger.  Really, any size frame you can create a layout for.  If you have an odd size (for photo printing), for instance, a 5x5 frame, you can create a 5x5 layout, place it onto a blank 5x7 background and have it printed - just cut off the extra 2" and place in your frame.

Have you created digital wall art for your home?  I'm looking for fun ideas.  I think I will continue to use the 8x10 size for gifts.  It's inexpensive, often under $10, if you already have kits to use and they are really priceless and meaningful.  One gift that brought tears to a Mom's eyes, was photos I took of her newborn with her name, the meaning of the name and the dates.  It was really cute and makes a nice wall hanging in a nursery or child's room.  Please share any other ideas you may have.  Happy Scrapping!

Until January 2nd, 2012, most of my store will be 35% off.  You can find me here at Heritage Scrap!

I apologize for being scarce around the blog and not uploading any new kits.  It has been a time to be sharing with my family and rest.  Hopefully in the new year I will be having some new kits and will update the blog and share more often.

Black Friday Sales

Come visit my shop at Heritage Scrap where many items are 25% OFF.  Most designers have this special running as well - $20 of Product for $12.  You can find the coupon code on the main page of Heritage Scrap.  Happy Shopping!

Hot Off The Presses

Feminine and romantic are not words that describe my home.  My Hubby (and incredibly wonderful man!) does not like flowers and frou frou and fluff.  In fact when I asked him if he had any preferences for my wedding dress, he said, "I don't like lace".  Do you know how hard it was to find a wedding dress without lace in 1998? I did.  Just a trim of lace at the bottom and he was okay with that.  So instead of "shabby chic", I'd say my home style is "shabby comfy".  It's only in my dreams that I have a room all to myself - robin's egg blue walls and white trim.  Rose covered fabrics, lace, damasks and brocades and soft feminine touches everywhere with antiques and re-purposed pieces and all orderly.  No one can bring Legos in the room or stuffed animals or found treasures from the backyard!  Well, one can dream, right?  I am perfectly content in my happily shabby home and with my family.  The feminine touches will need to pop in for my scrapbooking kits!

So with all my back issues of Victoria Magazine in mind, I created Cottage.

I've tried to create the same cottage style feel with a quilt paper, damask, plaids and flowers with "bits and bobs" to brighten up your feminine and lovely photo pages.

I think the papers are my favorite - I've tried to include more texture.  As an almost life long fabric enthusiast I wish some of these could be in my fabric stash!

Here you can see some of the elements.  In each kit I try to give you all the basics, plus a little surprise here and there.  The button in this kit was extracted from scans of my friend's grandmother's button collection and is an antique.

You might have noticed I include a lot of frames and journaling elements.  That is because even though I design kits, I still am of the opinion that our photos and written memories should take the center stage in the midst of our art.

As always, I would love to see what you create with my kits.  And I would like to thank all my loyal customers for their purchases over Digital Scrapbook Day weekend.  My family appreciates you!  Thank you!  Happy Scrapping!



DSD SALE Begins!

Let's get the fun started a little early!  I will be having all my products 50% off today through Tuesday.   Find me in my corner of Heritage Scrap HERE.

Blessings - November Collaboration Kit

Blessings is our November Designer Collaboration Kit at Heritage Scrap.  I created some autumn clusters that might go well with Thanksgiving layouts.

The preview doesn't quite show it but most of the light papers have leaf motifs on them and there are some papers with damask.

You can find my Blessings in my store.

DSD 2011 Sale!

It's that time of year again!  It's time for Digital Scrapbook Day Weekend and I'm joining the fun with 50% off My Store!  I decided to begin the party early with the sale starting on Thursday and lasting through Tuesday.

My ad this week is created with my portion of the November designer collaboration kit at Heritage Scrap.  It will be up in the shop soon!

Thank You Blog Trainers

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all the people who participated in the October Blog Train.  I hope you were able to use my kit.  I'd love to see anything you create - so drop in and share a link if you have!  Thank you for all the nice comments left.

October Is Family History Month - SALE

Find the BLOG TRAIN POST HERE

But Please Take The Time To Look Around!

October is Family History Month and in honor of that, all my family tree kits will be on sale for 25% off! Take a look around in MY STORE.

Do you need some inspiration?

Diane (aka as Diney) made these wonderful layout using my School Days kit.  I love how creative she was in placing a piece of paper into the typewriter with some type on it!

Her mother won a typing competition and she had all the certificates and newspaper articles to document the event.  What a wonderful heritage spread.  This shows how you can document and journal and still keep the page artistic and beautiful.  Thank you Diane!

I've been poking through some old boxes and was surprised to find this tintype fall out of some miscellaneous papers.  I wanted to show what a tintype looks like - future generations may not know.  So I extracted it into a png file and included that on the page along with a cleaned up version with lighting correction that allows us to see more of his face.  This is my Great Grandfather in his freshman year of college at Hamline University near St. Paul, Minnesota.  The background paper (and most of the layout) are from my Family Album Big Heritage Kit.  The map on the background paper is Canada and part of the northern United States.  I used the marker that looks like a bubble wand from my Family Album Genealogy Tool Kit.  The circle on the right highlights the area on the map where my Great Grandfather, Fred Tisdale grew up in Ontario, Canada.  The circle on the left of the indicator marker shows St. Paul, Minnesota where he went to school.

This was a really fun page to make with two wonderful finds!  Like the tintype mentioned above, this little photo dropped out from amongst papers.  I had never  seen this, but from description recognized it as the little cabin my grandparents lived in for about the first six years of marriage.  Recently I had also found this note book page which I extracted.  It includes my Grandmother's thoughts written down while her her late 80s or early 90s about her wedding day and the first little home they shared together.  They were just screaming to be scrapped together.  So I used my recent Our Home Digital Scrapbooking Kit to create this page.  Every time I look at it, it makes me happy to see my Grandma Hopkins' writing - a piece of her!  I may print and hang this in my turquoise/blue bedroom.

Thank you for stopping by to visit today. I hope you've been able to find some inspiration for happy scrapbooking.  Stop by my shop for 25% off family tree kits in the month of October! 



Family Album

Find the BLOG TRAIN POST HERE!

Family Album Big Heritage Kit was really fun to design.  Since it is family history month, I thought it would be nice to have another genealogy based kit.  Family Album is designed so that you could do a large family history project using primarily one kit.  It does coordinate, sharing the cream colors with my Family Treasures Kit and a similar palette to His Story - Family Tree Kit and the School Days Kit.

There is a total of 97 elements in the kit. There are many pieces to mix and match to create clusters and designs.

Here are the frame clusters and some of the journaling elements.

All together there are 36 12x12 papers.  This preview shows the colored papers, including some beautiful embossed designs.

There are more creamy/camel colored papers to allow journaling and to let your photos shine as the star of your family album.  Three papers are maps and the ones with the colored swirls would work well for a full page of journaling your family's story.

Lots of frames, including a full page frame.  There are many shapes and sizes in the metal style that initially inspired me in the kit creation, as well as some in colors from the elements and paper as well as one vintage paper frame.

And just to help you along in your pages and journaling - Titles in two fonts, in the coordinating metal style.  The word "Family" is available in 2 fonts different from the title fonts.

If you want to create your own album from this kit, I have created a Shutterfly ready album cover kit. Please note, this was created with Shutterfly's own templates with every effort to be accurate, however, I cannot guarantee their printing.

Family Album Genealogy Tools is a mini kit that was a lot of fun to design.  There are 4 pedigree charts - 4 generation and 5 generation, with each coming in a thick or thin metal style.  The other tools are markers or indicators that can be used to single out or highlight information on genealogy charts or documents, the lines can lead out to your journaling area where you can write more about that information.  Included are two quick page genealogy pages.

The family crest on the 2nd page is available in the big kit at a much larger size and is a fun way to journal or if you have a family crest you would attach it there.

Last but not least, there is a Family Album Bundle Pack with everything for a reduced price!

In my spare time (insert Guffaw here!), I will be working on an album about my Tisdale family and I plan on using this kit.  Watch for layouts and ideas.  As usual, I would love to see your layouts too. If you have created layouts with my kits, please send me a link to your gallery postings. Happy Scrapping!

Sneak Peek and Thank You Blog Trainers

Before I give you a sneak peek at the new heritage kit I've been working on, I want to say thank you to the ladies that have been here for the blog train and have posted comments! Very sweet of you!  I hope you will be able to use my pieces along with others you've collected to create something beautiful and meaningful.  If you're here looking for the blog train, it's in the next post down.

Here is what I have been madly working on this week.  Family Album is my largest kit yet with 97 elements and is designed so that you could do a whole family history project using primarily one kit.  It will also coordinate with my Family Treasures Kit and parts with my School Days and His Story kits.  There is a genealogy tool kit separate but coordinated as well as a Shutterfly Ready cover set and a bundle pack with everything!  I uploaded to the server last night so it should be up in my store some time this weekend.

This layout only shows a fraction of what's coming.  I am considering doing the life of my Grandpa Tisdale and his family with this kit and the above mentioned ones which coordinate.

After a busy weekend with Yom Kippur and my biggie boy turning 10, I'll be back next week with some more layouts to share, including some really fun ones from my creative team!

Happy Scrapping!

October 2011 DST Blog Train ~ Welcome

Hello Blog Trainers!  Thank you for coming to my little corner of the web.  You can download my portion HERE.  The next train stop is Amanda Heimann Designs HERE and if you get lost you can go back to the main Blog Train station.

While you're downloading the freebie, I hope you will stay and browse or book mark me and come back.  There are also widgets on the right to follow my blog and you can find me on Facebook as well.

Created with my Blog Train Portion

Most of my designs are heritage oriented, though I do try to find elements and backgrounds that are suitable for both vintage and modern photos and occasions.  It is important to me that we tell the story of our lives and our faith and our families, so all my kits are designed with that in mind.

Have fun looking around and I look forward to making some new friends.

Be sure to check your download for a special coupon to my store at Heritage Scrap.  And while you're looking around, make sure you check out the Heritage Scrap Blog.

Thank you for stopping by today!

October Eve - Heritage Scrap Designer Collaboration Kit

We had a beautiful palette to work with this month for October Eve. Kate had us envision old damask wall papers, rich textures of velvets and tapestries and the heavy scented air of October evenings, nights out at the theater or at home.  I tried to capture this through the textures of my background papers.  The layout is my Great Grandfather and I used it to highlight one way you could use the frame cluster included in the kit.

Here is the preview of my portion, which is found HERE.  You can find the whole collection HERE.  I encourage you to take a look at the other designers' kits.  There are lots of sparkles, satins, damasks and other beautiful features.  My kit is pretty simple in comparison but I'm kind of a "plain Jane" girl! The fun thing is that everything always works together when you take pieces from each portion and mix them together!  As always, the portions will be on sale for $2.50 each during the month of October.  Happy Scrapping!

School Days Fun!

Isn't this adorable?!  I love the picture of them holding hands and walking down the street.  These layouts were made by my new Creative Team gal, Anita using my School Days Kit.  I am very impressed with her work!

Her non-square layouts have inspired me.  Now I'm curious - what sizes do you create? I have to admit I have used the traditional 12x12 because I like a lot of room to spread out!  I was like that with my paper scrapbooking as well and I thought that would improve with digital, but it hasn't!  For wall art I have created 8x10 pages and I'm considering an 11x8 album for my heritage books.  It would be nice to hear from you what you have decided to use.  Happy Scrapping.

Our Home - Moving Day

One of my downfalls is never making the time to scrapbook my own photos of every day life. Remember our every day life is heritage in the making.  In 2009, the big event in our life was buying our first home.  It's modest and older, but it's HOME!  It was such a chaotic time.  My step Dad was right in the middle of cancer surgery and life was stressful, but we saw God's hand working in the details.  It was 7 weeks from thinking, "Maybe we could buy a home" to move in day on our twin daughters' birthday!  There is a lot to document in that time!  So I created some kits and I plan on making a book to tell the story so that my children can see God working in our lives. 

This page was created with Our Home - Digital Scrapbook Kit.  Look for the other kits, including the bundle pack.

School Days Layout

I was cruising through the Heritage Scrap Gallery (a great source of inspiration, by the way!), and I saw this lovely layout from Linda.  Linda is very talented and has been on the Heritage Scrap Creative Team from the start.  She taught me a lot when I was just a new digital scrapbooker!  I have loved seeing her heritage pages through the years and almost feel like I know her family a little bit through the photos and journaling!

If I find you in the gallery using one of my kits, I would love to feature you on my blog as well.  Happy Scrapping!

Layouts To Share

Recently I have begun going through my photos and memorabilia.  High on my priority list is to create an album for my little brother Danny (1967-1973).  This is my favorite photograph of him as a baby.  It really shows his personality, even though he wasn't old enough to sit up yet.  Our Dad played minor league baseball, so the baseball elements were a must.  This layout was created using two of my kits, My Family Tree - Baby Edition and My Family Tree - Baby Edition Add On.  These kits were created to make, soft neutral baby books.

While perusing the Heritage Scrap Gallery, I found this wonderful heritage layout from Creative Team friend Helene (Victoria32).  If you would like to see more of her beautiful artistry, you can find here gallery HERE.  Helene is an avid scrapbooker and all her layouts go into her family albums which she prints up for her grandchildren and family.  What a blessing that must be for them!  In this particular layout I was impressed with all her clustering and layering.  I almost didn't recognize it as coming from my own kit, but it is.  She created this layout with one of my new kits, Family Treasures.

If you post one of your layouts using my kits at the Heritage Scrap Gallery, I would love to see it and feature you as well.  Happy Scrapping!

Prelude To Autumn

Welcome to Fall - it's the first day of Autumn today. My favorite season!  You have one more week to purchase the September 2011 Designer Collaboration mini kits for $2.50 each at Heritage Scrap.  You can find all the Prelude to Autumn kits HERE.  And my portion is HERE.

Working on the designer collabs is fun!  Sometimes the theme is one that is more difficult for me or presents designing challenges and I learn to grow from those.  I particularly enjoy working with the other designers during these collaborations.  Every time we do one I remember and miss the late Jean Daugherty.  She was always ready to give encourage and help when needed.  Her beautiful artistry is certainly missed!

Hope you get a chance to look at these before the price goes up.  October's collaboration will be appearing soon.  Happy Scrapping.

Our Home ~ New Kits & Bundle

Our Home

Busy week here at the computer.  I've been working on a new set of kits that can be used to document your home and family, your ancestors's homes, building and remodeling projects, buying and selling a home or moving.  The elements are versatile and could be used to create other types of heritage or every day layouts as well.

Here is the preview of some of the homey elements.  I've included a mix of modern and vintage to help you use it for a variety of pages.

Here is a 2nd preview showing all the ribbons, bows and frilly stuff.

This preview shows all the journaling elements, including titles, title clusters and lots of labels.

I always like a variety of frames to choose from, so I've given you a lot in this kit and one frame cluster.

And this shows the papers with some neutrals tones and light blues and greens.  There are a few more modern prints, some blue print type papers, some old fashioned florals and damasks and a couple worn and torn overlay papers.

All of the above are from the main kit.  There are some add ons and a bundle as well. 

Our Home - Quick Pages

I had fun creating these quick pages.  There are two gallery pages, one stair case and wall where you can "hang" your family portraits and an open book page layered with lace, tabs and other "bits and bobs".  The preview doesn't quite do it justice, so I'll have to create some pages with them and share them.

Our Home - Word Art

This word art package contains titles and quotes for your home and family pages.

To help you save money, if you like the whole set, you can purchase them in a bundle, Our Home Bundle Pack.  Thank you for looking.  I hope you will enjoy this new kit!