Annies Digital Things

This is one of those posts that I hoped I would never have to write again. It seems like yesterday when we said good bye to our dear Jean Daugherty after her battle with breast cancer and now we have lost another designing friend, Anne of Annie's Digital Things.

When I worked as CT leader at Heritage Scrap, I first became acquainted with Anne.  She was enthusiastic and creative in every way.  I was a new scrapper and I had fun working with her kits.  This is a layout I created with her Parlor Music kit.

 

 

When I began designing, she encouraged me more and I can still hear her laugh when we did designer conference calls and chats.  I loved her Vintage Flying kit.  It was perfect for this and other flying photos I have.  She said her hubby was an aviation nut and there was a lot of plan "stuff" at her place, so she just had to make this kit.

 

 

My first collaboration kit as a designer at Heritage Scrap, was Autumn in Paris (no longer available).  I struggled a little, but she had no problem at all - this was an amazing vintage kit she put together.  I found it perfect for this poem written by my great grandmother.

 

 

 

Anne had worked many years designing and creating dolls/clothes and miniatures.  Thank Heaven For Little Girls came out of that love and the love she had for her granddaughter.

 

 

 

 

One of Anne's skills as a digital designer, was looking for the niche where a type of kit was needed.  Most of her kits have a particular topic or design theme.  This is something I have tried to emulate in my own designing.  This layout was created with her contribution to the Heritage Builder's Collab for the anniversary of the store. This is a beautiful vintage heritage kit that I think everyone should have in their heritage kit collection.

 

 





 

 

This is another layout done withe the Autumn In Paris collab which is no longer available.

 

 

 

For this layout I used the background paper and ruffle from the Thank Heaven For Girls kit mentioned above.  The rest of the items come from Grandmother's Sewing Basket.  Anne was particularly talented at extracting.

 

 



 

Another designer collab portion no longer available.  I believe this one was called Irish Linen.

 

 



This is another pedigree chart from the Heritage Builders Collab  mentioned above.  Anne and I shared a common surname in our family tree - Tisdale, but sadly we never found a connection.  It would be fun to be related to such a wonderful lady!

 

 

Tattered and Torn was a really fun kit to work with.

 

 



When I showed Anne this layout, she was delighted.  She said it was exactly what she had envisioned when she created On The Road Again.  It was perfect for my Grandparents' 1950s road trip.

This is also from Tattered and Torn, mentioned above.  It's an exquisite kit!

Another layout with Thank Heaven For Little Girls.

 

 

Lastly, I want to share Never Give Up.  This is Annie's Breast Cancer Kit.  She beat it and had an extra almost ten years.  The second time around,it got the upper hand.  Too many lovely people are lost to this horrible disease.  Somehow I think she'd still want us to join her in saying "Never Give Up!"  Even when she was battling it herself, she was often giving encouragement to others starting out on their breast cancer journey.  I've sure missed her this last year as she has battled the disease. And I miss her even more.  She only lived 4 hours away - I wish I had made that drive to see her.  My prayers are with her family at this time.

 

Please take a look around Annie's Digital Things shop before her beautiful work is gone.

 

So long Anne, it's been good to know you.  You may be gone, but you're not forgotten.

December Sales

 

My Store

Snow in the Air? New Kit

 

 

Snowflakes have always been one of my favorite design elements.  They are so amazing and remind me of what an awesome and infinite Creator we have.  I have a lot of snow pictures from the 1920s and 30s and none of the snow kits I've seen really fit, so I decided to create my own. This is Flurries Digital Scrapbook Kit.

 

 



Here is a view of the Flurries elements.  I used several crochet pieces and a paper snowflake too.  There are a few flowers to mix in as well as the winter corsage.

Frames and Journal elements, including a book with snowflakes lightly over the page.

Here you can see the papers.  There is a variety of patterned paper as well as solids and a snowflake edged overlay.

Right away I had to play with the kit.  This is a photo of me and my little brother and my Dad making a snowman.  It was just a few years ago!

This is one of my grandparents' pictures from a hunting trip, long ago, somewhere in Washington State or British Columbia.

I hope Flurries will be a fun addition to your winter kits.  It will work well with some modern photos as well as heritage and vintage.  You can find it HERE.  Thank you for looking!

SALE Time!

I started mine a little earlier HERE.  Make sure to check out the whole store this weekend for great deals from all the designers including $1 kits!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Digital Scrapbook Day Sales

I have a fondness for Digital Scrapbook Day.  DSD weekend in 2008 was when I discovered Heritage Scrap!  My entire store is 50% Off November 1 through 7 and you can find it HERE.

Spitting In A Tube

Earlier in the summer we had the opportunity to do the beta DNA testing through AncestryDNA. Since we only have part of the story on my Husband's side, we decided this would be one way that we might possibly connect with some cousins or other relatives.  Unfortunately that has not happened yet.  But it is still pretty interesting.

One of the things the testing determines is a percentage of ethnicity.  This is where the big surprise came from on Hubby's test!  We suspected his would be close to half British Isles with names in his tree like Hardcastle, Peyton, Cannon, Sullivan and Collier.  But guess what?  Not a speck!  His ethnicity shows:  50% Central European, 45% Scandinavian and 5% Uncertain.  We laughed - I'm the one who is 3rd generation born in America from Swedish immigrants on my Dad's side.  I'm the one with the Johnson surname and here my Hubby is 45% Scandinavian! 

Two explanations for this could be that we have no idea what is on the hidden side of the tree and many from the British Isles came from Viking stock.  Another factor is that DNA is a complicated thing!  It's hard to say how it all gets mixed up and what goes into making us who we are.  Having identical twin daughters, we see this every day.  They have the same DNA and yet are unique individuals in every sense of the word.

Well, this fall, Ancestry offered another opportunity for the DNA testing which is $99. Thanks to a great sales month (Thank you customers!), I was able to slip this into the budget and it was soon my turn to "spit in a tube."  The testing is done through saliva and is able to test both sides of the family.  Next came my turn for surprise!

My ethnicity was as follows:

75% British Isles
16% Central European
  8% Eastern European
  1% Uncertain

British Isles did not surprise me as my Mom's paternal side were Puritans, my Mom's maternal side came primarily from Scotland and Ireland and my Dad's maternal side has a lot of Irish.  Central European explains the Germans and Dutch on both sides of the family and I knew my great great Grandparents came from Poland and Slovakia, not to mention that some of the Germans came from the part of Germany that is now Poland.  1% Uncertain.  I can buy that. 

But where is the Scandinavian?  This is where the SHOCK came in!  I can trace my ancestry in Sweden back to about 1600.  Are you telling me that none of these people were Swedish?  There is a possibility that my family came from elsewhere to Sweden as at one point Sweden controlled a lot of countries, even though today we don't think of them as a "super power" country.  But all the way back 400 years, none of them were Scandinavian?  The only other thing I can think of is that since I am female and I only get an X from my father and that the Swedish would come down through the Y chromosome, that is why.  I don't understand the complexities of DNA well enough to understand this.  Do any of you?

It is fun and I already connected with someone in my Wolcott family tree and hopefully I can connect with more.  My hopes was to find other people I am genetically related to, which might solve some of my brick walls.  It just depends on who does DNA testing and the more people who do, the more possibilities will come up.

This whole experience has made us curious.  The Ancestry DNA testing is fun and is helpful for connecting through their site.  In the realm of DNA testing, it's fairly inexpensive.  So I do recommend it.  However, now we would like to know more than that DNA test is designed to share.  So I will start saving up pennies to try testing at Family Tree DNA.  They have a variety of levels of different testing and claim to have the largest available databases to compare testing with.  So, hopefully our DNA family adventure has only just begun.

Thank You

October has been the busiest month of our year so far!  I apologize for not posting on here more often.  I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for buying my products during family history month.

If you missed the sale, it's still running a few more days through October 31st.  Family history and family tree kits are 50% off and bundles are 15% off.  You can find them here in my shop.

Family History Month SALES

 

 

October is Family History Month!  I want to help you celebrate with 50% off of my family history themed kits for the month of October.

 

 

10 Ways to Celebrate Family History Month

 

Have fun and happy scrapbooking! :-)



 

 

NEW: Lady Jane Digital Scrapbooking Kit

This page documents a "Jane" in my family history.  I have several of them in my tree, especially on the Tisdale side.  This particular Jane is the Aunt of my Great Grandfather Frederick Tisdale.  His mother died when he was small and he was raised by his Aunt Jane, though he often still lived with his father and step mother.  Then when his Aunt and Uncle immigrated to the United States, he immigrated too.  The large book cluster comes premade in my new kit Lady Jane, so this page was easy to put together.

Special Thanks goes out to Idgies Heartsong of Heritage Scrap for her lovely vintage stamps used in this kit.

Lady Jane has stormy blue and gray colors and designs that reflect the 19th century. Some of the papers would also work for gentlemen's pages too. Perfect for a blue and gray heritage project, historical re-enactment, history tours and Civil War to Edwardian era photographs. The Kit includes:

24 12x12 300 dpi Background Papers

52 Elements

1 Mat
6 Journal Blocks/Papers (2 recolored)
2 Books (1 open, 1 closed)
4 Labels (2 recolored)
1 Tag
7 Frames
1 Cluster
1 Set Photo Corners
1 Doily
3 Bows
1 Button
1 Cameo
1 Cluster
1 Fern
1 Flourish
5 Flowers
1 Fountain Pen
1 Hook and Eye with shadows
1 Key
1 Keyhole
1 Lace
2 Leaves
1 Pin
3 Ribbons
1 Stitching
2 Tapes

Here are the elements which are mainly monochromatic blue and feminine in nature.

The papers were fun to create.  I wish I had some of them as fabric for quilting! 

Frames, including the one large Frame/book cluster.

 

 

Last, but not least - journaling elements for Lady Jane.

This is a smaller (but still good sized) kit, so I have given it a smaller price and the introductory price is 25% OFF!  Hope you will enjoy.  Happy Scrapping.

New Kits and Sales

 

 

Browse my shop and find some deals!  10-50% off Bundles and Kits.  All new kits are 25% Off, including Autumn Joy.  Thank you for looking.

Baby Grace Charity Kit - Help A Family In Need

I didn't have anything to do with this charity collab, but when I read about her condition it tugged at my Mommy Heart and my years working in pediatrics give me an idea of the journey they have ahead of them. You can read about Baby Grace.  If I had known about this project, I would have joined in, but since I didn't know - I want to pass it on to you now.

There are two ways to help.  The first is by purchasing the kit above at Scrapflower.  There is much more than you can see in this preview and it is on special price for $9.99.

The second way is to purchase a Commercial Use Collab at SugarHillco.

May you grow strong and healthy Baby Grace and be blessed by the Almighty Father who created you beautiful!  And may your parents and family be strengthened to help you on this journey and may your doctors be guided by wisdom!  And that reminds me - a third way to help!  You can pray for Baby Grace and her family.

New Kit - Autumn Joy

Autumn Joy is my latest kit, hot off the press!  Autumn is my favorite season and I probably have 10x more fall kits than I will ever use but I am always drawn to them.

Here are most of the elements.  Teal is one of my favorite colors so it was fun to throw in there for contrast and compliment to the oranges.

 

Frames and journal elements for Autumn Joy.

 

 



The leaf papers were fun to make and there are 8 solid colors.  I hope you have fun creating with them.

 

And now you can see the inspiration for my Autumn Joy.  Autumn Joy is normally $4.99 and is on sale now 25% off.

Sales and New Kits

Check out my new kit on sale 25% Off.  Select kits are on sale for 10-50% Off.  This is a new selection and different than last month.  Visit my store here!  Thank you for looking!

Fun Family Tree (New Kit)

 

 

I've been busy designing again.  For many months I have wanted to create a fun kit that could be used with more modern photos and not so "Victorian" looking.  Here is a pedigree chart page I made with my new kit Fun Family Tree.

 

 

 

Here is another page highlighting photos of our daughters.  My intent was that this kit could be used for every day pictures as well.  The colors would lend to autumn and fall pictures and there are some leaf elements.

 

 

 

As you can see, Fun Family Tree is bright and cheerful with a more modern, slightly country, slightly shabby feel to it.

 

 



 

Here are the elements with many flowers, ribbons and leaf/tree elements for you to mix and match on your layouts.

 

 

 

Frames from Fun Family Tree, including two clusters.

 

 

 

 

Here are the different journaling options for telling your story.  The 4x6 cards could be used for recipe cards as well.

 

 

 

 

It wouldn't be a family tree kit without pedigree charts.  This preview shows the two 4 generation pedigree charts as well as the two mat overlays for the papers.

 

 

 

 

Colored paper previews, including some "trees".

 

 

 

More papers including oranges, yellows and creams.

 

 









 

The greens and a couple browns as well as card stock in the Fun Family Tree Kit.

 

I hope you will have as much fun using this kit as I did designing it.  As always, if you design using my kit - I'd love to see what you made!  Thanks for stopping by today to look.

 

 

 



 

 

Search Ancestry Census Page Free Today

Today only you can search the US Census free at Ancestry.  They also have a free Census guide to download.  Happy Searching!

Family Historian Big Start Kit, Clusters, Papes and Easy Album

So, I've been busy, designing!  This is something I have had running around in my brain for quite some time and it feels good to get it done and in the shop.  First off is the Family Historian Big Starter Kit.

Elements

 

 

Are you the historian in your family? I am in mine and there is a lot of information to keep track of. Whether you are just starting out, or you've been doing this for awhile, this kit was created to help you handle your family photos, stories and memorabilia. The elements are neutral tans, beiges and creams, as well as the papers. Because the majority of the kit is neutral it will work together with some of my other kits like: Homestead, Family Album Big Heritage Kit, Family Treasures Family Tree Kit, My Family Tree series of kits, as well as many others here in the Heritage Scrap store.

 



 

Frames and Journal Elements

 

Of course it is important to keep track of the vital statistics for your family, so there are plenty of journaling options and frames. In most of my kits I decorate these, but I have left them plain and blank so that you have more freedom to design your own pages with them.



 

Special Papers

 

This preview shows the special papers that were created - a French memo board, rumpled sheet music, an old map, a delicate edged overlay and a worn overlay featuring one of the photo blended oak tree papers that were created with my own photography.

 

 



Some of the 12x12 300dpi background papers.  I have tried to create some neutral but interesting backgrounds so that your photographs and stories take center stage!

 

 

More background papers in lighter colors.  Several of the backgrounds have blended photographs from the lovely oak trees in northern California.  Others have vintage newspapers and there is a mix of feminine and masculine/neutral patterns.

 

 

And since this is a starter kit designed for both the experienced and the beginner, I have included a bonus color pack for those who do not have other kits to draw from, or for color ideas in mixing with the neutrals.

 

As you can see, this is a packed kit!  It includes:

 

44 Papers

39 12x12 300 dip background papers
4 Overlays
1 French Memo Board

79 Elements

11 Frames
14 Flowers
6 Leaves/Ferns
5 Bows (1 recolored)
5 Ribbons
1 Bead Spill
1 Bookmark
2 Borders
1 Set Brackets
2 Brads
1 Button
2 Chains
1 Clip
1 Coin Cluster
1 Doily
2 Watches
1 Lace
1 Lock/Key
1 Fountain Pen
3 Stamps
1 Staple
2 Pieces of Tape
4 Labels (3 recolored)
1 Banner
1 Book
1 Telegram
1 Postcard
4 Journal Cards
1 Scrap Paper
1 Envelope

 

 

 

One of my favorite things to design, are clusters. Since the main kit is a starter kit and some purchasers of a starter kit may not know how to combine and create clusters (or maybe you just think they are pretty), I have created a Clusters Add On.  In it you will find 10 clusters, many page sized, others floral, designed for journaling, frames or borders.  Dress up your pages!

 

 

 

These cuties are my Grandpa Hopkins and his little sister Vera.  The photographs were taken 1907 and 1908 respectively.  A page cluster was used to create this, adding only the journaling circle and background paper which come from the Family Historian Starter Kit.

 

 



 

Some of you may not want a whole big neutral kit, but would like some special family tree and vintage newspaper, music and map papers and overlays to mix in with your other kits to add a special touch a project.  That is why I separated out 9 12x12 300dpi background papers and 3 overlays into the Family Historian Special Papers Pack.  PLEASE NOTE:  These are the papers INCLUDED in the Family Historian Big Starter Kit, so if you purchase it or one of the bundles, you already have these - they are not an add on.

 

 

This fun family tree was actually created with the next kit I'll highlight, along with elements from the starter kit.  But this quick page from the Easy Album shows what one of the special papers looks like.

 

 

 

Family Historian Easy Album is designed to be just that - Easy!  If you want, you can simply slip in photos and write and you have an album.  It is left neutral so that you can add embellishments to create your own masterpiece!

 

 

One of the things I envisioned this Easy Album being used for, is a quick project to be created for a gift.

 

 





 

 

There are 3, 4 and 5 generation photo family trees as well as a pedigree chart on a tree background.

 

 

 

 

There is even a fun French Memo board page to which you can add multiple photos and memorabilia. (There is a coordinating "blank" memo board background in the main kit)

 

 

 

 

The pages can be configured in any order that you wish.  And there is a combination of full page photo frames, multiple photos on one page and photos accompanied by journaling.

 

 

 

 

All together the Family Historian Easy Album includes:

 

19 Premade Pages
1 Blank Page
1 Front Album Cover
1 Back Album Cover
1 Album Spine

 

 

This layout of my great grandparents was created with a page from the Easy Album, with the addition of a cluster from the Cluster add on and other elements from the Starter Kit.

 

 

This one is also a single photo page from the album with the cluster and a bow added.

 

Do you like more than one item?  You can save with a bundle.

 

 









 

You can get the whole shebang in the Family Historian Big Bundle, which includes the Family Historian Big Starter Kit, Cluster Add On and Easy Album.

 

 

And if you aren't interested in the album but would like both the Cluster Add On and the Family Historian Big Starter Kit, you can find them both in the Family Historian Bundle.

 

While these are new, the kits are on sale for 25% Off and the Bundles 10% Off (because they already offer a significant discount).

 

Phew!  This is a long post!  Thank you for making it to the end with me.  I hope you will enjoy these new kits.