Digital Scrapbooking

I've been wanting to try digital scrapbooking for quite a while, and made several feeble attempts, but gave it up pretty quickly. I bought several magazines and books, signed up for internet classes, and downloaded tutorials. Nothing ever jelled for me. Recently I decided to give it another try, and my mind must have been in just the right place because something seemed to actually 'click' for me this time. :)

I downloaded a tutorial and a free kit from http://www.scrapgirls.com/ to create the following layout. It took me a couple hours to do, so the next night I tried it again with a different kit (another free kit, this one from http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/), and it was much easier and a whole lot quicker. Here's my first effort:



For "the rest of the story" ... this is my 5 year old grandson. This was the first time I got to pick him up from Kindergarten, and we went for an ice cream afterwards. It was a beautiful day, so we got out of the car and sat down outside to visit while we ate our ice cream. He wound up with chocolate ice cream ALL OVER his face - he even had it in his ears! It was so funny! As I was wiping off some of the ice cream, he says "I yike ice kean Gamma". What a surprise! LOL! It was a precious couple of hours with him, and I'm glad I was able to capture it with this layout!

I don't think I would ever switch to total digital, but I can see where some digital and maybe some hybrid pages would be nice once in a while.



If you're doing any digital work, we hope you'll bring some to share at the Retreat.

Teaching!

Hello Attendees,

I am finally teaching! Well kinda. I am in graduate school now, working towards a Master in the Arts of Teaching (MAT). With this I attend classes at the university all day (9-6) on Monday, and then intern at McNair Middle School Tuesday thru Friday. This year is going to fly by as I am so busy I don't know which way is up! The school is AWESOME and the teachers in my pod could not be more supportive. I am excited about this year, but also nervous. I want to do a good job AND give plenty of attention to Croppin' Train.

I have been working hard to design a two page layout for the fall retreat. I have had trouble getting one aspect of it (no hints!), but Dora is working diligently to help me find what I need (thank you Dora). We attended classes at CKC and learned all kinds of new and exciting stuff to show you. This weekend (HAPPY BIRTHDAY DORA!) we went to a cabin and worked on more ideas to demonstrate for you in classes during retreat. It is amazing what creativity comes out in a cabin with other crafters. So while I am very busy with school, family, and more, I am still finding time to assist in planning a great retreat in November.

I look forward to seeing everyone and visiting with you all. I also look forward to sharing what I have learned and the ideas we have developed. See you soon,

Melissa

CKC Tulsa

We have just returned from CKC in Tulsa where I took four Tattered Angels classes. They are the makers of Glimmer Mist. I am so full of new techniques for Glimmer Mist that my head is spinning. I am looking forward to sharing it all with you at the Fall retreat. I hope I can wait that long :) I just cannot express how excited I am. There are things that I have never thought about doing. I know this is such a tease - but you have to come to retreat to hear about all the things I learned. You won't be disappointed.
Dora

Scrapbooking in a Cabin

At the end of May, five of us rented a cabin for the weekend to scrapbook. It was so much fun. We all got a lot done and relaxed. The lake view was so nice (picture above). I love combining nature and scrapbooking. I felt no stress that weekend. We may have to make this an annual tradition (or maybe more often).

This is the cabin we stayed in. We cropped on the bottom floor to ease the unpacking from the vehicles. :) Yeah, I think we are going again. I wish I could buy it. My goal the next time is to work on the Navy scrapbook for my husband. I think he would really like that. (see the Something to Think About post)

Follow Us

Don't miss any announcements we make on this blog. Click "Follow Blog" at the top of this page.

Wireless Internet

We WILL have wireless internet at the

Fall 2009 Retreat at Embassy.

We will have to set up your user login, etc before the retreat. If you are already registered for the retreat, please send us an email letting us know if you need access to the wireless internet. For those of you that will be registering soon, please make a note of this on the registration form.

If you want wireless internet in your sleeping room, that is an additional charge that you will arrange through the hotel.

Advanced Cricut Training

We are excited to announce that we will have a representative from Provo Craft at our Fall 2009 Retreat.

He will be here Friday night, November 13th, from 4:00pm until ?? to teach us some advanced features of the Cricut and of course, answer any of your questions.

He will talk about the Design Studio software, Deep Cut Blade with magnet, and many more topics that will be decided on closer to retreat. If you have any topic requests, please leave them in a comment here, we will try to get them all in. (Note: the Gypsy will not be shipping until November, so we may not have it in time for retreat. We can take preorders and we will try to have the best price around - see the Cricut Gypsy post)

This class is optional and FREE. We will have a area set up off to the side where you can come and go to listen and learn.

Cricut Gypsy

For those of you interested in the Cricut Gypsy check out the following web site. This link will take you directly to the test drive but there is also other information on the web site.

http://www.provocraft.com/gypsy/test-drive.html

One thing to keep in mind, once a cartridge is loaded onto the Gypsy, it cannot be loaded onto any other Gypsy. It does not affect using it in any Cricut machine. So you and your friends can still share cartridges for your cricut machines. And we will still have all of our cricut cartridges for you to use at retreat (just don't load them on your own Gypsy)

We will be able to sell the Gypsy to you for $225.00 plus any postage to mail it to you, if necessary. If you would like to preorder one, you can make payments on it until it is delivered which should be in November (hopefully in time for retreat).

Here are some questions I copied from another email I received:

1- Will the Gypsy Version include ALL the features of the current Design Studio,
or will features be reduced to facilitate operation on a handheld device, ie, a
Design Studio Lite?

Yes the Gypsy will have evrything the DS has and then some. The only thing is lacks now is individual select but that should come with an update soon

2- Have the bugs that have plagued Design Studio been corrected and/or reduced?
If so, which ones specifically?

Yes it is completely different from DS written from the ground up. DS issues have no bearing on the gypsy

3- Since Design Studio was introduced, users has asked (okay.... we have begged,
nagged, whined, and even cried) for the following options:
Group all/ Ungroup all
Select all/Deselect all
Weld all/ Unweld all

Yes it does group, select all, weld options and more.

4- Given that Windows 7 will be here shortly, ProvoCraft can you please confirm
that Design Studio and the Gypsy are both able to work with Windows 7?

Yes, we are prepared to update the gypsy with windows 7 when it comes out.

5- If carts can only be loaded once in the Gpysy, what happens if my Gypsy
breaks or the software malfunctions? What procedures/policies does PC have for
retrieving lost data and cartridges ~ both in and out of warranty?

First is that the carts you have do not get erased. Second if the Gypsy malfunctions while in warranty it will be replaced by PC with a Gypsy that has an identical serial # to the faulty one and you can then reload the carts again. If the Gypsy is lost, damaged, stolen, or out of warranty then you will need to purchase a new one also with the same serial # as the former one and then reload the carts.

Glimmer Mist for Sale

We have the following colors of Glimmer Mist for sale for $5.60 each (includes tax). Buy 3 and get free priority shipping. Buy 6 and get the 7th free plus free priority shipping.

Go to http://www.mytatteredangels.com/ to see the colors.

If there is a season and year after the name, that is when it was available. So it may not be on the website site anymore. Let me know if you cannot find one and are curious about the color.

Don't delay - we only have 2 to 3 of each color (I will delete the colors as they are sold out)

At this Fall retreat, I will demoing more ways to use glimmer mist.

(Payment note: email us your order at croppintrain@aol.com and we will email you the amount you owe and hold your order until payment is received. You can mail us a check or we can send you a paypal invoice. )

Aspen Yellow

Auburn - Fall 08

Autumn Leaves

Black Gold - winter 08

Blue Skies

Candy Apple Red

Cherub Pink

Cinder - Fall 09

Cinnamon - Fall 08

Coffee Shop

Coral - Summer 08

Cranberry Zing

Dewberry - winter 08

Frost

Frosty Nights -Winter 07

Gingerbread -Winter 07

Gold

Golden Terracotta

Harvest Orange

Holly Berry -Winter 07

Kiwi - Summer 08

Lavendar Wisp

Merlot

Mustard Seed

Old Lace

Olive Vine

Oriental Poppy

Pineapple - Summer 08

Pink Taffy

Red Maple

Red Velvet

Sage - Fall 08

Sand

Simply Khaki - Fall 08

Slate

Snow Angel - winter 08

Spring Mint - Spring 08

Spring Violet

Suede

Sugar Cookie -Winter 07

Tattered Rose

Timeless Lilac

Tuscan Sun

Twilight - Fall 08

Walnut Gold

Watermelon - Summer 08

Wheatfields

Wild Currant - winter 08

Winter Pine - winter 08

Today, I'm sharing a couple pages from a work-in-progress multi-page wedding layout to highlight some techniques to add texture and dimension to your pages. These pages use SU! cardstock. On this first page, I stamped an image from the Cherish stamp set (love that set!) multiple times to create the border. If you want multi-stamping to look random, be sure and turn your stamp so you're not stamping the same position every time. And, NEVER be afraid to stamp off the paper - just make sure you have something covering your work surface beore you do. After stamping, I used SU! Mini Glue Dots to adhere the pearls. I used Grey Taffeta SU! ribbon to separate the two cardstocks, and, again using Mini Glue Dots, adhered tiny pink jewels to the taffeta. The pearls and pink jewels came from Hobby Lobby's bead section. I am not concerned about embellishments like that being acid-free - they're not touching my pictures, and they're adhered to acid-free cardstock, so there's a buffer between them and my pictures. Across the top of this page, I wheeled with an SU! jumbo wheel, with a Versamark-filled ink cartridge. I then embossed that image with clear embossing powder. Then I sponged pink ink all over the image. This resist technique is very easy to do, and, depending on the colors, can be subtle or very striking. After I sponged with ink, I also used a cotton ball and 'scrubbed' over the embossed areas, just to clean them up a bit.

This second page - with that beautiful cake! - highlights the Cuttlebug Embossing Folder. In the enlarged section, you can see how the swirls on the gray cardstock match the swirl pattern on the cake. I ran my cardstock lengthwise through the Cuttlebug, then turned it around and ran it through again. This allowed me to get the embossed image across the 12" width. This technique will 'shrink' your cardstock a bit (width-wise), but I don't mind having that sliver of background color on the edges.

Hope you enjoy today's post, and can use some of the techniques highlighted here. Have a great week!

This week's layout features my youngest grand-daughter, Maebre - pronounced like "maybe" with an "r". I love her name - it's unique, and I particularly like the old-fashioned spelling of "Mae". This is a collection of photos from her first year -- she just turned 3!

The pattern paper is from Close to My Heart - Life Delights, and the solid cardstock is all from Stampin' Up! The ribbons are from Adornit; the other embellishments (chipboard flower and brads) are also Stampin' Up! The chipboard flower was naked, so I painted it with a SU! Craft Ink, and then stamped an image on each of the petals.

Both the title on the left and the words on the right were cut from the Wishblade cutter. I originally intended to use the individual letters for the title on the left, but, after I got it cut out, I liked the silhouette of the name. The Wishblade is similar to a combination of Cricut and SCAL (Sure Cuts a Lot), wherein you can cut any font, image, etc. you want. No cartridges are required. I've had the Wishblade for about 3 years, and have used it extensively one week-end! Shameful isn't it? I still have it, but find I use the Cricut more often. I have Design Studio for the Cricut, but have not yet invested in SCAL.

Something to think about

I was looking at the Aug/Sept 2009 issue of Scrapbooks, Etc. today and read a question that made me think.

"What scrapbooking project have you always wanted to create but haven't yet? What's holding you back?" (page 14)

Immediately I thought of my project... my husbands pictures from his time in the Navy. I think he would really appreciate me putting his pictures in a scrapbook. I have purchased the album to put them in and paper and embellishments for the US Navy. He seems to get excited and interested. I recently purchased the Stand & Salute cartridge for the Cricut. He liked that. All and all, he is more excited about me getting a Cricut then I would have expected, but that is a different story.

So what is holding me back... I scrapbook for myself most of the time. When I create classes for the retreat or my classes at my house, I am nervous you won't like it, but that is nothing compared to how I feel about doing his Navy pictures. I didn't know him when he was in the Navy. I am afraid to get the wrong tone for the pictures or maybe he sorted them by event and I mixed them up again. Bottom line, I am nervous he won't like the album.

Silly, I know because he has always liked the pages I have done. He actually wants to read my journaling and all.

So how would you answer this question? Think about it and if you want to, post a comment to encourage us all to finally do that project that keeps following us around.

As you've noticed, Dora's been doing most (well, okay, "all") of the posting to the blog. She's working on a special project this month and asked me (Pat) to post a few things, so here's my first post for you. The left-page, in particular, is quite blurry - I don't know why.

This layout is pretty simple, but I really wanted to show off the subject - my grandson! This was for his 2nd birthday (and he just turned 5!). The cardstock is SU! - Marigold Morning and Buckaroo Blue (both retired) and Chocolate Chip (an all-time favorite!). I cut the title and date in (I think) Base Camp. Just cut two sets of letters and then offset them when I adhered them to the page. The 'photo corners' on the left-side are just squares of cardstock, adhered on the backside, then folded and snipped to form the finished square on the front. I also used a small hole punch to punch holes for the hemp, that is tied in a knot.

I like to do tone-on-tone stamping to create backgrounds. Versamark is a great ink pad for this - it just stamps in clear ink on any color cardstock. However, in this instance, the Versamark was a little too light, so I used the same color inkpads (Marigold Morning and Buckaroo Blue), and stamped images from the (retired) SU! set, "Toy Box". (This set, along with another 300+ stamp sets, will be available for you to use at the Fall 2009 Croppin' Train Scrapbook Retreat.) When I went to get this layout to photograph, in my head I remembered as having sponged all the torn edges. What a surprise when I noticed they weren't sponged! In retrospect, I really should have sponged those torn edges, but, in reality, I'm sure I won't do it now! No stamping or anything special on the right-side page.

Over time, all of our scrapping methods, likes, dislikes, etc. go through phases. When I first started noticing an abundance of one-photo pages, I remember thinking 'what a waste; I would never do that'. Well, as you can see, I've changed my mind. I don't do it often, but, must admit, there are certain photos, layouts, that just lend themselves to that ... and I do like it!

A special Croppin' Train "WooHoo" (Happy Birthday!) to Linda and Dorothy this week. Hope both of your days were special and happy!

T-Shirt contest

We are working on designing t-shirts for your Croppin’ Train Retreats, but we want your help.

So, for the month of July we are having a T-shirt design contest. Please email or snail mail your designs to us by July 31^st. We will review the designs and pick the winning design in August.

The winning designer will receive a T-shirt for FREE.

Design requirements:

Design to include one to two color plus black

Must include “Croppin’ Train” and “Scrapbook Retreats” “CroppinTrain.blogspot.com”

Suggest a shirt color and style

You can create your design on the computer or hand draw it. Both are great ways to submit your ideas.

croppintrain@aol.com or Croppin' Train; PO Box 982; Bentonville, AR 72712

Look what was delivered

WOW! - this was on my front porch when I got home today.

To give you some perspective, the box is 16" x 16" and FULL of Glimmer Mist.

There was barely any packing peanuts (thankfully) in it because there was no room.

Glimmer Mist is the same great product with a Fabulous NEW Look!

Copied from their blog "Bet you didn’t know that ALL of the bottles of Glimmer Mist are hand labeled? Glimmer Mist is made right in a warehouse in Loveland, Co. And each bottle is mixed, bottled, and labeled by crafters. To make things easier on our staff, they have decided to change the look one last time. Their bottles will now have a screen printed label to help out their bottle crew (and to prevent them from getting Carpal Tunnel!). They bottle over 10,000 bottles a week."

We will have over 60 colors at the Fall retreat plus all the screens they make including the new Halloween screens and colors.

Check out all the colors and products at the Tattered Angels site at www.mytatteredangels.com

Glimmer Mist card

to make up for my super simple page - here is a card I made for Father's Day.

The cardstock (CS) is Stampin' Up Not Quite Navy and Kraft.

The stamps and glimmer mist is Tattered Angels.

I sprayed the Kraft CS with Simply Khaki Glimmer Mist (GM).

Then I stamped the Compass stamp and the images on the left with black ink.

I painted on Patina GM on the left images and the outer ring of compass.

I painted the inner ring and middle circle on the compass with Riptide GM.

The star is painted with Starfish GM.

I attached black brads to the two left images and the center of the star. I also added a small black grommet to the star center.

Then I edged the Kraft CS with brown ink.

This was inspired by a tag that is on www.mytatteredangels.com

Simple Layout

This is a very simple layout. This was so long ago... I knew the when and what but not the where, etc. But I still wanted to document the pictures.

The point of me posting this layout is the font. I used the new Lyrical Letters cartridge for cricut. I just love this font.

Cricut Rewards

Did you know that you can get Cricut Rewards for any cartridge that was released in 2008 and 2009? Well, you can (or if you don't want to, I can use your points, just let me know)

Check out www.cricutrewards.com

You can get shirts or cartridges. And the cartridges are ones that you can't buy from a store normally - they are ones that are released with the machines.

There is a listing of the cartridges that have points available. And on the FAQ page, they talk about what you do if you didn't get the certificate to redeem for points.

Check it out then post a comment here telling us what you think.

not so spooky layout

For this layout I used Black Gold glimmer mist and the iron works glimmer screens. The title "not so spooky" is using Heidi Swapp's ghost alphabets. I took these pictures at an angle in hopes that you can see the ghost shapes better. I also used a glaze pen on the ghost shapes to make eyes.

We will have all of this available in our Boxcar Store at the fall retreat.

(note: my brother has issues with posting pictures of my nephew on the internet, so I smudged his face on the images to respect his wishes.)