Upcoming Classes

I am excited to tell you that these upcoming classes are now on sale.

Creative Composites - If you have taken Blending and Beyond and would like to explore more ways of incorporating blending on your pages, Creative Composites is for you.  This class takes off where Blending and Beyond ends.  We will be exploring color enhancements, creating motion, sequencing of photos, using filters and more.  The class includes six recordings and two live webinars.  Here are two of the images that I demonstrate during this course.

Class will run from January 7, 2013 thru February 11.  It is now on sale and you don't want to miss the early bird coupon which is good through November 17.  The early bird coupon code is: 4CCJAN13.  You can sign up for this class here.  I hope to see you there.

Blending and Beyond Booster Workshop - If you have taken Blending and Beyond and didn't want the class to end this workshop is for you.  I will be doing three page demonstrations through 2 live webinars and 1 recording.  I will be using the same techniques taught in Blending and Beyond but will show you some other ways of incorporating them into your pages.  

The workshop will run November 25 - 30 and is on sale now.  You can register for the workshop here.  I hope to see you there.

Jana's Junkies

I think I have mentioned this before but it is certainly worth mentioning again.  I started teaching digital art classes a year ago.  I will admit that when I started this journey, I was a little nervous.   I wondered if anybody would take my class and I wasn't quite so sure that I would be able to explain what my fingers were doing.   I honestly thought I would teach one class and that would be it.  Well, what I discovered was that I absolutely LOVE sharing my passion with others and I have had such an amazing group of people to work with.  They are the best...the most creative...the kindest....the funniest....the most helpful and most supportive people.  I can't even begin to tell you how much I enjoy these women and seeing the beautiful pages that they create.

I am currently teaching Blending and Beyond.  This is my third session of this class and I'm happy to say that I have some very familiar faces in this class that have taken it before.  I love that and it is so fun to see how much they have grown as artists and they are flat out so much fun.  There was a thread in the forum and they were joking about taking my classes more than one time and they decided to name themselves "Jana's Junkies".  I thought it was hilarious.

This morning I get this email and laughed so hard it hurt.  I just had to share it with you.  They are SO funny and creative!

In case it is too small to read on my blog, it says the following:

BEWARE
Be on alert!  The individuals pictured on these pages should be monitored closely.  Addicted to the blending classes of Jana Morton, they are known to exhibit and can be identified by the following symptoms:
-The need to participate in Jana Morton classes repeatedly.
-Difficulty controlling their urge to Blend and Post.
-Postponement of established responsibilities in order to extend their computer sessions.
-Rapid heartbeat and sweaty palms when experiencing creative urges and the associated adrenaline rushes that accompany Blending.
-Exuberant language accompanied by occasional overuse of exclamation points.
-When agitated, they have been overheard muttering such incoherent phrases as "Reverse, Dither, Transparency - all checked" and "Switch the Mode on the Bottom Layer to Hard Light".

WARNING
The persons in these photos are particularly dangerous at the end of Blending Classes, when strong class withdrawal symptoms may manifest.  Challenged, they may be unable to control their urge to enroll in additional classes.  

APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION!
Jana Junkies have been well trained by Jana Morton in all techniques required to blend mercilessly.  Armed with cameras and skilled in their use, Jana Junkies have been known to "Shoot now, Blend later".


OK, is that a hoot or what?  I still can't stop laughing.  I so appreciate their collaborative efforts of putting this together.  It made my day to say the least!  It has been my pleasure getting to know the people in my classes and I feel so lucky to work such an amazing group of people.  A huge "THANK YOU" to each of you for taking my classes and letting me be a part of your memory keeping journey!

Weekend

I hope you had a great weekend!  We had a really nice weekend which started on Friday with a birthday celebration in our house.  Wiley turned 10 and he got the royal treatment which always includes ham for dinner and birthday cake.  I can't believe he is 10.  He has been such a wonderful part of our family.

My brother and nephew's football team won their first round of the playoffs which was huge and so much fun.  I can't wait for the game this week.

On Saturday, the kids went trick or treating on main street which is a whole lot of fun for them.  They are so excited about their costumes and it is nice that they get to wear them more than once.  Well, actually Quinn has been in his non-stop and it is already tearing out from so much use.  

Amelia and Quinn decided to be Power Rangers.  The two of them are so close and it was no surprise that they wanted to do something together.

Here they are on main street checking out the "goods".

Ellie wanted to be Katy Perry and I just didn't think that was a good idea so she decided to be a raccoon instead.  I love her costume and it is going to be warm which is always a plus in Minnesota this time of year.

The kids have been counting down until Halloween.  They only have two more days to wait!  Life is good!

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a great week!

Halloween Tags

I love creating all kinds of things.  I am in charge of the gift bags for Quinn's preschool class Halloween Party and yesterday we put them together.  This is how they turned out.

I dusted off my old Cricut machine that played a large role in my old traditional scrapbooking days.  We found a tag that I cut out and scanned in.  This is how the tag looked:

After I cut it out on the Cricut, I scanned it into the computer.  I wanted to know both the size and shape so that I could create an inside tag with each child's name.  Once I brought this tag into Photoshop, I took the magic wand and tapped on the white.  It activated all of the white around the tag.  I then went to "Select" and "Inverse" to activate only the tag shape.  I then created a new layer above the tag in the layers palette and went to "Edit" and "Stroke".  I entered a value of 3.  This gave my tag a black outside line so that I knew what shape to create the design.

I then created a new document and used my move arrow tool to bring this outline of the shape over to the new document.   I made the outline a bit smaller so that when I cut them out, the colors of the original tag could be seen around the edges of the white. I duplicated it a number of times (Command/Control + J) and I was all set to start adding my products.  

I decided to use Pattie Knox's cute little Boo Buddies and these tags came together in no time.  Here is how they looked on my computer.

Of course I needed to add a back to them.

Quinn helped me stuff the cups and this is how the batch looked when we were all done.

I really like creating things for others and so do my children.  I enjoyed using my Cricut again and combining that with the fabulous digital products that are so easy to use.  If you are looking for some quick Halloween tags, this is a fun one.  Have a great day!

Project 2012

Hello.  I hope you had a good week.  It is hard to believe that we are in the middle of October already.  I am continuing to plug away on my album for 2012.  I don't even know if I should use the word "plugging" because I really enjoy this project and it feels so good to know that our year has been documented.  I just did a count and to date I have 187 spreads of photo and stories from our daily lives for this year.  I absolutely LOVE that.  This system has totally changed the way that I scrapbook.  When I want to create a special page for my children's albums, I now go through these pages, find the stories and photos that I want to share.  I open up the page from this project and know the journaling and photos are all there.  In my eyes, scrapbooking is about documenting the memories and the ability to be creative with these memories is just an added bonus.  Years from now when (IF) life ever slows down a bit, I will be able to pull these pages, have all of the information there and just enjoy creating.  Here are a few pages from the beginning of October.

I'm starting to think about how my album will look for 2013.  I know I will continue on this same track.  I'm sure I will be using a different set of template although in all honesty, I love the set that I have used this year.  It fits with my style of clean and graphic.  The end of the year is such a rush and I am hoping to have my system for 2013 all set before the crazy last months of the year.

A Peek into Our Little World

I hope you all had a great week.  The kids were off of school today and we had such a nice day.  I thought I would share some photos of what life is like around here. 

Quinn was happy that Mia was home all day.  

A quick trip to Target this morning and then stopped at the park for a walk with Wiley.  He loves going there.

After lunch Ellie's best friend came over for a playdate.  

When she comes over, we always ask for her to bring her little sister because Amelia loves to play with her.  The four of them play so well together.

 Here they are on the patio dressed as princesses.  They had made "castles" in the woods with the leaves and then they were having a snack....of course it was popcorn!

I guess the kids are anxious for winter to arrive because they got out the sleds and had the neighbor boy pull them down the hill.  They did this all afternoon.  He must have been exhausted.

Here are the girls and notice Q is in his power ranger costume.

Then we headed across the cities to my brother and nephew's football game.

It was a great night for football and we smoked them which is always a good thing!

I love days like today...just simple days spent together.  I'm looking forward to the weekend and hoping we have nice weather.  The yard is full of leaves and we need to start putting outside things away in preparation for winter.    I hope you have a good weekend!

Jana's Jumpstarts - October

There is a new Jumpstarts up on on the Creative Passion Blog.  I hope you will join in me in celebrating fall.

On a Mission

I have been on a "decluttering/get organized" mission for the last two months.  I do not like clutter and let's just face it...kids and clutter go together.  I think that was the biggest adjustment for me in having children was the fact that there was now so much "stuff" in our home.  As I picked up after the kids all summer long, I decided that we needed to get rid of some "stuff".  We were at the beach one day with some friends and they were talking about the same thing.  We decided to do a garage sale.  I've never done this before and probably will never do it again.  I knew this was going to be a tough concept for the kids to grasp.  We have so many toys around our house that simply never get played with.  Of course they didn't want to part with anything.  I then happened to mention that if we made enough money, we would purchase a popcorn machine for the basement.  We love to do family movie nights at our house.  All of a sudden the toys started coming out of the woodwork.  Everybody was on board.  We had the garage sale in September which was eye-opening to say the least.  We sold a ton of stuff and made enough money for the popcorn machine.

The popcorn machine arrived last week and let's just say that it has been a HUGE hit.  Our home smells like a movie theater.  While everybody is at school and work, Quinn and I have gotten into the groove of just popping a little popcorn when we need a snack.  It has been so much fun.

In the process of getting ready for the garage sale, I pretty much gutted our home and it felt so good.  I am now switching my efforts to my computer which has a whole lot of clutter.  My husband who is a technology guru is amazed at the amount of memory that I consume...both in the volume of pictures that I take as well as the layers and layers of psds and now all of the videos for class.  I'm now in the process of reorganizing, backing up and deleting files that I have no need for.  I'm excited about feeling a whole lot "lighter" in all areas of my life.  

I'm also starting to actually print out some pictures.  Through the process of creating my heritage album, I realized how important it is to have hard copies of some of the more important photos.    I haven't printed out pictures since I started digital scrapbooking 6 years ago.  I haven't started this yet but I am planning on going back and printing a handful of pictures for each child over the last few years.  My Documenting a Decade album is going to come in very handy because when I created those spreads, I used my favorite pictures for each year.  

The last few months have totally been consumed with creating my heritage album which I am so excited about.  I will admit though it feels good to move on and to take care of some of these things that have been building up around here.  

Now we just need a bulk shipment from Orville Redenbacher and we will be all set!

Coloring a Title

It has been awhile since I have done a tutorial so I thought it would be fun to share one with you today.  I recently created this page about a sweet conversation that I had with my son.  You will notice that the title at the bottom of the page has some color variation in it which is really simple and adds a bit of pop to the title.

I brought this new word art by Cathy Zielske into Photoshop.  It was of course black so I recolored it to a soft yellow.  I activated my color palette and selected my color so that it was in the foreground of my color palette.  

Then I activated the marching ants around the title by left clicking with the mouse + Command (Mac)/ Control (PC).  I had yellow in the foreground color so I used the hot keys and hit Opt (Mac)/ Alt (PC) + Backspace to change the color to yellow.

I positioned the title accordingly on my page.  I then wanted to add a little bit more color to the title.  Once again, I made sure the title layer was active in the layers palette and activated the marching ants by left clicking with the mouse and hitting Command (Mac)/ Control (PC).  I changed my color palette to a dark orange for the foreground color.  I created a new layer above the title by hitting the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette.  I selected a soft brush and painted portions of the title on the new layer above my original title.  The marching ants determined my perimeters so I didn't need to worry about coloring outside the lines.  I like the fact that it is a quick way to add some interest to word art.  Here is what it looked like in the end.

This word art is by Cathy Zielske and it is called "Typesets HelviRound 1".  It will be available this weekend at Designer Digitals.

Next time you use word art for a title, I hope you try out this technique.  It is simple and fun....I like that in a title!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Beginning of October

October has arrived and I can't believe it.  I'm wondering where September went.  The weather has been absolutely amazing here.  The temperatures are warm and the colors of fall are on fire.  I love this season!  I thought I would share my favorite photo from last week.  This is the lake near our home and when we have an occasional night off, I've been taking the kids there and I've decided that it is the perfect way to end the hectic days.

I just wanted to take this time to update you on a few things going on. 

Generations - Tomorrow is our last class posting for this class.  It has been an awesome journey for me to share my love for family heritage through this class.  I have had such a wonderful group of people to work with and it has been so fun to see them uncovering their stories from the past.  

Blending and Beyond - Blending and Beyond is back and begins next Monday.   I'm looking forward to this class starting and seeing what everybody creates.  If you haven't signed up yet, I would encourage you to  register.  I promise you will have fun!

Blending and Beyond Booster - We received a number of requests for more Blending and Beyond.  Tami and I put our heads together and came up with a Booster workshop that we are very excited about.  The workshop is scheduled for the end of November and is only for people who have taken Blending and Beyond.   This workshop includes two live webinars and one recording.  I'm liking the whole concept of this workshop and hope that is leads to a variety of workshop offerings.

Designer Digtials Photo Swap - In August, Designer Digitals hosted a photo swap and it was SO MUCH FUN.  I exchanged photos with Amy Mallory and had a blast scrapping somebody else's photos.  Well, the photo swap was such a huge hit and is back.  You can sign up through October 9th in the forum at Designer Digitals.   It is so fun to see what somebody else creates with your photos and it is also such a great way to connect with a fellow scrapbooker.  I hope you play along. 

Masterful Scrapbook Designs - Masterful Scrapbook Designs is a monthly seminar in which Debbie Hodge brings in a variety of scrapbookers to share their creative process.  Debbie has done a wonderful job with this and it is an ABUNDANCE of information.  The artists share layouts and deconstruct their process. There are also live webinars and it is so fun to listen to how everybody approaches memory keeping in their own unique way.  I will be teaching at MSD in November when the topic is "old photos".  I just finished getting everything ready for this seminar and I'm looking forward to sharing my creative process for heritage photos in this manner.  After completing a 200 + page heritage album, it was fun to dive back in and create different types of pages with these photos.

There is a lot of exciting things coming up that I'm looking forward to.  I hope you are enjoying these days of fall.  Thanks for stopping by!