Baby Gift

I love to make gifts for people...always have...always will. I made this baby gift for a friend last week and wanted to share it with you. It is super easy. I found a frame that was 8 x 20. I found it in the multiphoto section of the frames. I really like the size of it and actually have used this size before for various pictures that are in my children's rooms.


I used Pattie Knox's A to Zoo Alphabet. It happens to be one of my favorite alphabets because I love the color and texture of it. I also like that it is clean and bold. After I had Caitlin's name in place, I placed marching ants around all of the letters. I created a layer below her name and filled it with black. I moved the black slightly to the right to create more depth with the letters. I then positioned these sweet little bunnies around her name. The bunnies are by Katie Pertiet and they are frequent flyers on my pages. I added some shadows to the title and a little word art and it was done.




The photo is not that great but I just wanted to show you how it looked in the frame. If you are in need of a gift idea, keep this one in mind.



All products are from Designer Digitals.

Today through the Lens

My weekend started off on the right foot. I sent my "go-to" lens into get fixed a couple of weeks ago. They quoted me 6 - 8 weeks because it was going to Japan. My stomach turned but I had no choice. Well, I got the call on Friday that my lens was back....15 days later (yes, I was counting) and I am back to full strength and it feels SOOOOO good!

Today we went to my husband's company's picnic. I wasn't all that fired up to go but it turned out to be awesome. They went all out this year. When we arrived each of the kids got a cute stuffed dog....there were 6 different jumping balloons......face painters......cotton candy......popcorn....a huge buffet....arts and crafts for the kids. Let's just say the whole family was in heaven. Here are some shots from the outing....

After the picnic, we headed back to church because they have a program for the 2.5- 3 year olds in which they receive a bible from the church...Quinn was so excited.

He didn't waste any time diving in....

I hope those of you on the east coast are safe! Take care everybody and have a great week. Thanks for stopping by!

All About Me Pages

I think it is obvious that my favorite thing to scrap would be my children...they have scapbooks upon scrapbooks to prove it. I love seeing the world through their eyes and trying to capture the joy that is so much apart of their childhood. I have scrapbooked for about twenty years and I can honestly say that before coming to Designer Digitals, I had never created a page about myself. Designer Digitals has a monthly "All About Me" challenge. Without this challenge, I probably never would have even thought about doing a page about myself. However when I really think about it sure makes sense to do them.

Earlier this summer, I created a page for each of my kids regarding what they are into at this particular stage of the game. I thought it would be kind of fun to do this for myself. As many of you know, my mother passed away many years ago and there is so many details about her life that I wish I could remember or even that I wish I would have asked her. Once I became mom, this became even more apparent. I was so overwhelmed and had so many questions for her....seven and half years into it and I still feel overwhelmed! As I sat down to write this page, I kept thinking about her. I wrote about the things that I enjoy doing with my kids...I wondered what were her favorite things about being a mom....I wrote about some of the little things that frustrated me as well as the things that I am passionate about. I really wish I could get her perspective on her life as a mom. I kept this in mind as I created this page and I really had fun just rambling out random facts about who I am at 39 years old (YIKES...when did that happen). Someday my kids will get a kick out of this...I hope!

I decided that I should have a photo on this page despite my aversion for being in front of the camera. I set up the tripod on our back patio. Ellie came out and saw what was going on and her eyes lit up. She took over from that point and had me doing all of the goofy little poses that I always suggest for the kids. Then Amelia came out and wanted in on the action. Wiley was wandering through as well...I tried to get some shots with him but he really wasn't interested. It was kind of fun even though I feel a little weird about having my face all over a page. I guess I am just making up for the fact that I am never on any pages because I always have the camera...I like that!

Here is the page that I created:

Here are some additional All About Me pages that I had done last year...

All products are from Designer Digitals.

I hope you take some time to create some pages about yourself. They are fun to do and YOU ARE IMPORTANT. You have a story to tell and believe me there are many people that really want to hear it.

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!

Repeating Word Art - Technique Tuesday

Word art is one of my favorite products to add to a page. I love the simplicity of it and it works really well on pages that are very graphic. I think the word "graphic" would describe my style. One of the ways that I have used word art to unify my layout is by incorporating it into the background paper by changing the opacity or even using a blending mode. I love how subtle it is but it ties the whole page together. Here are some examples of ways that I have used word art on my background paper.

Unconditional Love: You can see that I took the word art that I used for the title...made it larger and then duplicated it several times and "sprinkled" it around the page.


When: On this page, I wrote the title "When" in a font (Impact which is one of my favorites) and then stroked the outside so only the outline appeared. I then duplicated the title and blended it into the background in several places.

Believe: I used an alpha on this title. I highlighted the title with marching ants, filled in the layer below it so that the title would have a shadow. I duplicated this shadow a couple of times, changed the opacity of each of these layers and used it as a type of brushwork.

Happiness: Here you can see that I placed the quote and title in multiple places around the page.

Write It: Once again, I duplicated the quote and made it significantly bigger and placed it over the right hand portion of the page. I then reduced the opacity of it. I love how it reinforces my message.

This is just a simple technique but I really like the look of it!

At the beginning of the summer, I decided to bring you "Technique Tuesday". I have really enjoyed sharing some techniques with you and I hope that you have found them helpful. This will be the last installment of Technique Tuesday at least for awhile. I will continue to share techniques with you from time to time because I really enjoy it but it will be more random. Let' s just say that life is hopping and that is a very good thing...busy but good!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

North Shore

We took a quick trip to Duluth this weekend. Duluth is a city in the northern part of Minnesota and it is located on Lake Superior. It is absolutely GORGEOUS. My camera got a workout and we all had so much fun. Here are some photos from Gooseberry Falls.

This is Split Rock. There were a number of beautiful lighthouses that we saw...this one was my favorite....

Today we were on the pier in Duluth. The kids thought it would be fun to run down the pier together holding hands...

And then they stopped in the middle for a little game of ring around the rosie...

I love this shot...

This is what I call Quinn's "little old man stance". Whenever he is pondering something, his hands go behind his back. I think it is the cutest thing...

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Our Week

Friday has arrived...yeah! We are headed out of town for the weekend and really excited. The week was busy as usual. My camera lens broke while we were on vacation a few weeks ago. It is on it's way to Japan to get fixed which totally bums me out. I used my only other lens as backup...it is going to be a loooooong 6-8 weeks! Here is a little recap of our week...

I survived school shopping with the girls which actually turned out to be fun...I think we spent 1.5 hours and all of our money in one store but everybody came out of there happy which was a bonus. Amelia HAD to get this hat which she ended up wearing all week so it was justified and Ellie HAD to get Vikings sweatpants. The two of them couldn't be more opposite.

A little trip to my favorite park which includes a little trail in which I love to practice photography and the kids love to look for animals...it is a win-win in my book...

I looked at this photo and did a double take....Jeff and Ellie look so much alike here...

Our neighbor boy who is an engineer in the making and is always going through our garage looking for parts assembled this go-cart that the kids had a blast with this week...

Unfortunately the wheels gave out but he came back the next day with a better design...

A lot of time at the park this week...

On Thursday night, a friend invited us to go see the Twin Cities River Rats. They perform every Thursday night and the kids just LOVED it. It is free which is always a bonus and I think that we will be back there again this week. My friend used to be a part of the team. They are performing here on the Mississippi River.

Today Quinn heard heavy equipment in the cul de sac behind our house. I told him he could go watch and when I came to check on him, I found him like this....sitting on top of the fire hydrant enthralled with the trucks.

I hope you have a great weekend!

Silhouettes - Technique Tuesday

A few weeks ago we were at this park. Amelia and Quinn were running back and forth through this tunnel laughing hysterically. I just kept taking photos hoping that I could catch the joy in their faces but I knew the lighting was working against me. When I looked at this series of photos on my camera, I will admit that I was bummed because I didn't capture their facial expressions and that is what I REALLY wanted to capture. My pictures got downloaded onto the computer and I didn't even give this series of photos another thought.

Then the other night I was going through photos and this one stopped me in my tracks. I just stared at the computer screen however this time I looked at it in a whole different light. When I really looked at this photo, I found so many things that I loved about it that I didn't see the first time that I saw it. I love that you can see they are in motion...I love the profile shot of Quinn looking at Amelia as he runs by her side...I love the texture of the actual tunnel itself. Although I cannot see their sweet faces laughing, I can hear their laughter when I look at their silhouette. I could have totally disregarded this photo but I looked deeper and found things that I love about it and went with what I had.

I love this silhouette. Here is the original photo...





Although "technically" I added the frame as my last step on this page, I thought you might like to see how it would have looked with just the photo in place.




When I started on this page, I immediately knew that I wanted to make it look like they were running out into the sunset. I decided to extract part of the photo so that just their silhouette and the tunnel remained. Sometimes extractions can be more complicated but this was a simple one. I just used the magnetic lasso tool and traced the edge of the tunnel opening as well as their silhouettes and hit delete. It was as simple as that.

Then I found some beautiful paper by Lynn Grieveson, added some word art, framed it and that was it. The whole page took me less than 20 minutes. I love it when that happens. Here is the end result...

I thought you might like to see some other examples of how I have used silhouettes. I think I wrote about this photo on a previous blog but I will recap. We were outside playing and the chemical truck came to treat our yard. I had to run inside and told the kids to stay in the garage and not go on the grass. When I came back out, I found my daughter and son sitting like this in the garage waiting. This is another photo that I may have disregarded had I not looked deeper. On the surface, I see two kids sitting in a dirty garage next to my van watching a big white truck with a hose coming out of it, spraying icky chemicals on our yard. However, when I removed all of that "stuff", I found a silhouette of a brother and sister who adore one another.

Here is the page that I created with it...

Here is a picture of my husband and our two daughters from years ago. I love this picture. I decided to use this picture for an art journaling class taught by Pattie Knox at Getting It Scrapped. I LOVE learning from Pattie...she is brilliant, she is fun and she is one of the kindest people that I have ever met. By the way, her self-paced classes are all on sale through September 1st.

Here is the page that I created with this photo. This page was published in Somerset Memories 2011 Spring issue.

I created the silhouettes simply by extracting the individuals and then creating a new layer above them. After creating a new layer above them, I filled the silhouette in with black. You can also see that I did some shadow work on these silhouettes. I did a shadow tutorial here if you are interested.

I think it is so important that when you look at your photos, you find their strengths. We are not going to capture the perfect shot every time but if we can "look through different glasses" and find things we love about the photo, we can create meaningful images that capture the heart of the moment. I hope that you look at your photos a little differently after this blog post.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

Week in Review

WOW...I can't believe it is Saturday already. The week just flew by. The weather has been fabulous here....between 70 and 80 all week but I can feel fall coming. It made me well aware that we only have a few weeks of summer left before we are in full motion with school. We just had a wonderful week together plus my dear friend who has two little boys welcomed a baby girl into their family last night. We are so excited for them and heading over to the hospital later to see her. Here is a peek at our week...

Quinn is now collecting beer bottle caps and the neighborhood is doing their part to make sure that his collection is plentiful...
A little trip to the zoo...

A playdate with friends...

The kids always race around the cul de sac on their bikes and scooters. We have THE BEST neighbors ever. Fritz our neighbor fits in perfectly with the kids. Last year he came back from a motorcycle convention with a miniature motorcycle that he HAD to get because it had Quinn's name on it...it is called a Q-50...here he is racing the kids on the Q-50 with Wiley chasing him of course...later in the week, it was this same scenario except this time he pulled out his Harley. Never a dull moment in the cul de sac.

Wednesday night is ice cream truck night...the kids would be alright waiting on the curb from the moment they get out of bed that day...

Ellie apparently thought that her treat needed to watch her attire...

Wiley smiling for the camera...

Quinn was going through some withdrawals from vacation...

Soccer season comes to a close...

We have a really quiet weekend which is nice. We are having a "girls afternoon out" as they like to call it. We are going to do a little school shopping which will be interesting. My girls are EXACT opposite. One of them won't wear anything except a t-shirt and shorts and the other one goes through about four outfits a day. I'm guessing my family and friends can guess who is who. I will need a lot of patience for this outing.

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend. Thanks for stopping by and I'll look forward to "seeing" you on Tuesday!