Book Worm

Before I ever had kids I knew I wanted to pass along my love of reading to them. I worked at a bookstore in college and used my discount to stock up on children's books! 

My boys and I go to the library often and I was pretty excited when they asked to have their own library cards. Simon didn't want his picture taken, but Andrew was a good sport. Right now he's reading every Calvin and Hobbs book he can get his hands on. It's hilarious to see him crack up at the jokes. 

To create my background for this page I just added an overlay from the Kaleidoscope kit over my patterned paper and changed the opacity of both until I was happy with the results.

MDS Blog Hop - What are you working on?

Welcome to another blog hop! So excited to have you drop by today! I've been pretty busy in MDS so I have a few fun things to show you.

First up is a letter. And not just any letter - a chain letter for a sticker club! Did you just roll your eyes? Heave a mighty sigh? I did. I always do when I get a chain letter in the mail. Especially if it's one for your kids. You know the type - a letter assuming that you've just been waiting for just such an opportunity along with this little gem: "Parents if you can't do this within 6 days then please let me know because it's not fair to the kids!" Oh, thanks. Guilt comes by mailbox now. Makes you wish there were bills to look at instead.

However, included with this letter was a note from my friend expressing her hatred of chain letters and telling me it was perfectly fine with her if we didn't want to do it. I agreed with her feelings completely but...my kids love stickers. It could be fun right?  Long story short, after I'd looked at the letter a few times I decided it could use some sprucing up. And while I was at it, I'd rewrite the whole thing. Because, let's be honest - what's most annoying is how presumptuous it sounds.

Behold! A chain letter that people can feel good about!

I have to say, I don't mind sending these out. And it helps that I've already asked my friends if they'd like to participate so I know who's willing and who's not. Crossing my fingers that we get some awesome stickers! 

Ok, I have two more projects to show you and I'll make it quick. You didn't come here to read a novel, now did you? ;)

In my church I'm the Assistant-Secretary in the Relief Society (it's our women's group) and since people are aware of my crafty tendencies, I'm asked to put things together that are, shall we say...pretty. Oh, that I had all the time in the world. I could make everything pretty! 

Our Relief Society President asked me to take our goals for the year and make something cute that could be displayed each week at church. Here's what I came up with: 

I hope the chalkboard trend never leaves us, because I love it. Love, love, love it! 

One of my other responsibilities in the Relief Society is the monthly calendar. Lucky for me MDS has a cool calendar feature! Makes my life sooo much easier! We email it out to everyone each month and the way I see it, if you're going to be this busy you might as well have a cute calendar to look at, right? 

So... that's what I've been up to. Hope this gave you some great ideas to use MDS. You don't have to be a scrapbooker to love it! 

Click here to go to Cindy's blog next - can't wait to see what she's been working on!

MDS Blog Hop - What are you working on?

So. . . Christmas is only 6 days away!  Can I get a what what?  Christmas is the same date every year and still it sneaks up on me.  One of these days I'm really going to have things ready in November so that I can sit back and enjoy the fun holiday activities rather make December a mad dash to get it all done.  I still haven't delivered my neighbor gifts and my Christmas cards are sitting here on my desk, waiting to be addressed and mailed.  Lucky for me, I have MDS because it makes these tasks so much simpler. And faster!

For my neighbor gifts I found some adorable boxes to fill with delicious treats on Pick Your Plum. The only thing missing is an adorable tag.  Enter MDS.  It didn't take long to create this and now all I have to do is print a bunch, tie them on and I'm good to go!

Front:

Back: 

I'll be sure to take pictures and post them so you can see how it all turned out.  Hope you enjoy the rest of the blog hop and that you enjoy a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones! 

MDS Blog Hop - Print Products!

Hello there!  I hope you're enjoying all the fun projects on the hop so far.  Today we're focusing on print products and gift ideas so I wanted to show you a board book I created last year.

My kids are hilarious.  Really - they crack me up.  I started randomly writing down the things Andrew and Simon would say so that I could blog about it, but then I  got busy, let that blog lapse and just didn't write things down as much.  After we moved to Virginia and left our family and friends clear across the country in Utah, I started using Facebook quite a bit to keep in touch and I discovered that I could post these kid quotes pretty quickly without having to write an entire post about it.  Then I realized that it was also a great way to keep my family in the loop and they wouldn't have to feel like they were missing out on the boys' lives quite as much.

Sometimes I post quotes several times a day, so you can imagine that I've got quite a collection now.  I think the best way to preserve these precious memories is to put them all together in a book. Although I'm going to need a few volumes . . .

And here is the finished (and printed) product.
Ta Da!

I decided to go with a board book because, well . . . mostly because I just wanted to try it out.  But also because I wanted something that would be sturdy and hold up well.  I also loved that it opens flat. It's a lot easier to design in MDS because you can see the facing pages together. 

I chose a layout that would allow me to put multiple quotes together while still leaving room for artistic elements and then repeated that layout through the entire book.  It made the process so much faster because all I had to do was change papers and embellishments and add in a few pictures here and there. 

I am so happy with the quality of the book!  The pages are thinner than what you would expect from a traditional board book, but they're still heavy enough to withstand my kids.  We'll be enjoying this book for years to come!

The printing is great as well - the images are nice and clear.  It looks just the way I designed it on my computer.

Have you ever been using an embellishment in MDS and thought, "Whoa . . . that looks so pixelated! What's the deal?"  I asked about that awhile ago and one of the tech guys on MyDigitalStudio.net got back to me.  He assured me that things wouldn't look that way when they're printed.  They did that on purpose to keep MDS running smoothly.  Higher quality images will slow things down.  I don't really understand all the ins and outs, but he was right - it looks awesome in print!

I have loved these books so much that I've reprinted them for gifts.  The only thing I had to change was the cover.  My parent's and in-law's books say "My grandkids say the darndest things" and my sister's says, "My nephews say the darndest things".  That's the beauty of digital scrapbooking - you can create a scrapbook once and print it as many times as you like.  How's that for a time saver? You'll be crossing people off your list left and right.  Boom.  Christmas shopping done!

Let's keep this party going!  Cindy is your next stop.  Enjoy!

For some crazy reason blogger won't let me add a link to our next button, so until I can figure that out click here instead.

Stampin' Up's home page?!

I wandered over to Stampin' Up's home page today and saw something amazing - a page layout that I created is featured there!  I knew it was going to be on the My Digital Studio blog - which is pretty amazing already- but I didn't expect to see it on SU's home page.  I'm not sure why that seems like such a big deal to me.  Both sites are run by SU, right?  Oh well, who knows how my thought process works - I've given up trying to make sense of it!  What I do know is that being a part of this design team is pretty awesome and I'm still pinching myself.  It's really pushed me to do my absolute best work because I don't want to let anyone down!

I hope you're inspired by all the members of the MDS Design Team.  I'm so excited to check the blog every morning and see what they have in store for me.  I learn something new every day!

MDS Blog Hop - Christmas!

Wahoo!  It's time for another MDS Blog Hop!  Just FYI, we're shifting things up a week from what we normally do, but just for the next couple of months because of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  In January we'll move back to the 2nd and 4th weeks.

This week we're all working on Christmas projects, which is awesome timing because Stampin' Up has a bunch of great holiday kits on sale.  You can shop the sale here.

For this layout I mostly used the Jingle and Joy kit (which is on sale for $8.37 right now) along with some papers from the new kit Snowy Soiree (on sale for $12.57).  Both are really fun to use and have some great elements!

Next stop is Cindy's blog!  Thanks so much for stopping by - have fun! 

MDS Blog Hop - What I'm working on

Are you ready for another round of fabulous projects?  I can't wait to see what everyone is working on!

Right now I'm working on a birth announcement for my sweet little man.  I managed to make handmade announcements (and send them out!) after my first son was born and I had every intention of doing that for my second baby, but he switch from one child to two proved to be more difficult than I expected and I never made announcements let alone sent them out.  He'll probably never care, but I still feel like he's left out somehow.  I've been determined not to do the same thing for my third son, and this time, I have My Digital Studio on my side!  It's so easy to play around with different ideas and, even though I love handmade, being able to create the design once and then print as many copies as I need will save me so much time!

I nearly designed an announcement with the new postcard shapes, but I ended up with so many amazing pictures of my sweet baby that I went with a tri-fold card instead.  I really wanted it to open vertically rather than horizontally and I was disappointed to find that we don't have that option.

So I thought and I thought, and then it hit me - design it sideways! I'll admit - it's taken some extra time to do it this way, but I'm very pleased with the results.  I found the easiest way to do it was design everything horizontally and then flip it.  Kept me from having to look at my screen sideways the whole time ; )

Pretty cool, right?  I wanted the main focus to be on Mr. Jesse so I didn't add much in the way of stamps or embellishments.  Besides - why would I try to compete with those gorgeous photos?  My friend Jenny Lewis is an incredibly talented photographer!  She moved earlier this year, but I kind of begged her to come do pictures for me.  Being the sweet person that she is, she drove two hours with her own two kids and then spent the afternoon with me doing the photo shoot.  Let me tell you - a newborn photo shoot is hard work!  Jesse peed on every blanket we had - multiple times - and pooped on me, also multiple times.  My super sleepy baby also decided that he wasn't interested in staying asleep that day.  It was crazy!  LOL.  If you're ever in Virginia and need photos let me know - I'll hook you up with Jenny.  She is phenomenal! 

There is a backside to this card, but since I don't always know who's reading my blog and I want to save some surprises for the friends and family we're sending these to, I'm only going to show you this part. After I send out the announcements I can post the other side for you to peek at : )

Ok, on with the show!  Next up is Cindy's blog and something tells me she has something amazing in store for us!

MDS Blog Hop - Celebrate Stampin' Up!

This year is Stampin' Up's 25th anniversary!  Oh, how I wish I could go to Convention this month.  I couldn't go to the 20th anniversary either and was determined not to miss out again, but life has a way of changing those plans :)  So for now I'll have to be content with looking at all the great pictures my friends will take.

To celebrate this fun event, I created a card in honor of Stampin' Up!  Actually, I just took one of their cute templates and changed it up a bit. Here's the before:

And the after!

We're thrilled to have Julie Davidse as our Guest Blogger today! Hope you enjoy all the projects we've shared! 

1. Holly VanDyne 2. Amber Meadows 3. Jeanna Bohanon 4. Julie Leblanc 5. Aly Schilling 6. Erica Shaw 7. Cindy Schuster 8. Julie Davidse - guest blogger!

MDS Blog Hop - Gearing up for summer weather!

You may be thinking: "Hey wait a minute!  We're just barely getting spring weather  - what's with the summer theme?"  Well... that's true for a lot of us.  Mother Nature has been toying with us for the last few months.  However, I looked at the calendar recently and noticed that Summer Break starts in 6 weeks! Not only that, our pool opens at the end of May!  It's definitely time to start thinking about warmer weather.  I hope our projects cheer you up and get you excited for fun in the sun!

I pulled out a couple of pictures from last summer of my son Andrew and his friend Clara goofing around at the pool. They always have a blast hanging out together and this is a fun memory.

I added the circle of patterned paper in the background by first filling the circle with paper, then in edit mode, pulling the paper off to the side so it only filled one quarter of the circle.  I copied and pasted the circle in place three more times and filled it with a different paper, moving it to a different section of the circle each time.  

This month Beth Rush will be joining us as a guest designer and we're thrilled to have her! 

Hope you have fun on the rest of the hop!

1. Amber Meadows 2. Jeanna Bohanon 3. Julie Leblanc 4. Rochelle Gould 5. Aly Schilling 6. Mandy Grant 7. Kimberly Van Diepen 8. Holly VanDyne 9. Erica Shaw 10. Cindy Schuster 11. Beth Rush - guest blogger!

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