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(inter)National Scrapbook Day: Blog Hop Freebie!

We're kicking off the (i)NSD festivities at Design House Digital with a blog hop, a free kit, and a layout challenge! So let's get started with a look at the most recent collaboration from the DHD Designers, Retrospect.

This kit is FREE for you if you play along with our DHD Blog Hop, which starts on the DHD Blog. From there, just hop from blog to blog, picking up letters along the way, which you'll plug in at the end to grab a coupon code which will allow you to download the full kit from the shop. My letter for you is: 

I was lucky enough to participate in the April 2012 class at Masterful Scrapbook Design recently called Artful Embellishing. As I was preparing my layouts for the course, I spent a lot of time thinking about scrapbook embellishments and digital kits. I'm a one-kit scrapper, for the most part, and I've talked before about the pros and cons of scrapping with just one kit. I keep an ongoing list of stories that I need to tell, with photo notes alongside, so that when I get a creative team assignment or just some time to scrap on my own, I have stories ready to be scrapped. 

But what do you do when you're faced with a themed kit (perhaps by assignment, or perhaps simply because you just LOVE the kit too much not to purchase it) and no photos that fit it? Here are some tips for using themed-kits for non-themed layout pages.

FOCUS ON THE COLORS: 
I pretty much buy any kit that uses the colors red, white, gray, and light blue because those are my kids' school colors. Both of my girls are involved in multiple sports and other extracurricular activities, so layouts with papers and elements in these colors can come in quite handy. The layout above was made with a Christmas kit, but you'd never know that by looking at it. (Here are a couple more that use Christmas kits for sports pages: Run Like You Mean It and Run Like Girls.)

FOCUS ON THE SHAPES AND PATTERNS:
Just about every kit comes with a set of common patterns (stripes, dots, chevrons), along with patterns that are more thematically-focused. If you focus creating a certain mood with your paper choices, themed kits can still be extremely useful. In the case above, the patterned paper and elements are from a 4th of July kit, but the circles and stars help capture the movement and energy of the photos. The hand-drawn, comic-book touches also tie in nicely with the track photos. 

FOCUS ON THE WORDS AND STORIES:
For this layout, I was assigned to work with a spring/Easter-themed collab. Sadly, we've almost outgrown the Easter bunny at my house, so I didn't really have anything that fit. When I was flipping through the elements, I found a word art that said "Faith" and was inspired to tell the story of my oldest daughter's youth group, her family in faith. Word art, titles, quotes, and other textual elements from themed kits can be a great starting point for a layout about a variety of topics. Here's a link to a page I did where I was inspired by the "Start the Journey" elements to use a travel/vacation kit for a graduation layout. 

Leave a comment on this post and share with me a link to a layout you've created (or one you've been inspired by) that uses themed products for non-themed layouts. I'll choose a winner via random.org and that person will recieve all of my May product releases for FREE! That's right! Each week when the new releases go live at DHD, you'll get a coupon code allowing you to purchase them for FREE!

Want additional chances to win? Here's how:
1. Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter and post a link to your tweet in the comments.
2. Update your Facebook status with a link to this giveaway and then post a link in the comments here.
3. Blog about the giveaway and then link me to your blog post in the comments.

THAT'S 4 WAYS TO WIN! All comments must be posted by midnight EST on May 6th, 2012. I'll post the winner on Monday.

If you are playing along with the Design House Digital LAYOUT CHALLENGE, to be entered into the drawing for a digital photo frame, you will need to complete a layout meeting all 26 of the challenges by Tuesday, May 8 at 11:59 MST. These challenges should be gathered as you visit each blog for the iNSD blog hop. Here's my challenge for you:

Now you're ready to head over to the lovely Gen Bursett's blog for a great post on what to do with your layouts once you've finished them, plus another letter and layout challenge. HAPPY iNSD!!!

march madness and girl vs scrap

Well, almost the entire state is celebrating UK's win in the NCAA tournament (I say almost because I doubt there is much celebration happening in Louisville). But even though March Madness is over, that doesn't mean we're finished with our Mad March Memories celebration at Design House Digital!

In addition, voting has started for our Digiscrap Competition winner, so cast your vote here; you can vote once a day until the April 6th deadline. We've got 24 gorgeous layouts to select from, and one lucky voter will also win a class from ReneePearson.com. 

It's time to kick off the April round of Girl vs Scrap over at One Story Down today, too! This month your challenge is to:

Here's the layout I created:

credits:
Photograph tab and leaf doodle (recolored): Photobooth by Paislee Press
alphabet: Candyland by CD Muckosky
page border: Storyteller by One Little Bird and Paislee Press
all other papers and elements: Tell Me A Story collaboration by One Story Down designers
font: Olivetti Type 2

Upload your layout to the gallery and then post a link on the blog or in the forum by 4/30/12; just for playing along, you'll get this lovely freebie from Tickled Pink Studio:

 

upcoming: this weekend

Just a few announcements for the weekend, before I log off and finish out my Spring Break weekend as unplugged as I can get.

My Count Your Memories collab with Erica Coombs is 25% off through the weekend. We're also chatting at 4 pm CST on Sunday at the DHD Chat Room -- freebies will be involved. Come hang out for an hour or so!

Speaking of freebies, I've got a couple of card freebies for you on this blog post. Just click on the link and when the image opens up, right click and save it. It's just a .jpg file, so you can print straight from that image, no fancy programs required. 

Everything in my shop will be 25% off this weekend, so if you've been eyeballing something, now's a great chance to get it at a discounted price. I've got some free and $1.00 kits available as well: Tribal elements is free, and Orange Crush, Jar of Hearts Papers, and Small Talk Bubbles are all $1.00 through Sunday night.

One last thing: I've got a new article up on Ella Publishing's e-zine, Scrapbook Ellaments, about using your favorite TYPES of books for scrapbooking design inspiration. I guest posted there almost two years ago on a similar topic, so it was fun to revisit the idea of using books for inspiration. I hope you'll give it a read and let me know what you think. 

Now, I'm off to finish up some laundry and dishes, take the recycling to the drop-off center, and grade a handful of essays. I'm taking Cass to see The Hunger Games this weekend, and I've got two novels I'd like to finish before Spring Break is over. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you at the chat on Sunday!

THANKFUL THURSDAY

One of my favorite authors, Charles de Lint, has a running theme in novels about the concept of coincidence, and how coincidence really isn't coincidence but evidence of some greater power at work in the world. (I can't find the specific novel where he talks about this, or I'd provide you with a passage, because his words do the idea much more justice than mine do.)

I like this concept, though, and I love when I see examples of ideas and concepts converging in my own life. Like today. For the past few days, Ella Publishing has been promoting THANKFUL THURSDAY, an idea that I really love (I also love those gorgeous cards they've been showing!) And today, when I headed over to One Story Down, I see that the feature post is about Gratitude.

image via Paper & Glam

I have lots to be thankful for, but today I want to say a big thank you to all of you who read my blog and buy my digital designs and comment on my photos and layouts, who offer your friendship and kind words to me, even though we've never met in real life. I am so lucky to be able to do the things I love to do, and all of you are the main reason why this is possible. Life is good, y'all, life is good, and you are the ones who help make it so. So thank you. THANK YOU.

Here's a simple printable freebie for you. These are two 4x6 card fronts, designed using my Softly Part Two collab with Robyn Meierotto. All you have to do is click on "view this photo," and then right-click to save the image. Print to a sheet of white cardstock or photo paper, trim to size and adhere to a 4x6 card. Easy. So go ahead -- download and start a circle of gratitude by sending out a THANK YOU card to someone who deserves it today.

View this photo

DHD Mad March Memories Blog Hop

For the first time in a long time, I'm really excited about March Madness because my Murray State Racers have a chance to make some real noise in the big dance! We're making some noise over at Design House Digital this month as well, kicking off our own version of March Madness, digiscrap-style!

The shop has been just overflowing with great products recently, and one that I'm personally excited about is a new one I released last week called See-Throughs.

Essentially, these are 12x12 clipping masks that create a fun peek-a-boo effect on your layout backgrounds. They are an easy way to add an extra bit of pattern to your page, and they can be used in so many different ways.

Here's how to use them: 
NOTE: I am using Photoshop Elements 5.0, so if you are using a newer version of PSE or CS, then things might look a little different, but the steps will essentially be the same. Also, I know that there are multiple options for achieving this same effect -- this is just the way I've always done things. Feel free to share your shortcuts and suggestions in the comments section of this post.

Step 1: Open the See-Through in your program.

Step 2: Select a pattern paper and drag it onto your canvas. Move it to the layer BELOW the See-Through. Resize the patterned paper if necessary.

Step 3: Select a different patterned paper or a solid paper and place on the layer ABOVE the See-Through.

Step 4: "Clip" the second paper to the See-Through by first using the keyboard command CtrlG (Layer > Group with Previous). Then merge the two layers by selecting the keyboard command CtrlE (Layer > Merge layers).

Step 5: Add a drop shadow to the top layer now. Finish off your page by adding photos, embellishments, journaling, and a title. 

credits: star paper from Robyn Meierott's Everyday papers, kraft paper from Robyn Meierotto's Let's Go papers

There are lots of different ways you can modify this product to fit your needs. The masks are easily resizable, so you can clip your photos to them, or cut out portions of them to clip to journaling cards, accent papers, tags, and more. Play around with your background papers too -- use three or four different patterns. Embellish them with stitching, glitter, buttons or brads. You're really limited only by your own creativity. Here's how our Design House Decorators have put them to use on their own layouts.

Katherine

Aria

Celeste

 I'm offering up the See-Through from my tutorial as a freebie for you all; just click on the link below to download it.

Download An-dhd-freebie-seethrough

But wait! That's not all! Hopefully you made your way here from Aria's wonderful blog, which is the 3rd stop on our blog hop. (If you've gotten lost or mixed up, you can always head back to the beginning at the DHD blog.)

If so, then you know that your goal is to gather a letter from each blog post (along with whatever great freebies are available) and then head back to DHD to enter them for a great prize: this gorgeous collab from some of our DHD designers! Plus, you can enter to win a new Wacom tablet (details here).

As one final thank you for being so wonderfully supportive of my designs, I'd like to offer one person a chance to win a $10.00 gift certificate to my shop.  (UPDATE: Winner announced here.) (I've got an awesome collab coming out this week with Robyn Meierotto that you don't want to miss, so a GC sure would be nice to have right now!)

To enter, just leave a comment here on my blog. Want to earn additional chances to win? Here's how:
1) Tweet about the giveaway (with a link to this blog post); come back to the comments and link me up to your tweet.
2) Post about it on your favorite message board; come back to the comments and link me up to your message board post.
3) Share the news on Facebook; come back to the comments and link me up to your status update.
4) Follow me on Twitter and/or like my fan page on Facebook.   

You've got until Wednesday night at midnight CST to comment; I'll use random.org to draw a name on Thursday. After you comment, don't forget to head over to Carey's blog to find your next letter!

Sunday night catch-up session

That feels like what I've been doing all day long -- playing catch-up on all the things that I meant to do at the end of this week but didn't. I was out of town on Thursday and Friday, and I spent all day Saturday helping my mom and aunt begin the process of cleaning out my grandparents' house, as well as organizing my sister's craft room/spare bedroom. 

There are several things from this weekend that I want to remind you of.

I have a sweet little FREE printable that I created for Ella Publishing Co.'s celebration of National Wear Red Day last week. If you didn't visit during Day 1, Day 2, or Day 3, you really missed out on some great projects. 

The printable uses items from my Jar of Hearts element and paper pack at Design House Digital. Shemaine Smith created some gorgeous hybrid tags and a card with these printables; take a look.

Speaking of DHD, February brings back our Daily Dollar Deals. Every day during the month of February, we'll put a couple of new kits in the shop for just $1.00 and they'll stay at this price the entire month!

I introduced my first Dollar Deal product on Saturday: a set of word arts that coordinate perfectly with my 2012 product line (Photo Templates vol 1, Photo Templates vol 2, Digital Kit). You can use these for digital projects or print them out to use them in your Project Life albums. 

Finally, I'd like to announce the winners of my giveaway featuring flair badges from Shelley Haganman's fantastic Etsy shop: 

Dawn M., Jennifer, Anna, and Sue -- congratulations! The four of you will each win a set of Shelley's cute badges to use on your crafting projects. Send your mailing address to me at audneal at gmail dot com and I'll get those in the mail to you by the end of this week.

 

BLOG FREEBIE

A friend requested a copy of the files I used to create my Portrait of a Reader album, so I thought, Why not? I've zipped up the files for you, which includes all 6 patterned papers (8.5x11 .jpg files), 6 index cards (as individual .jpg files and as two 8.5x11 .jpg files with three cards each), plus a set of labeled banners and a set of blank banners. These are saved to an 8.5x11 .jpg for direct printing. I've also included a .psd template of the banner outline so you can customize your own, as well as a .psd template for the index cards. Click here to download the file to your computer; unzip and then enjoy!

Celebrate: Digital Scrapbooking Day!

We're celebrating Digital Scrapbooking Day in style with a couple of blog hops; the DHD Designers have created coordinating mini-kits that I know you are just going to love.

All the Designer blogs are linked up to the DHD Blog (I've also included a list of all the designers and links to their minikits at the end of this post); stop by and check out the other events that we've got going on: challenges, chats, giveaways (you seriously DON'T want to miss these -- they are GOOD), plus a Decorator Blog Hop tomorrow featuring quickpages created from the Designer mini-kits.

Here's my contribution to the hop; click here to download it. (Please let me know if there are any download issues.) 

Make sure you stop in the shop, too, since we've got some great sales going on! Everything is 25% off, so if you've been eyeballing some of my recent releases, now is a great time to pick them up.

If you aren't following me on Twitter yet, now would be a great time to do so; you never know when I might pass out some extra coupon codes. The same applies to my Audacious Designs page on Facebook.

Here's a link to the other DHD Designers so you can grab their freebie pieces of this great kit as well:

Audrey Neal 

Angie Hinksman 

Celeste Knight 

Dana Zarling 

Deena Rutter 

Gennifer Bursett 

Jen Allyson 

Karen Funk 

Karla Dudley

Robyn Meierotto 

Shannon Hegarty 

Tiffany Tillman

 

 

expectantly yours, collaboration: new release, giveaway, & freebie

I am so excited about my product release today -- for a very special reason. A couple of months ago, my sweet friend Emily Powers contacted me about doing a collab with her. Of course, I jumped at the chance, and we bounced a few ideas back and forth. Once we settled on a theme and some colors, we both got to work but it was evident at some point that things just weren't working. We put things on hold while I went on vacation, and then Em took a vacation too. After talking a few times, we settled on a different theme, a different set of colors, and even a different way of putting our collab together.

Basically, we've each created a variety of products for you that feature the same theme and color palette, but are sold separately. So there's a little something for everyone, created in our signature styles, but easily mixed-and-matched.

Before I share my pieces, I want to let you take a peek at what Em's created:

 

The kit is posted in her shop, and it's 30% off on Thursday and Friday. There's a gorgeous album as well, priced at 50% through May 31, if you purchase the kit. Plus, if you stop by her blog, you'll be able to pick up a great freebie too!

But there's another reason to check out her blog. Em and I are both offering you a chance to win the ENTIRE collaboration -- EVERYTHING we've created under the title "Expectantly Yours" -- just by leaving a comment. There will be two winners: one on her blog and one on my blog, so make sure you leave a comment in both places. To increase your chances of winning, you can tweet about the contest or post to your Facebook status line about it; just make sure you stop back by and let us know you've done those things. You've got until midnight on Friday night to leave your comments on our blogs; we'll use a Random Number Generator to choose our winners and announce them on Saturday!

Now let's take a peek at what I've got releasing today, shall we? I really loved this color scheme, and once I started putting together pieces, I just couldn't stop. That's why I've got EIGHT items going up today; you can choose to purchase them individually, you can choose to purchase the kit (patterned papers, elements, and word art), or you can buy the entire collection (shown below). The choice is yours. Even better, all items are 35% off today only! (Do the math: purchase the full collection at 35% off today and that's a $22.00 savings for you -- what a deal!!!)

But that's not all -- I've created a little freebie for you as well. You can click here to download it. As always, thanks for stopping by, and thanks for your ongoing support of my work. It means a lot to me.

Happy {i}NSD!

 

Just a reminder that there are lots of fun activities going on at Design House Digital all day today! We've got lots of products on sale for you, plus some great freebies available during our designer chats. I'll be chatting in the forum tonight at 8 pm CST (that's 6 pm PST, 7 pm MST, and 9 pm EST), so I hope you all will stop by and join me. We'll be playing a fun scrappy game, plus I'll have a freebie paper pack to give away to all the participants, as well as a chance to win the collection of your choice from my shop!

Speaking of freebies, I've got a great little word art pack that coordinates with the paper pack I'm giving away tonight... just click here to grab it. Once the link expires or has been used up, it won't be available again so make sure to grab it while you can.

 

ETA: Here's a look at the coordinating paper pack I made. You can get the download link from the DHD chat I hosted in the forum. There's also a challenge going on in my thread -- you have until noon tomorrow to get your layout created.