Ahhhhh -- Peace & Quiet

But it may be short lived! Looks like another storm is rolling in.
It's been chaos around here for most of the day. Julie & the girls came over for breakfast before her doctor's appointment. Then  Kalei & Jenny arrived. Kalei had made plans to spend the day working on her 4-H poster here. The little girls were just here while Julie was at the doctor. That took most of the morning. It was time to fix lunch when they finally left.
Kalei's project didn't get started until after that -- and it took two trips up to the church for things I had in the office there. But she did get it done.
All that on top of a very stormy night. Janessa had spent the night & she's a little afraid of storms, but nothing like the dog. I have scratches & bruises from where she clawed at me. For some reasons she thinks I'm her great protector when it's storming. We ended up with over 3" of rain during the night. And I was right about it looking like another storm was coming -- it's really pouring again.
I did manage to do a layout about the river rising....

Yesterday there was a sand-bar in the river behind the house. Today it is gone & the log back there is pretty much covered up. Amazing! I can't imagine what it must be like in Calgary where they have had to evacuate thousands of people.

I think there is electricity in the air here. What with the stormy weather, the humidity and to top it all off, Julie's doctor is putting her in the hospital Friday morning to start inducing her labor. It's all very exciting though.

May you see rainbows in the sky in spite of the storms of life & have a blessed day!

PS. I forgot to report that I did not make it to round 4 in my contest, but that is really a good thing because of my new spot at Gotta Pixel. It was fun creating the layouts & getting to know the other contestants!

Learning the ropes & more

Wow, learning all that a praiser does has kept me hopping! Busy, busy, busy.
To top it all off Dave hurt his back & I've been trying to do extra things that he normally does & playing nurse for him. When it rains, it pours!
I've been having so much fun learning my new job at Gotta Pixel & loving every minutes of it. I think I need to get out my thesaurus & learn some new words before I start sounding like a record with my comments on layouts there. LOL!
I have done a little scrapping too, including using the kit provided for the GoDigitalScrapping contest -- My Main Man Bundle by Seoule2Soul Designs. It is a great one for scrapping that special man in your life, but I struggled with this one. The first one I did was so cluttered looking that I just started over with a blank page.
Here's the first one I did (I really liked the little heart I made with the quote marks in the alpha set with the kit!):

And here is what I posted in the gallery for my entry in Round 3:

 

We find out Tuesday evening who made it to the final round.

 

May God's blessing pour out to you all day long!

New Doors Opening

My last post was a bummer. Seems like I was having doors slam in my face -- Dawn's website closing; Jolanda's store closing; my decision to leave Wilma4Ever...I was feeling a bit of a hanging-in-the-air sensation.
They say when one door closes, another opens -- well it certainly has for me!
I was looking around over at GoDigitalScrapping & saw a contest starting this month for a 4-month stint on their Supreme Team. I figured it might give me some inspiration. Well, in tonight's chat I found out that I'm on to Round 3 (out of 4 rounds)! I'm very excited to say the least. Even if I don't make it any further, I feel quite honored to get this far.
And after I signed up to do that contest, I got an email from the owner at Gotta Pixel asking me to join the Praiser Team at GP. That website is where I call home & I jumped right on it. They had a Praiser Team call a while back & I was so busy I didn't think I would have time to do it & give it the proper time needed so I didn't even apply. Needless to say I'm honored to be on this team!

Here are my layouts from the first two rounds at GDS:

 

Happy Scrapping!

Saying "God Be with You" to Jolanda

Sadly, Jolanda of Jellebelleke's Designs is closing her shop. Her family has moved into a new home & she has taken a full-time job, so her designing days have been put on hold. I have enjoyed my time spent on her Creative Team & will miss creating layouts with her templates & kits. She was with Gotta Pixel for only a few months -- that's where I first became acquainted with her work. Right now kits & templates at her store in Gotta Pixel are on sale.
Here's my latest layout using one of the templates due to come out next month -- I don't know what's going to happen as these were supposed to be a part of the Gotta Pixel specials for June and are not in the store yet -- but I was really happy with the way this turned out:

So I bid farewell to Jolanda & pray that her new walk in life's travels will bring her happiness & fulfillment.

Progressive Challenge at Wilma4Ever

I'm working on a progressive challenge at Wilma4Ever.
Here's the first week's instructions:
Step 1:
Select a photo that you can stretch across your background. You will be using a single image as your background, so it needs to be stretched to cover your whole page. It could be a photo of a scene, a close-up of your garden flowers, a portrait, whatever. Keep in mind that we will be adding things over it in the next three steps, so there should be some white space or parts of the photo that you can artistically cover once it is re-sized to cover your page. After you have selected and stretched your photo over your page, add some texture to it. There are many ways to do this.
And this is what I did:
I made a copy of my photo after I stretched it to fit the page. Then I aded a a canvas texture to that layer. I added a second copy of my photo on top of that and aded a watercolor filter with the opacity lowered the opacity to 48%. Next I added a mask to the filtered layers and brought out the Great Blue Heron from the origional photos.
And it looks like this:

Step 2:
Create an arrangement out of some type of greenery (vines, leaves, pine boughs, etc.) AND some combination of long paper strips, straight ribbons, cord, beaded string and/or ric-rac.
 I would suggest that you design this strip either horizontally or vertically on your LO and that it should be no wider than 3 or 4 inches and at least 9 inches long. It can be narrower and longer than this, but I wouldn't make it very wide or very short. Think about layering this thing up -- stack things on top of each other, angle items just slightly so that some are a bit askew, mix paper strip patterns, different textures and patterns of ribbon, choose items of varying widths, etc. Have fun!

And here's what I did for the second step:

 

I picked up step 3 today --
TASK 3:
Select a photo and frame. You will position this photo and the frame on or under the strip you created last week. Let's really make the photo pop by using an action or an overlay or a blending mode, etc.
Now I'm off to do this task & will post the LO when I'm done.

Here it is -- I picked my photo & used an action by Dave Jaseck that created a mask & frame for the photo all in one action.

 

One more step to go & then I'll have a completed LO!

 

 

TASK 4:
 Title/Journaling
 Make a title out of at least two words. Use a handwritten font for at least one word and a chipboard alpha (or something similar) for at least one word.
Add some journaling, even if its just the date.

 

And here is my final project:

 



They're Back!

When I came home from work today, I was absolutely thrilled to see a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak sitting at the window feeder. And as I watched this afternoon, I spotted two females & four males in the backyard. A sure sign of winter's passing! Now I only hope they will decide to spend the whole summer with us like they did last year. Our friends said they saw a Baltimore Oriole yesterday -- one more sign. Happy birding!

Project Heritage May Kit by PattyB Designs

 I've been working on a new-to-me kit from PattyB Scraps over at Wilma 4 Ever - a great place to pick up goodies for your digital scrapping & lots of great challenges each month!
Here's PattyB's kit -- click on the image to link to her store:

 

And here's a look at the layouts made with the kit --

 

 

 

And one more --

 

 

This last one is a quick page that I put together --

you can pick it up without my family photo & the text here.

All you have to do is put your photo on a layer behind the QP

& add your own text (or not).

 

I also made a little cluster for you - click on the cluster

to link to my dropbox & it's your's to use in your own LOs:

 

 

Have a wonderful day & happy scrapping!