Spring Sparklies

Okay, I think I got a little carried away. Remember, how I said I had some commercial use items and I wanted to try to do a kit for the Stone Accents Studio color challenge? Well, I finished, but it’s not a small kit! There are 6 colors in the palette for the challenge and since I was doing simple elements, like I do for my color kits, I made each element in all 6 colors. It adds up! I started with glitter swatches and customized colors to match the palette. I think it’s a nice looking kit. It’s just bigger than I’d planned on it being!

I know I said I wasn’t thinking I would do this “pro.” Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes as a professional designer. Would anyone want to buy the kits I’ve done or the better with experience ones I will create? I enjoy doing them and it might be something someday that I do well enough to be a supplemental income source. I guess that depends on what the job market brings and how soon. In looking at others’ kit contributions in this challenge, I think my work stands up okay, but it doesn’t stand out...yet.

While I grapple with assessing the quality of my design work, I am working on a new theme kit. It’s probably going to be another couple weeks before that’s unveiled and I’ll probably do a mini color kit for the DSO color challenge first. Having the guidelines makes me stretch what I can actually do a bit. I just don’t want to make boring kits. Like I said before, the color kits are actually harder to create than the theme kits. In the theme kits, the theme determines whether or not the kit appears to be interesting or blasé. In color kits, it’s all about what I can do to give the kit character. There’s the challenge!

Here is my sample layout with Spring Sparklies:

Precocious Cargo

Credits: Spring Sparklies by Digitalegacies, Alpha - Emma by Retrodiva Fonts - Note This, Arial

And here’s the preview!


sorry, link is expired.

Monday Mug Shot

New York, New York

360º view of mug

We just got in this afternoon from our weekend East. David’s nephew, BP, was a main character in his middle school's musical. They did a wonderful job! I joke that David and I are putting in points for the Aunt and Uncle of the Year award, but we are really getting the best part of the deal! We’ve been to a ballet recital (an absolute joy for this former kid ballerina) skating lessons and 2 hockey games this January, one boys and one girls (remember I’m a former kid hockey player too!) the musical last weekend and we have another musical in Michigan next month and plans for a marching band event in June. I gotta say, if they never do create that award, the cool time with the nieces and nephews is SO worth it!

The story of the mug coming home to live with me is simple - I have a WONDERFUL man! Yeah, I know, it’s syrupy and I give credit for half of the fun things in my life to that, but he’s right here, all the time. How could he not have a lot to do with the great things in my world? David and I stopped to grab McDinner on the New York Thruway and this mug was in the gift shop window. It’s a very cool mug! The “New York” is raised embossing on the outside of the mug and it’s as big as what David calls my “soup mugs.” Okay, I have used the big ones for soup from time to time too, but more often they are coffee mugs! If he’s not sharing the pot from the little coffee maker with me, it fills a cup that size with a regular cup left for an evening drink. :)

New York has everything to do with that “Aunt and Uncle of the Year” award too. You see, that award doesn’t exist, yet, but one day it might. When Mike Piazza signed on to a longer term with the New York Mets, his contract included a bonus if he won the Division Series MVP award. Piazza is two seasons past his Mets days and thus far, not playing this season. The Division Series MVP award STILL does not exist! That provision was included in his Mets contract just in case they created the award and just in case he won it. So it is with “Aunt and Uncle of the Year.” Just in case they ever create it... We may not have Mikey’s money, but like Piazza, while we are working on that “just in case,” we’re loving what we’re doing. The best kind of tale - everybody wins!

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish!

Wait a minute! I’m not going THAT far! I’m not going for good either.

If you’re lost on the title or how significant it is when I’m talking about birthdays that my next one (and David’s) will be 42, then you need to brush up on your Douglas Adams! Since I may have piqued your interest with the title of today’s blog, you can start here and go forward or back to figure the whole thing out. Better yet, read all five books in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy trilogy! :)

You know how sometimes you do things because they seem like the sensible thing to do and then kick yourself later asking “why’d I do that?” We all have those moments, right? Right??

Well, if you’ve never had a moment like that, you’ve never moved to another state into a house that was already inhabited!

For Christmas one year, Mom bought me a huge hardcover compilation of the whole Hitchhikers series. It’s a wonderful book to have sitting on the floor by the bed (because it’s too big for the night stand) to read, or on the coffee table to enjoy while the Yankees are playing and David insists on watching it because they’re losing. BUT, it’s not something you throw in a shoulder bag and read in the car while waiting for a train!

I’m currently in between books. The last two I’ve read were disappointing to say the least. “Web of Evil” by JA Jance is a book David picked out at Christmastime because it had a train on the cover. Hey, no laughing there! We all have very simplistic subconscious motivators when we make impulse purchases, like a bestseller at the grocery store! But it’s not a good book. It’s trite and a bit scattered. I usually love a good murder mystery, but this one left me looking for the good murder mystery. I don’t like books where by the second chapter I can tell you how it ends! Unless I’m wrong and a brilliant twist logically alters all of my conclusions. It’s very discouraging when I read the whole book only to find out I was right.

So, after that I decided that I’d go older and try a different genre. I’ve had Scarlett by Alexandria Ripley for a long time. It was written in 1991 and found its way to my Christmas stocking. I love the movie Gone With The Wind, it’s one of my all-time favorites and I read the book a long time ago. What I wasn’t really interested in was reading someone else's idea of what Margaret Mitchell might have been forced to write by a money hungry publisher if regurgitating a sequel to everything was the fashion in the 1930s. And I wasn’t wrong about that either. (grr) Scarlett was 884 pages of wear on my eyes that I’ll never get back. The book was over-detailed, a lot of it completely out of Scarlett O’Hara’s character and just ridiculous in the rags-riches-rags-riches, but we never REALLY ran out of riches story. Where Gone With The Wind was romanticized history, this was just romance fluff. It was like a romance novel without the sex.

So, I’ve gone a few weeks without a book in my tote bag or by the bed. I haven’t read a really good book since the last Harry Potter book. That one frustrated me until the end when everything that bugged me twisted and curved into a perfect ending for the book and the series. JK Rowling is a genius! Why isn’t there someone writing books for grownups that well?

So, back now to kicking myself. I have that beautiful hard cover coffee table edition of the Hitchhiker's series, I also had every one of them in paperback, most of them from the used book store (I LOVE used book stores - they smell wonderful!) When I was moving, there were things I left behind. Things that there just isn’t any room for! Yep - I made the executive decision to take the hardcover collection and leave the paperbacks. Now, I want to go back and reread the series in celebration of my 42nd birthday. We’ll be leaving in the morning for a long weekend east and I have to choose between bringing the ten pound edition or choosing another book. “Why’d I DO that?”

I think I’m going to reread Gone With The Wind.


There isn’t a Friday By Request for this week. I’d LOVE it if someone wanted to leave a comment for me making a request for next Friday! Just start the comment “FBR” and make sure you leave a name or Internet ID - Your request comment won’t be published, so feel free to leave an email if you have questions.


And finally, I’ll leave you with a scrapbook page I have posted on my home gallery at Digital Freebies and at digital-scrapbooking.org (DSO)

As you know from yesterday’s Photoblog, we celebrated Baggle's 12th birthday Tuesday. I commemorated the day with this layout that also met 3 April challenges between the 2 sites!

Happy Birthday Baggle!

Credits: Sweet Affection by Dielle brag book page altered to 12x12, font - Tiza

I’m working on a small, but I think neat kit for the SAS April Color Challenge. It’s the first time I’ve done a kit for a color challenge. I usually do a layout, but I had some ideas and a couple commercial use elements and I figured I’d give it a try. It’s a color kit, but I think my designing efforts are coming along and it’s a step up from Raspberry-Orange Sorbet. I find the color kits harder to do than the theme kits because I don’t have the crutch of being able to photograph and extract elements. The new color kit will be available next week!

Until the next Mug Shot, have a great weekend!

Photoblog Wednesday

What? Baggle 2 Wednesdays in a row??

Shhh! It’s a special Wednesday!
Baggle’s got to sleep off a BIG can of food from yesterday!
It was his 12th birthday!

Happy Birthday, Baggle!

I've Been Tagged!

I was tagged by Sherrie (President & Designer, RC Mama Designs)


All are invited to join in the Links fun!
PLEASE just follow the rules! Just copy paste THIS and everything below up until my Five links:

I thought it would be cool to have a meme where we post links. We can post up to five. Then we tell five more people to share their links. If we all share who tagged us, our links are sure to be seen!

They can be business links, favorite sites, affiliate links, whatever you want…

There are Five Rules:

1. MUST be clean. No R rated sites.
2. Only FIVE links.
3. MUST tell 5 people.
4. A link back to the person who tagged you
5. Lara’s Place is the meme originator. (an active link is appreciated)


My five links are:

Shutterfly

I have been so satisfied with the products and service at Shutterfly! I’ve ordered 4X6 prints from them. We ordered our Christmas Cards last year from them, they in turn they gave me a free 8.5 X 11 album! I put the album together online and ordered it - not even a penny for shipping and handling! I was so happy with the quality that I’m now planning to order all of my digital scrapbooking pages in 12X12 albums. I also ordered a calendar for my Dad last Christmas. There is so much they can do with pictures there and they do a great job with decent pricing.



The Frenzied Feline

Debbie is a friend from Yahoo 360. She’s moved her blog to blogspot too. (She’s in the friends’ sites links too) Her blog is a must-read if you are a cat parent or just a cat lover! She posts a great collection of informative articles abut cat-care and in general cat-love!



Mike’s Calorie and Fat Chart or 1000 Foods

This is a great resource that I’ve used often! It’s a very complete list of nutrition information for just abut everything I eat or everything that goes into what I eat!



Monster Mini Golf

There’s not one in Toledo, but I keep this as a travel site!

Glow-in-the-dark, indoor mini golf with monsters - need I say more???



The Baseball Bride

I found this link following a link on another blog for “great and unusual” wedding invitations. Of course, great and unusual is a “can’t resist” click for me! However, I was disappointed that there were no baseball or train invitations. Great and unusual means they should have the invitations I’d want for a wedding someday! So, wondering if anyone made baseball invitations at all, I did a search and found this site.

Dina and Ryan got married last September on the field right after a Boise Hawks game. Wedding Wednesdays were contests held throughout the season last year, where the fans made the choices for the cake, wedding singer, invitations, even the dress! It was SO cool!

I’m not so crazy about the choice of dress, but I’m not a strapless type. You cant play mini golf in a strapless wedding dress! But the invitations and the cake, I just LOVE those! You just have to see this site!



I am tagging Mare, Ruthann, Sheri, Rich and Summer