Quick Page - I Love You

Merry Christmas!

I sit here in my family room. Christmas Eve church service thoroughly enjoyed. New tradition of Christmas Eve pizza filling our bellies. New Christmas pajamas keeping us cozy. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" playing on the DVD player. Kiddos snuggling in our lap.

Aaahhhh... I love Christmas.

I pray you all are enjoying it as well!

Tonight I'm sharing with you a quick page I made a couple months ago. I didn't have any journaling with this picture -- just the kids messing around making "I Love You" in sign language. So I thought it would be cute to find multiple translations of "I Love You" and add it to the page. I couldn't begin to tell you which languages they are -- but so long as the translater page I used was correct, the words should be too! :)

I will give the heads up that this is an 8x8 template at 300dpi. It will print fine at 12x12, or you could do some fun layered papers under it, if you'd rather.

The Quick Page can be downloaded from 4Shared by CLICKING HERE.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

2011 Calendar

Wel... Another year is upon me. And another year where I'm going through the internal debate about whether or not I'll do a calendar. I'm over a year behind on my scrapbooking, so the idea of a calendar seemed kind of daunting.

However....

1) They're my standard Christmas presents. Without them, what would I do?

2) Someone asked. :)

So I got to work. I wanted to do them different than year's past. The result, and I'll apologize in advance, is ridiculously large file sizes that require you to download 4 separate files to get them all -- and each file is between 100-150MB. SO SORRY!

However, I do hope that they've provided you some flexibility as well. Here's a preview of what you'll be getting. I really love the style of a large background photo with a textured / washed out overlay -- it's kind of my "go to" scrapbooking style, if you will. So that's what I've tried to create for you.

Let me give you an idea of some of the features of these calendar pages (which may explain the reason the files are so big!)

- You can customize your colors. The background colors are their own layer, so you can choose the layer that best speaks to you the color of the month, or the color that best coordinates with your chosen photos.

- The texture layer is already set to "overlay" -- so you just have to drag your favorite photo into the layer between the background and the texture layers (marked in each file), and the effect will be applied for you.

- In years past, I've had requests for things other than Bible Verses. I personally want Bible Verses, and since I'm creating this for my own gifts, that's what I've included. However, I've made them their own layer, so should you prefer to remove them, that's easy for you to do.

- The "Frame" layers are movable and interchangeable. I've included a separate download just for the frame clusters if you'd like them. However, they're on each of the pages as well -- both ways work.

This approach almost is more of a quick page than a template -- not typically the direction I go. But I do hope that you enjoy it. Included in the downloads are some instructions for how to manipulate your large photos to make it work well with the texture overlay.

I've had people request in the past if they can use my calendars for gifts or church / school fundraisers. The answer is yes. However, I do request that you don't sell them as your own, and that you don't sell them to make a profit for yourself. That permission is granted for the printed calendar only -- not individual bits and pieces of the kits.

I hope that you enjoy it, and those who you're giving the calendars do too! I'd love to say I'll be back with some templates...but I can't promise anything. I do have a few scrapbook pages that I could probably convert to templates.... but honestly, I'm hunting for templates and quick pages right now, too, simply to catch myself up! My goal is to complete 2009 in time for Christmas gifts.... but I'm still on June. Who else needs life to slow down just a touch!?

Alright, so here are the download files. Again, my apologies for the large file sizes.

January February & March 143MB

April May & June 135MB

July August & September 136MB

October November & December 110MB

If you'd like the elements only, those can be found HERE. They are only 3MB. Go figure! :)

Enjoy!

FREEBIE: Christmas Cards

Did you think I had fallen off the face of the earth? :) No fear, I am here. I appreciate those of you have reached out in concern to ask about me. It has been quite a crazy year! I really can't complain, because it has been a GOOD year. I just haven't had any time to myself to do any hobbies. And what little time I did have, I'll admit, I was selfish and created for myself, but didn't get to the freebies.

The background, for those who don't know. In January we moved. In my real job, I'm a sales rep. In the past, I've always had an office in my home, because I was the only one of me in a given region. Well, the move we took in January put me in an office instead of home based. So now I've got a 20 minute commute each morning and evening, which isn't too horrible. But... what it really means working out of an office is that I've got basically 2-3 hours each night to play with the kids, cook dinner, and keep the house reasonable. I'll admit, I struggle to keep the house reasonable, and we've eaten a LOT more processed food than I would like to (and my waistline is paying the price for that). I definitely LOVE my job, LOVE my company, and have no desire to change either of those... but hopefully the next move/position will put me back in a home-based office! We shall see what He has in store for us.

Anyway, so I just finished up and ordered my Christmas cards for this year. And I thought I'd wish you all a Merry Christmas by sharing with you some of the cards I've used in years past. The top 3 versions are the actual cards I sent out. The collage is how I've tweaked them for you. Because the '07 and '08 cards used someone else's papers, I obviously couldn't share them with you like that.

This is our Christmas card for 2006. My son was 6 months old and my daughter was 28 months old. She needed to be bribed with a sucker to smile, which I Photoshopped out in that center photo! These photos were taken at the top of our stairs with a white bedsheet draped over the railing. I used Virtual Photographer to "glow" them a bit. I also bolded the "Christ" in Christmas, as a subtle reminder of just why we're celebrating. There are 4 PNG files available in the download: black, green, red, and red/green polka dot. I have taken the year out, so you won't be stuck in 2006.

This is the card we used last year. I couldn't seem to get a good photo of all of us at the same time, so I used a picture of each of us throughout the year. Again, I made "Christ" slightly larger to give it some emphasis on the card. The verse I chose is, "May the God of Hope fill you with all joy and peace." I provided for you a PNG file as well as a layered template so you can choose your own background. I obviously took our names and year off of there. The font I used is Arriere Garde, which is a free download.

And this is the card I ordered for this year. I used Vista Print to print them. I got 250 cards for under $50!!! And that's with envelopes, too. AND they print on the back in B&W for free, so we added our address and contact info on the back. They printed our cards last year too, and they did a really great job. I did get the idea for the love, joy, peace, and the verse from someone who I saw on Two Peas a few years ago (it's been in my inspiration folder ever since). However, I couldn't find it again to give proper credit. If anyone recognizes the theme and can tell me who did it, I'd love to give her thanks for inspiring this years card. Hers is a 4x6 and includes another greeting/verse, so is different, but the theme idea came from her. Anyway... I've provided you with 3 PNG files for this card -- one with a black background, white background, or red background.

You can download all of these HERE.

Enjoy the cards, and have a blessed Christmas!

12 Photo Quick Page - Photo Cluster

Here's another Quick Page I created for use with multiple photos. You can see the quick page on the left side, my layout is on the right.

Credits for my layout:
Background Paper by Marcee Dugar
Note Paper from the DigiScrapDivas "Under the Sea" mega kit

The Quick Page was created as an 8x8 file at 300dpi.

You can DOWNLOAD HERE.

Quick Page - 36 Photos

Ever have a bunch of somewhat junky photos that you couldn't bear to part with? Here's a template that allows you to put 36 photos on one page. I used it for low quality photos my babysitter sent of the kids while they were playing.

In my LO, the paint swash is by Traci Sims.

I created this LO for 8x8 at 300dpi. Sorry if you're a 12x12 scrapper -- I'm not! :)

You can DOWNLOAD HERE.