More Scrapbooking Layouts

Here's another couple of layouts. My daughter, Jenni, again. Although I'm doing many layouts for various photo books I want to create, I find that scrapping photos of my children and granddaughter right now is extremely cathartic. I miss them so very much. I gotta get rid of all my pent up emotions! I can't wait til Steve and I move where we will be only a half hour drive from them. In the meantime, I'm loving the creative process of working with photos of them all.

Jenni - I hope you like these layouts. I love you and it won't be long now!

Where's the rum?

I'm a huge, huge fan of Pirates of the Caribbean. It could be Jonny Depp but I think it's more likely the fact that I love, love, love the Caribbean, Barbados in particular and have a weakness for Bajan Mount Gay rum... hmmmm Loverly!!

So anyway, I was going through some of my favourite blog reads and came across these gorgeous pirate doodles for scrapbooking. They utterly fun and so lush. Love the girlie ones in particular. Brilliant!

Hmm is it too early for a rum and coke?

Home Again

I'm back. Steve and I went down to Kent for a few days for my granddaughter's dedication and it was just wonderful. I have dozens of photos and can't wait to start doing some photo art and scrapbook pages with them. Jorja Ruth is a delight and her parents are truly amazing and so wonderful with her. I'm so proud of them!

It was fabulous to spend time with my twinnies and see my eldest son and his new girlfriend as well as spend time with my parents, sister and brother and their kids. All in all a really fantastic few days.

Back to work now. Yay! I love my work and looking forward to getting cracking on some new projects and getting creative.

For My Twinnies

I did a scrapbook layout yesterday and I want to dedicate it to my precious twinnies, Jenni & Kris. Life's been pretty rough on all of my kids but in particular my twins... I miss them so much and I can't wait to move to Kent to be close to them again.
Anyway, this layout is for them:
{click on image to see bigger version}

Faux Fimo Flowers - a fun digi download just for you!

Freebie for you! A couple of papers and some faux fimo flowers

Please just leave a little comment if you download - thanks :){Click on image to see details}

Download here

So I came across Kirsty's cool videos over at YooTube and loved her fimo flowers demonstration. As well as inspiring me to try and create some faux ones in Photoshop, it took me back years to when I did art/craft with my kiddos especially my twinnies and we used to do alsorts with fimo. I forgot how wonderful that stuff is and how much I loved doing art and craft with my kids. I do miss those days so much and can't wait til my granddaughter is old enough to play!

Anyway, I also did a couple of matching papers and put it altogether as a little freebie for my readers here and my fellow UKScrappers. Hope you find some use for them. I'm creating some more as buttons and doing lots of colours and patterns as a big embellishment kit which will be available on my site and at ScrapGirls in the next couple of weeks.

Creating those flowers and papers got me off my backside for finally creating a freebie for my blog/store each month. I've been designing and creating digital scrapbook products for just over 2 yrs now but had to shut down my website/business due to some serious personal issues in my life and moving home. I'm excited to be back up and running and will be launching my new store in a few weeks time. So this is the first of many freebies to come.

Immediate Thoughts

• Pain
• Money (or lack thereof)
• Magazine article
• Deadlines
• Weekend
• Sons, daughter-in-law, daughter, granddaughter
• Whitstable
• Photoshop brushes
• More pain
  
• Sleep (or lack thereof)
• Website/online store
• Rain

Creative Muse

So I love pushing pixels. I love being creative. I've always done some form of art/craft and flexed my creative muscles one way or the other. Discovering the computer as a powerful tool for creating art was honestly one of the best days of my life... and I still remember it. My father had set me up with a little 286 and I was doing some typing for him and some admin stuff. I was also discovering the WWW. It was 1994 and I was doing very primitive html.

And then one weekend we went to visit my ex's family - aunt/uncle and cousins. They're a very creative family and uber talented using the computer.. it's their business. Well, I was just sitting playing on one of their pc's and started playing in Corel Draw... ugh! I was hooked. It was so liberating and from that day forward I did everything I could to learn more about graphic design and digital art. I took courses, read books, went to college. As soon as I could afford it, I bought Corel Draw, Photoshop and Painter and have upgraded ever since.

Every day I'm on my pc. I'm blessed to be doing this as a career. I don't know where my leisure time and work time start and end. I love my creative muse. I love colour. I love design. It's exciting to now be with my new partner who is also a digital artist. He's also a traditional artist and graphic designer and oh the joy of working together! It's a dream come true. We feed off of each other. We talk Photoshop in bed hahaha!! It's just too amazing. And it's my creative muse.

Here's the very latest little scrapbook layout I've just finished. I created it in Photoshop CS2 and all the papers and embellishments are my own work. This is my precious little granddaughter, Jorja Ruth.

Quiet

So Jen went home this morning. I feel so empty and quiet. Not that she was noisy but that her presence was here and now it's not. I'm so excited to be moving back to Kent and that time can't come quick enough. Steve said it's like Superman (the first Christopher Reeve film) where he went away to get inspired, encouraged etc.. to be able to move on and "save the world". Not that I want to save the world. The point is, I had to move away after my divorce. I had to find "me" and whether anyone understands it or not, I had to do that away from my family including my kids and granddaughter. I'm ready to move back. I need to move back and be near them all again. I'm better and I'm more me - Diane - than I've ever been before. I know it's still a day by day thing. I know there will be good days and bad days. The good days far outnumber the bad ones. I'm excited about my future. I wake up every day excited. I wake up every day so keen to get started on all that the day offers.

So yes, it's quiet and I miss my Jen but I'm happy. Quietly happy and extremely contented.

Monday Again

Weekend just flew past and it's Monday again. Jenni is here for a few days and we spent the weekend chillin', chatting, and watching the odd movie. Oh and she baked wonderful chocolate chip cookies. Naughty but nice. Especially with Tiramisu ice cream! Hmmmm


Yesterday we went for a nice long walk in the woods. Most of the snow has gone now but is still so cold. There were little crocuses springing up here and there... Spring is on it's way. I wonder though if we've seen the last of the very cold weather. I think not.


I did manage to get some work done as well. There's so much going on... I'm working on some new textures for Steve's 3d models; creating various digital scrapbook papers and embellishments for my new store; doing my Scrap Girls designs; and some new exciting work for a UK photo service company. More about that another time. It's non stop and it's exciting. I love my life. I'm truly blessed. And it's Monday morning and the start of a new week.

Digital Scrapbook Creations

I'm nearly there. I've been doing digital scrapbooking and designing kits and elements for just over 2 yrs. I used to have my own website and store but my personal life took a massive nose dive and I had to just shut it all down. But now I'm back up and running. Well, my website is done. Got some more tutorials to upload and still got to finish the store. My partner is helping me with the programming since I'm extremely php etc.. challenged! I love creating websites and love my Dreamweaver but don't ask me to look at the CSS coding or PHP.

It's exciting to be so creative again. I've always done some form of art ever since I was a little girl and was fortunate enough to have parents that were artists as well. And then my father introduced me to computers back in 1994 or so and the combination of art and computers was just fabulous for me. I stumbled upon digital scrapbooking and it was an evolution process to be where I am now. Creating layouts and papers and elements and alphabets.. I love it. It's my career choice, my livelihood, my passion, my art and I know I'm very lucky to be able to do this every single day.

I've got so much going on though and so much in the pipeline. It really helped to put together my own inspirational scrapbook. It's just a watercolour pad that I knicked from Steve (my partner) - he's an artist too! Anyway, I collect magazine articles, images and put together my colour schemes in this scrapbook. Last night I wrote out all the categories of products and the 3d clipart section that I want to create. I also scrawl out various names for my colour schemes with the hope of creating papers or full kits. It just really helps to put all the stuff that's swirling round my head onto paper. It makes more sense to me. I think I'm really lucky to have this seemingly endless supply of inspiration. I have had complete artist block before now and having the inspriation scrapbook helps. I can just open it up and there's a ton of inspiration!

Yes, I love my life and my art.