Time to blog…..

Posted on May 17, 2013 by ronnietexas

My MIL is visiting from England and as I type she’s snoring away having given up trying to stay awake so it means I have a little time to blog. The end of the school year is nearly with us and with it I’m trying to squeeze into life my creative team requirements. I love scrapping and try and scrap everyday but sometimes it just doesn’t happen due to family commitments and the fact my eye lids won’t stay open much past 10pm. I don’t know about you but I’m not a late night person. I’d rather get up early to do something than try and stay up. Over the next couple of weeks I may be scrapping in the early hours to do things.

I recently joined the team at Pixels & Company – that place is full of the most awesome designers some of my favorite. Its great to be part of a store team as it means I can play with different designer products and mix match which what I like to do. Rather than kit scrapping I like to pick and mix items. And it can’t be better than having the choice of all these great designers.

That being said this week I did kit scrap. Well the kit was just so full of awesomeness that it had everything I needed.

Devoted by Karla Dudley

Look at all those wonderful elements and the colors were just perfect to scrap my daughter and her friend at prom this year.

Don’t you love that background paper??? I rarely use full pages of patterned papers like this but I couldn’t help myself with this one. I actually used 5 different patterned papers. The papers that Karla created work so well together.

For this layout I used one of the awesome templates from Tiffany Tillman. If you haven’t used one of her templates you really should. They are so easy to use. You can see from my layout that I used the basic structure but changed out where my elements went. I kept them balanced by making sure I had my visual triangles working. There is one of words – from My Best Friends, Love Us to Friend Tag. Then The color pink from the button with its ribbon to the small flower to the F on the friend tag. Remember visual triangles don’t have to be the same type of elements to help the flow of the layout.

Ronnie

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May Simple Scrapper Blog Hop

Posted on May 7, 2013 by ronnietexas

My layouts this month:-

My first layout was hard to do as its about my Aunty who was tragically taken from us last year. The prompt was to use happy pictures to record sad moments and even though the large picture was taken at my Dads funeral it was a happy picture as we were celebrating his life how he would liked. The sad memory was this is the last time I saw my Aunt prior to the accident that killed her and I didn’t know it.

Supplies – May 2013 – Story Starter no.12
Simple Scrapper Premium Membership Template – September 2012
Vicki Stegall -Butterfly Kisses; Cathy Zielske – Grateful for this memory
Katie Pertiet – VintageBlendablesNo1-5; Katie Pertiet – SommerDelight
Connie Prince – Supply Closet

My second layout has lots of layers providing visual interest. I add the border of inked edges to the background paper to also provide some visual interest. The paper was textured but I really like the addition of the edged border. I would do this a lot when I was a paper scrapper and so I still like adding it.

Supplies – Simple Scrapper Premium Membership – May13-single1; Aprilisa School Days; Connie Prince – Supply Closet; Chelle Creations CU Splats; Chelle Creations – Fall Semester; Dream Big Designs – Smarty; Kaye Winiecki – A Little Edgy Vol 2; Mye De Leon – Old School; Sahlinstudio – Explore Learn & Grow

Want to win a one-month trial of the Simple Scrapper Premium Membership?

Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter a giveaway for a one month trial membership at Simple Scrapper. There are three ways to enter and three winners will be selected. To be eligible, you must enter by 11:59pm CDT on Wednesday, May 8. Continue on with the Simple Scrapper Blog Hop using the links below–you won’t want to miss out on how these other ladies have used this month’s Premium Membership goodies

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Continue on with the Simple Scrapper Blog Hop using the links below–you won’t want to miss out on how these other ladies have used this month’s Premium Membership goodies.

Simple Scrapper (Jennifer Wilson)
Lisa Corbin-Polak
Ronnie Crowley
Margrethe Aas Johnsen
Amy Kingsford
Samantha Landay
Pam Lozano
Aimee Maddern
Jean Manis
Van Nguyen
Melissa Priest
Mandy Ross
Celeste Smith
Sara Strickland

The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping. Each month members receive a new collection of sketch templates and Story Starters, story-focused prompts for pages and projects.

Thanks for stopping by!

Ronnie

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Pixels & Company iNSD Creative Team Blog Hop

Posted on May 3, 2013 by ronnietexas

Welcome to the Pixels & Company Blog Hop and to my blog. If your new around here welcome. If you’re a regular welcome back and hope you enjoy this blog hop.

First of all I want to share my 4 favorite products over at Pixels & Company that I’ve been scrapping with recently.

A Kind Word- Love Part 2 by Deena Rutter

The Summer Elements by The Ardent Sparrow

Hatteras by wild blueberry ink

Caffeine – Papers by Robyn Meierotto

There are so many great designers at the store that was a really hard decisions if you check out my gallery you can see some of the layouts I’ve made using these products and also lots of other great layouts.

Especially for iNSD the designers at Pixels & Company have designed this great kit especially for iNSD.

Look at all that digital loveliness. Its full to the brim of great papers and elements. You can earn this kit for free by hopping the blogs of all the designers (see this blog post for details ) but in addition to that the creative team have made some great journaling cards – well to be more exact they have made 59 cards which you can also earn for free. Including one from me! Look at all these cards.

Mine looks like this.

So what do you need to earn these two kits for free. Well if you started here you need to go back and start at the beginning the P&Co Blog and there will be instructions for both of the hops. Today’s post is for the creative teams hop for the designers hop you will need to check the previous post but it will be well worth it.

If your working your way through the creative teams hop you can see from the list below where you are up to.

Pixels & Company – START HERE

Ronnie Crowley <<———YOU ARE HERE

Wendy Bretz
And now the important part of the hop – my letter!

Next stop – is Amy Kingsford.

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April Simple Scrapper Blog Hop + Giveaway

Posted on April 2, 2013 by ronnietexas

See details below on how to WIN a years membership!

This month I created a couple of layouts to record a memory beyond the picture in the layout. The April Story starters got me started as they were all about connecting stories and I was also taking a class at Big Picture which was all about different ways to journal. If you don’t take class I highly recommend them. Simple Scrapper offers some great ones to members and non-members – you can check them out here. I find that classes push me out of my comfort zone for my scrapbooking and make me try things I maybe wouldn’t do otherwise.

My first layout is one of the story starters – “This moment reminds me of…..” I’d been working on getting some pictures ready for a retreat where I was going to work on last summers road trip and I came across a picture of my kids in a garden we visited. It got me thinking of my Grandmother and Mother who were both lovers of gardens and flowers. I surprised myself sometimes that I know names of some flowers but it is all down to these two ladies who are now sadly gone and won’t be able to pass on this knowledge to my kids so its down to me!

Credits

My second layout was created because I loved this specific template that Jennifer created and once I’d seen it I had to use this template regardless of the fact I didn’t really have a picture in mind when I started. I don’t know about you sometimes I start with pictures, other times it’s a kit but the most times I don’t start with a template – that is unless a template speaks to me like this one did. I don’t even usually scrap 8.5 by 11. I also decided what kit I was going to use before I chose a picture. I’d bought the kit that was being sold to raise money for the Designer Mye De Leon’s baby and I hadn’t used it so I wanted to put it to some use. As my color scheme was dictated by the kit I realised it was a perfect time to scrap one of my heritage pictures and as a result I found the opportunity to tell the story about how I got the scar on my elbow. (I’m slowly adding more pages to my album.)

Credits

Want to check out what the rest of the team have been doing this month – you won’t be disappointed. Check them out by following the links below.

Simple Scrapper (Jennifer Wilson)
Jeryn Carlisi
Lisa Corbin-Polak
Holly Humbert
Margrethe Aas Johnsen
Aimee Maddern
Jean Manis
Van Nguyen
Celeste Smith
Sara Case Strickland

Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter a giveaway for a one-year premium membership at Simple Scrapper. There are three ways to enter and three winners will be selected. To be eligible, you must enter by 11:59pm CDT on Friday, April 5.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping. Each month members receive a new collection of sketch templates and Story Starters, story-focused prompts for pages and projects.

Posted in Blog Hop, classes, giveaway, Simple Scrapper | Tagged Simple Scrapper | Leave a comment

March 2013 Simple Scrapper Blog Hop

Posted on March 5, 2013 by ronnietexas

February was a hard month round here. Live never seems to slow down and February seemed to be none stop for us. There were highs (my sons basketball team won the State Championship) and lows (a friends boyfriend aged 24 died as a result of a car accident). In and around I did manage to get some scrapping done if not any blogging.

I made two layouts for the Simple Scrapper team.

Credits

In this layout the blue in the pictures was so strong that I couldn’t find anything with color that worked so I decided to allow the pictures to star and go for a neutral background picking out the color from the costumes the kids were wearing.

My second layout was with the special story starters. The theme this month is Adventure and when I read number 6 – “Create a layout in your pet’s first person about his/her adventures while you are away.” I knew I had the perfect picture that I hadn’t scrapped and would work perfectly for this starter.

Credits

In reality Bevo isn’t our Guinea Pig (we do have 2) but a friends and my hubbie decided to mess with her kids while we were minding them by pretending to eat him for Thanksgiving dinner. The journaling reads “I was less than impressed to be told that I was going on vacation to stay with Slash and Galaxy for Thanksgiving while you were all going skiing. I mean I didn’t even know them so why would I choose to go stay with them but as usual nobody asked me. The situation went from bad to worse when their owners threaten to cook me for Thanksgiving dinner! They even put me in the roasting pan! For a minute I thought I was a goner and I quickly said my prayers. Your lucky I didn’t die at that moment. I ‘m so thankful it was some elaborate human joke and they were only trying to scare you! I’m just thankful to be alive and kicking. Please don’t leave me with them again! Bevo.”

Want to check out what the rest of the team have been doing this month – you won’t be disappointed. Check them out by following the links below.

Simple Scrapper (Jennifer Wilson)
Jeryn Carlisi
Lisa Corbin-Polak
Ronnie Crowley
Kim Gehring
Michele Holcomb
Margrethe Aas Johnsen
Amy Kingsford
Samantha Landay
Pam Lozano
Aimee Maddern
Jean Manis
Van Nguyen
Melissa Priest
Celeste Smith
Sara Case Strickland

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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February 2013 Simple Scrapper Blog Hop & Giveaway

Posted on February 5, 2013 by ronnietexas

Well January went by fast for me. One minute we were celebrating Christmas and now we’re thinking about Valentines Day. Its been a crazy schedule as we some how let my son play 3 basketball teams and a soccer team all at once. This was not a good idea and it is for certain that it won’t be happening again. None of us have appreciated it. I for one have felt the stress on my scrappy time but I did manage to get three layouts done for the Simple Scrapper team this month – one for the story starter and the other 2 using the new templates. So I can’t really complain.

February’s story starter was hopes and dreams. I decided that some scrap therapy was in order and to do an art journal page using the template from November 2012. If you remember back in November I created this layout using that template.

Credits

Well for the February 2013 Story Starter this is what I created

Credits

As you can see the two pages are totally different! Just shows you how creative you can get with the use of a template.

The two pages I made with this months templates are both for my daughters dance album. She attends a Fine Arts school and these are pictures from the school dance company. I’m very lucky as my hubbie takes the pictures as a volunteer for the school so I get some great pictures to scrap for her.

Credits

Remember as always with each blog hop there is the chance to win a prize – Use this link to enter a giveaway for a one-month trial subscription to Simple Scrapper: http://ow.ly/ctrlx” Entries will be pooled and one winner selected at 11:59pm CST on Wednesday, February 6. You may enter from multiple blogs.

Simple Scrapper (Jennifer Wilson)

Margrethe Aas Johnsen

Lauren Hague Madsen

Jean Manis

Van Nguyen

Melissa Priest

Mandy Ross

Sara Case Strickland

Posted in Blog Hop, giveaway, Layout, Simple Scrapper | 4 Comments

My Custom Digi Scrapbooking Toms

Posted on February 3, 2013 by ronnietexas

My daughters friend is raising money for a school trip and I think she’s found a great way to do it by designing and painting customs TOMs. I got her to do some for my daughter for Christmas but then I decided I wanted a pair. I told her I wanted the them to be British Digi Scrapbooking Queen! Yes I appointed myself the Queen for my shoes……well RonnieTexas my online name didn’t work well for shoes. This is what she created.

T
T

Aren’t they cute! I’ve never had Toms before and they are comfy to wear on your feet and perfect for a Texas winter.

If you’d be interested in a pair of your own unique designed TOMS check out her facebook page – she has lots of pictures of the different designs she has done. Also the shoes don’t have to be Toms you can use other canvas shoes. You provide the shoes and she paints them.

Stepping In Paint – Custom Shoe Design by Chelsea – https://www.facebook.com/sipcustomshoes?ref=ts&fref=ts#

Ronnie

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The evolution of a layout.

Posted on January 30, 2013 by ronnietexas

So I’m taking round three of the guided-study critic class over at Get it Scrapped. I just love this class and really missed it while we took a break over Christmas so I was so happy to start again last week and work on my homework. If you’ve never taken a scrapbooking class I highly recommend it. I take them to push me to design better layouts. This weeks was case in point. This is the layout I created for the live critic session.

I was really happy with the design I created. After the comments made on the day though I did some re-work and created these two layouts.

The comments had been that the font I’d used for the words was too light and some felt that the word ‘the’ should be a script font. That the journaling was too cramped in the space. They also didn’t like his leg stepping through the word Dream. So you can see these two layouts dealt with the journaling and played with the title. I wasn’t though totally happy with them. When I shared them it was suggested that the journaling in the top half also needed to flow with his shape. I played some more and still I wasn’t happy. Then overnight I was lying in bed unable to sleep due to allergies and was pondering the issue and I came up with the solution – the addition of another word to the title. This would allow we to have “The Dream” across the whole page but also get rid of the trapped white space in between his legs. So the final version which will be sent to print is here.

Jump Start Designs – Textured White Paper
Love Language Elements by Dianne Rigdon – Frames

So yes when I look back I was 100% happy with the first version but now I’m 150% happy. Its an interesting process and you don’t always have to agree with the suggestions made but this time I’m glad I did.

I wonder where they will take me with this weeks homework – given that I wasn’t 100% happy it could be a long way!

Ronnie

Posted in classes, Layout, Sports | Tagged Sport | Leave a comment

First Love

Posted on January 11, 2013 by ronnietexas

Totally had fun scrapping tonight. When I started the night I was downloading Chelle’s Creations new release with no idea what I was going to do with it. My kids are a little too old for Valentines but not old enough for ‘real’ Valentines.

I decided to flick through the box of pictures from my paper days that I’ve been trying to scan and see if there was anything in there I could use and I came upon the perfect pictures! Pictures of my 3 year old son and his first love.

Template – AprilLisa Designs Picture Perfect 19

Once I scanned the pictures this layout came together easily. Chelle has created some great elements in the kit. I stayed with a mostly pink color scheme with just a few hints of blue and green. Chelle also has some rub-ons

I used the word rubon on top of the main picture. So that it didn’t cover the faces I then added a mask and used a large soft brush to gentle mask out the area that was over the two kids. It really added some interest to the layout I think.

I’m so glad that I found these pictures to work with this kit was a joy once I had the right pictures.

Ronnie

Posted in Chelle Creations, Layout | Tagged love | 1 Comment

2012 Favorites

Posted on January 2, 2013 by ronnietexas

So I decided to post a a few of my favorite layouts from 2012. I don’t count the number of layouts I do in year but in 2012 it was a lot but I’m going to limit myself to five favorites.

My No.1 favorite I did for a class. Why is it a favorite well the journaling.

Credits

The second favorite was also done for the same class. Once again a favorite because of the journaling.

Credits

The third one was totally out there for me. I did it for the Simple Scrapper Design team and when I started I didn’t have a clue where I was going to end-up but in the end I fell in love with the final layout I created.

Credits

Fourth – I just loved the picture in this one and how I blended the hand to make it look like she was hanging off the frame! The picture was actually taken the same time as the one in layout number three!

Credits

Finally I have to include a sports layout. I love doing these especially with blended photos and Anna Aspnes products

Credits

So do I see anything common to the layouts I’ve chosen. Well 4 of 5 include blending techniques which I learned from the classes I’ve taken with Jana Morten. Highly recommend those classes if you want to learn to blend pictures. I also see that taking classes really pushes me to scrapbook at my best. It’s the my competitive nature I guess. I want to get great comments from the teachers in the class. I want the gold star. Yes I love gold stars from teachers even when in reality it means nothing. So I will continue to take classes. I’ve already signed up for one in February at Big Picture Classes about journaling and I will be for certain taking the next guided study critique class with Debbie Hodge. I’ve taken this twice now and absolute love it. The next class has sign-up next week. I’m saving my Christmas money so I can do this class.

In 2013 I will continue to scrapbook digitally. I’m committed to scrapbook on the following teams :-

The Daily Digi

Dianne Rigdon Designs

Chelle’s Creations

Simple Scrapper

This keeps me busy scrapping and I love being part of the design teams. My time with Mye De Leon as a guest came to an end and I didn’t apply for a full time position. It was too much on top of the others. What I’ve learned over the years is that my scrapping has to be for enjoyment and stress release. If I add too much it becomes a chore and I loose the love. That’s why I don’t do project life and other such projects. I don’t like the restrictions. I know these projects work for lots of people but I have learned from experience they aren’t for me.

Happy New Year

Ronnie

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Going Digi – and the many stories along the way

Time to blog…..

Devoted by Karla Dudley

May Simple Scrapper Blog Hop

Want to win a one-month trial of the Simple Scrapper Premium Membership?

Thanks for stopping by!

Pixels & Company iNSD Creative Team Blog Hop

A Kind Word- Love Part 2 by Deena Rutter

The Summer Elements by The Ardent Sparrow

Caffeine – Papers by Robyn Meierotto

April Simple Scrapper Blog Hop + Giveaway

March 2013 Simple Scrapper Blog Hop

February 2013 Simple Scrapper Blog Hop & Giveaway

Lauren Hague Madsen

Van Nguyen

My Custom Digi Scrapbooking Toms

Stepping In Paint – Custom Shoe Design by Chelsea – https://www.facebook.com/sipcustomshoes?ref=ts&fref=ts#

The evolution of a layout.

First Love

2012 Favorites

My latest layout

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