Chinese New Year

Time for the annual Chinese New Year celebration! We had a lot of fun at our local Sushi & Hibachi Buffet.

I downloaded some free clipart from the Internet and got this lovely "Year of the Snake" picture.  The rest of the page is made with a kit by Saxon Holt called "At the Museum - China."  Unfortunately, Saxon retired and the kit is no longer available.

This is more from Saxon Holt's kit.

My child is a goofball!  Where she got the idea to pretend she was being punched is beyond me, but you can see she can barely control the laughter! 

I love blog trains and this page was made with elements and papers I downloaded from all the freebies on the "China Orient" blog train hosted by Digiscrap Forum:

http://www.digiscrapforum.com/showthread.php?t=3895

Anytime you hear of a blog train, go check it out.  This is a chance not only for you to download a lot of kits for free, but a chance to see lots of different designers you may not have heard about before.  Everyone's taste is different and I love blog trains because they include designs from many different styles.

Getting Started with Digital Scrapbooking

Getting Started!

I've had so much fun with digital scrapbooking I thought I'd share with you. I tried making layouts using Photoshop, but it was a little complicated for me. I found this page on Facebook called MyMemories. I lurked for a while and thought maybe I would give the software a try. Everyone said it was really easy, so I decided I was going to "bite the bullet" and buy the software. It was $40, but a friend gave me a code to use to get $10 off the software, plus $10 to spend in the shop mymemories.com. I figured that was like half price, and I'm a real bargain hunter, so maybe this would be the thing for me.

First, I went to the website and took a look around. They had all these free kits you could download, whether you had a PC or a Mac. Plus, if you choose not to buy the software, you could download them as "General" files and use them in Photoshop. Well, what's better than free? Then I looked at the Dollar Store. So many kits for $1.00!! Wow! You get the papers and embellishments with some of these kits - for $1.00? Loving that.

Downloading the software was easy and so was downloading the kits. Once I got the software installed, I opened up the file for one of the kits, and it automatically downloaded to my Applications folder. Cool Beans! I decided to try one of the "Quick Pages." The designer puts together everything but the photo. I have SO MANY photos I need to get scrapbooked! Holy cow! It was so easy! And it looked really professional. I really liked it, so I decided to try a page using the kit and make it up myself. Not super good, not super bad. I uploaded a jpg of the page to the MyMemories facebook page and asked for critique. A lady said it would look better with "shadows" so I gave that a try. What a difference! It looked like all the photos and embellishments jumped off the page! Go look for yourself! It's http://www.mymemories.com

I am having so much fun with this! If you think you might want the software, I'm going to do for you what my friend did for me. If you buy the software, when it asks for a Promo Code, cut and paste this:

STMMMS31635

It's best to cut and paste so your get all the letters and numbers correct. That will get you $10 off the software and the software will come with a coupon for $10 any purchase in the store.

If you decide to give it a try, let me know. I'd love to share pages and tips with you. If you decide not to get the software and continue to use Photoshop or something like that, also let me know. I'd love to swap ideas!