The Great Pumpkin Day is coming!

Well, I guess this image blurred a little bit! So much for getting a clear picture on the scanner! Anyway, I did a quick little treat for the preschoolers at church and daycare. I wrapped a little notepad in Old Olive and Rich Razzleberry and then stamped the Halloween image from the Sweet Treats for the bottom part. I used a glue dot to hold on a set of Halloween crayons and finished it off with some jute and the center of the stamped image. The next two are pins that I made for the daycare workers. I used the curly label punch as the base and then a few hole punches and paper snips to make a Frankenstein and Dracula. Hopefully they weren't too scary for them! I also covered each with 2 layers of Mod Podge just to keep it from being too flimsy to wear on a shirt.

And here is the bag that I sent all of the worker's pins in. I used a white paper bag and covered the front with a 6 X 6 inch piece of black cardstock. I used the Whisper White and Old Olive craft ink to set the Baroque images on the background. For the pumpkin, I just glued a bunch of wide oval punches together and snipped a little stem for it. Finally, I used the Movers and Shapers Curly Label to punch the Old Olive paper and put some stampin' dimensionals under it. For a little ending touch, I added a few Boho Blossoms to the corner.

And one last bag that I made for my little niece, Brinklee. I found a few board books to send her for Halloween, so I used the Build-a-Bear pumpkin outfit to make a sweet and simple bag for her as well.

Last MDS pages

Well, I just finished the last of my certification quizzes for My Digital Studio...I guess if I had watched all of those webinars BEFORE I started this, I could have just made a video to post of the whole entire album. Ah, but that will be a project for the next album, because I am most certainly NOT done playing with this fun program!

So, I apologize for small photos and blurry reproductions, but I will say that the album that I ordered from SU is truly outstanding! It was definitely worth every penny!

Here are a few pics from Belize - we went to Mayan ruins, a place called Altun Ha. They were located in a clearing in the middle of the rain forest - very thick with mosquitos! But also rich in culture and history.

And here is the Belize Zoo. Certainly not the most outstanding zoo I have ever been to, but definitely the most darling and natural zoo. All of the animals truly live in their natural habitat - no man-made living environments for them (unless you count cages). The zookeeper was near the jaguar, so she allowed Toby to touch his paw. I think Toby was on cloud 9 for the rest of the day!

And what other background color can you choose for beautiful pictures of a sparkling ocean? I never knew the ocean could be so vividly clear until going on this trip. After snorkeling in Cozumel I am now a huge fan of it! I saw angel fish, lobster, a huge school of fish, porcupine fish, and even barracuda!

And as if that weren't enough to make me ecstatic, there were fabulous fajitas just a mile down the road from our stop!

Well, thankfully we aren't treated to dining like you see above every night...my hubby ate 2 appetizers, 2 entrees and 2 desserts every night! You would think I couldn't cook! We enjoyed the beautiful view and the outstanding food, though!

While we were at dinner the last night, we had our friends from our table sign their names to a picture we took of them so that we would never forget them. They were terrific company every night!

And one last look at the cruise had to remember how much our little girl loved the kids area. We didn't have to feel guilty dropping her off for a date night, because she begged to go play in the kids room every night! Well, I guess if I got to do fun things like face painting every night, I would probably beg to go, too! I believe I'll just have to beg for enough money to go on another cruise someday...maybe in another 10 years we can save up again! For now, I think it's time to cruise on through some more pictures and projects!

More MDS

Okay, so here is where the pages that I created start. I started with our cruise pictures. I realize that the picture below this is a terrible picture, but despite the terrible lighting, I loved the way that the picture highlighted my daughter's beautiful, long curls in her hair!

And here the layout above was a pre-made layout, but I figured out that you could add a mirror image and even flip the details, so I really like the cohesive look it created - nice and simple, but just perfect for our pictures together. I really liked these pictures to showcase our anniversary - they just showed us - the way we are together. We're just silly and happy!

Again, the pictures for this layout were terrible, so I converted all but one into black and white - that way, it was okay to use all these bright colors on the layout! Here, you will notice that as I put the layout of photos on the pages, the same idea was used on the second page, but it was flipped over.

Yes, those are real stingrays...no they did not cut the tails off of them. In the Grand Cayman Islands lies a HUGE sand bar where the water is only 2 - 4 feet deep and hundreds of wild stingrays come to swim with people it was awesome!

So for the scrapbook page - I took the same beginning layout of the opening page of the previous post below and changed the papers, lowered the opacity and used different embellishments.

Here is a page I wanted lots of pictures on. We had so many pictures from Roatan, an island off of Honduras. This is one of the beautiful things about My Digital Studio - it is so easy to add many photos and to get the largest majority of your picture in each photo spot. I have tried printing pictures at home in different sizes to scrapbook in the past. The problem was always that if you sneezed, cried or slightly scratched the picture, the image would easily deterioriate. In MDS, I can add pictures of any size and in turn, I don't have to create so many layouts. Plus, there are no wasted pictures that I might have printed out and not used!

My Digital Scrapbook

Well, I have done it! I have finally figured out not only how to make a scrapbook album in My Digital Studio, I have printed it out and now can even upload my pictures of my pages to my blog! I am SOOO proud of myself! (I know....it only took me a month and a half to figure all of this out....I'm working - slowly, but surely).

So these pages on this post are all of the basic drag and drop picture pages from our summer trip that you find in the beginning of our book. I like the pre-made pages and since I was creating about 28 pages total for my book, it was very quick and easy to just drag and drop my pictures in until I got a feel for the album.

The pictures above are from Vizcaya - a beautiful mansion in Miami. Halleigh thought she had found a princess there!

And a luxurious room we stayed in during our visit to Miami deserves a page, too! Daddy and his little sand castle queen!

And a brief trip to the Everglades - now we see why it is called Alligator Alley!

The coolest part of our trip was a wild animal show that came to our resort while we were in Fort Lauderdale - we got to hold animals after the show was over. I couldn't believe that Halleigh didn't drop that Egyptian fox! It is almost as big as she is!

Halleigh's invitation

I made these invitations for my daughter's upcoming birthday party (address/phone are covered, of course!). I got the idea from Linda Hansen on UStamp the Fall session. I thought it was a cute way to make the invitation for her party. The Sundae party (her birthday is on a Sunday) was my hubby's idea. I, of course, ran with it!
Stamp: Goody-Goody Gumdrops
Paper: Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla
Ink: Chocolate Chip
Accessories: Watercolor pencils, blender pens, Cropadile, Wide Oval Punch, scraps of ribbon

Now for my birthday card for Toby...

Here is the card that I made for Toby for his birthday. I got the idea from Karen Giron's Sweet Sunday Sketch website. It was a quick, simple card. Just Crushed Curry, Bermuda Bay, and Chocolate chip, a 3/4" circle and scallop circle punch and a little glitter and markers.

Happy Bearthday, Daddy! (And a card from MDS)

My daughter and I worked together to make a birthday card for daddy. She got to pick the paper and the card choice (to color a bear or make a paper bear). She rolled the bear pieces through the Big Shot and wanted to make the bears clothes all white. Then, she stamped cupcakes and hearts on the inside with a picture of mommy, daddy, and Halleigh. (Okay, so they looked a little like Mr. and Mrs. Potato head, but I know daddy thought they were terrific!)

I think I have finally gotten a few cards and my scrapbook printed from My Digital Studio. So, here is a card that I made based on a card I received at the Cincinatti Regional. It was pretty easy to do - and it's fun to be able to make cards and scrapbook pages when I don't actually have the stamps!

Where in the world have I been?

Have you missed me? No, I didn't stop scrapping and doing stuff! I have been trying to work the kinks out of my computer and My Digital Studio. Notice the "I" here....it is NOT SU's fault that I am not a computer whiz! I'm still trying to figure out how to get my scrapbook pages to save as a jpeg on my computer so I can share the pics with you! Hopefully soon I will even have a real scrapbook to show people!

In the meantime, here are a few pics of the new look in our bathroom. I used a So Saffron decor element on the canvas and a stencil around the edges of the wall. I used the same paint from the stencil to paint the background of the canvas. The wall is just a neutral tan color. It is a very different look (the one before was leftover from the previous owner....we've only lived here 7 years...but I am slowly, but surely getting a little confidence in my painting skills!) I love decor elements - they are beautifully decorative as well as EASY and inexpensive! What's not to like about that?!