Tuesday 22 January 2013

Time is Money

Time is money so the business bods say. It's certainly been the case for me as an accountant for the past 30 years. The client is charged for the hours spent on the accounts work. I've been self employed for most of that time so time really is money. It amuses me when I'm in a meeting with a client and he just has to check his messages and answer his phone. You're paying for that time spent with me, Sonny! And I might just add in the rudeness surcharge ...

Before you start thinking "Is she posting on the wrong blog? Does she need more coffee" I'll get to my point. Time is valuable whatever we're doing given that we all have a finite amount of it. Many scrappers struggle to fit in time to scrap in between jobs, home schooling, housework etc. It's important we don't waste that valuable time. So I'm afraid the designers who arrange kits - even freebies - that just dump everything into your downloads folder with no organisation whatsoever have their offerings ignored. No freebie downloads means no looking at your blog and new kits. No sales! Well, no sales anyway because paying to have to tidy up after the designer is even worse...

One big online store has had server problems this week. They have my sympathies for that but one of the side effects of the server problems was that the reduced prices of new kits were not showing up. A few people mentioned it on their Facebook page and were told to email the company. Er....NO, NO. NO!! The customer took the trouble to mention it on the Facebook page - and all of them did it nicely, even me - so the person running the Facebook page can pass the information on to the admin, can't they? Why is the customer having to waste time jumping through hoops? They extended the reduced pricing for a few hours. I'm not sure why they couldn't have done it for a few days. Anyway the pricing still wasn't right in their tiny time frame so no sale and probably not looking at next week's new kits either. Sorry, folks, I just don't have time!

Sunday 6 January 2013

Are you happy with your work?

By work I mean, of course, your digi scrapping efforts and not the W word kind of work, the mention of which can get you thrown out of our Facebook groups. I retire from that kind of W word in a  few weeks so I'm almost exempt.

Are you happy with the layouts you make? Do you constantly tweak them? Having tweaked them to death for a few hours after a normal person would considered them finished do you then leave them alone or do you revisit them later and wish you'd done something different?

I sometimes make several versions of a page anyway. I'll often duplicate it (right click on the thumbnail at the bottom of the screen in MyMemories) and change only the background. For an erstwhile paper scrapper it's always a thrill to be able to change the background without dismantling everything and it's surprising now different a page can look.

I'll make several versions of a heritage page because my family continually fail to send me photos (grrr...)  and I don't have many photos to play with but have plenty of fabulous new kits to use. This isn't redoing. It's more like overdoing ...

As for completely remaking a layout because I don't like the old one - yes, I'll sometimes do that. If this sounds like you make sure you catch this week's challenge on Tips!

Lots of new exciting stuff happening!

Those of you seeing this blog for the first time are going to think. "Digi scrapping what now?"  Digi Scrapping Divas is an umbrella site for the Digi Scrapping Tips, Freebies and Landscapers groups on Facebook plus a LOT more. It will have articles, reviews, help pages for the FB groups etc and will be written by several contributors. You've met Catherine in her post below and you will start to see others appearing on the right hand side >>>>

The Facebook groups are not changing, other than getting new spruced up headers when time allows and a lot more members since our new site and blog will be promoting them all over the place. That  means more tips, more layouts, more freebies and more new friends! FB groups are fun but they're a bit restrictive in terms of information pages and help we can offer so that kind of thing will be on Digi Scrapping Divas.

Have fun looking around. We're happy to have suggestions !

Saturday 5 January 2013

Another Year, Another Blogger

Evening everyone, well its evening in my neck of the woods which is the beautifully wild moorland area of Halifax, West Yorkshire.

New Year being the time when its traditional to make some kind of fresh start I jumped at the chance when Sharon invited me to be a member of Digi Scrapping Divas.

I've written my own blog for a couple of years now but never worked in collaboration with a team on one before so this is really exciting for me - ok, I have a pretty boring life so it doesn't take much!

Like I said, I live in Halifax with hubby, 12 year old son and mad border collie puppy. I work as a Shopping Centre Manager (that's a Mall for my friends over the pond) and in my spare time I design Digital Scrapbooking kits and digital printables. I work with a fabulous creative team and Sharon has actually just joined us so you might see one or two of my kits featured in her tutorials!

I guess after all the blurb I'd better introduce myself - I'm Catherine Riley (aka CatDesignz or Catvinnat depending which online persona you are looking at).

Before I forget I'd like to wish you all a belated Happy New Year. I hope its a happy, peaceful and loving one for you and those you hold dear.

I'm looking forward to chatting to you lots more in the coming weeks.

 Happy Scrapping,

 Catherine


New blog design AND new website

I couldn't stand the whole header fiasco taking up any more mental energy so I changed it to this smart and rather posh design (don't you think?) which goes well with our new website. Our new what now?? Here's a clue. It's the same name as this blog with the usual bit on the end. Just the basic pages are set up at the moment. I'm still struggling with the end of the tax season so playing time is short.

Fortunately there will be a team of peeps writing on this blog and the website and what they don't know about digital scrapbooking is not worth knowing. You will learn a LOT!

Friday 4 January 2013

Yes, I know the header looks fuzzy ...

[Ok, this doesn't make sense now as I changed it!]

I think I'm going to leave it there as a good example of why you should NOT set up custom sizes for things in MyMemories. I set this one up at 800 pixels for the Facebook group header and it was too small for Blogger. Adding it to a plain background of the same colour in a new page didn't work. It's driven me barmy.

The best thing to do - always and despite what a gaggle of bossyboots will tell you - is to make a regular layout and resize it once it's finished in the very handy Picmonkey or any other program. Now I'll have to start again or - even better - get the designer in our team to design it!

The header for the Facebook group is about to change, leaving out the .com. Why? Because the dot com will shortly be going to ...a new website. watch this space. Just try not to look at the header.