New Tutorial for MyMemories Fans

Here's a question for you. No, I don't need you to find Wally. I already live with him ... Is this layout

1) Two circles surrounded by odd shapes? Or ...

2) Rectangles with circles in front of them?




If you believe in 2) then you can make this layout! The tutorial is on Coastal Scrapbooks HERE and there's an album set up on Digi Scrapping Tips for your layouts. There's no excuse. It's easy! There aren't many things you CAN'T do in My Memories Suite! Come and challenge us!

Ths layout is from Lindsay Jane's Simple Set 6 Bonus (currently free on her blog). Word art is from StoryRock's Destinations and other elements from SAS Designs' Flying the Flag. Photos? Me, John and our friends Lionel and Barbara during Oriana's sailaway from Madeira in December 2009.

Prettying Up The Tower of London

The Tower of London was not a fun place. The website portrays it to be a fun place NOW, of course, but you wouldn't want to be there a few hundreds years ago unless you were prepared to come out without your head. My husband, John, works in his firm's London office occasionally and he took this photo in May on a wet, grey day. Not that our summer days have been much different since...



It would make an interesting old v.new study but I decided to use a mask to remove almost everything except the Tower. I also used the Auto Enhance in Paint Shop Pro X4 to brighten it up and change it to how it looks on a sunnier day. We've given up all hope of a summer here in the UK and have to do what we can to pretend! Generally I've found PSP X4 auto enhance to be completely useless - my old PSP 8, Paint Shop Album and virtually any other program you can think of is better. However, while the photo is on the screen waiting for its mask you might as well hit the button and try it and this time I got lucky.

I used Wendy Tunison's World Traveler London Add-on kit and a free border cluster made by Simply Creative by Thao. I covered up a few bits like suitcases with a few extra embellies mainly from the New York kit. I don't know why designers think London is full of Victorian objects! It's very difficult to find British kits that aren't extremely annoying to any British person I might show the layout too. Even DH remarked that it must be obvious it's London in this page. I just liked the postmark effect.

Don't like Mondays? Try our challenge!

Every Monday on the new Digi Scrapping Tips group on Facebook we'll have a Monday challenge. You don't HAVE to make a page on Monday but it could improve your Mondays if you do! It's not a speed scrap and there are no strict rules. You'll just get a design idea or sometimes an easy tutorial and you can interpret it how you like - and add as many pages as you like. We're putting them in an album each week so they don't get lost down the busy page.

Today's challenge is to use three photos in a row but make one of them a bit different. That's it. Easy! Here's one example. I used Lindsay Jane's Sea Breeze template for MyMemories, tilted the middle photo so the name of the ship was straight then put the frame BEHIND it.



I have a few more examples for you here: Slideshow ~ Gallery. Have fun!

New Facebook Group - Digi Scrapping Tips

I hope the noticeboard says it all. Someone is obviously ignoring the request to keep it tidy! I used Heather Roselli's Cubicle with a View to make it.

The new Digi Scrapping Tips group is a completely ad-free zone with pretty strict posting rules to make it a nice place to be. There is far too much "Look at my new kit" garbage on too many Facebook groups and pages. We're quite capable of spending our money without any help! There are several tutorials on there and there will be even more soon. We don't mind which  program you use for your scrapbooking. Whatever it is I bet we can teach you new tricks with it.

We even have a plan to make Monday something to look forward to. Hey, we have a noticeboard for that too!

The Digi Scrapping Freebies group we started a few months ago has a fancy new header, a daily photo challenge - see post below for yesterday's and you can now post good deals you find in the Files section. So I think we got it all covered!

Many thanks to my team of "admin" for both groups - Kimmie, Catherine, Diana, Yobeth, Rachel and Debbie - smart, tough cookies!

A Chair With History

Today I wanted to make a layout with a chair. Like you do. This Lloyd Loom chair was the first thing my parents bought, along with a matching linen basket, for their new home when they got married in 1949. I say new home but in those days that consisted of what my Mum called "Furnished Rooms" so I suppose it was nice to have something that was actually theirs.

As you can see Mum and Dad thought it was hilarious to have a photo of me sitting in the chair holding a bottle of gin. I suspect that was Uncle Ernie's doing and he would have been the one with a camera.

When we got married Mum and Dad gave us the Lloyd Loom set and we painted it dark green (it was Olive green before) to go in our bathroom. The linen basket has remained green - and we actulaly use it as a linen basket - and the chair has been painted blue. This might  be its last incarnation as it's a pain to paint!

So why on earth am I making a layout about a chair? Well, apart from wanting to share the thrilling story, today Photo word of the day on the Digi Scrapping Freebies group is "chair".The challenge is fun to do and you can use pages you've already made. There's nothing worse than having to make a page each day when you don't have time. So it's not a P365 thing. I can't abide those. But that's the subject for another long rant another time.

This layout was made with Lindsay Jane's Essence of Blue MMS template.