Does My .... Look Big In This?

Yes it does! Although that could be because my head is missing since the template division slices right through it.

Why do scrappers think this kind of thing is OK? People cut in half, limbs sliced off, Vincent Van Gogh impressions ... my friends and I call it the Eeek Factor.  I've even seen designers who think that spreading a photo across pockets in trendy manner is more important than not cutting members of  your family in half. Please don't do it!

There are tips in the article HERE on positioning your photo and choosing the right template - plus a tutorial on merging photo boxes in PSE.

Here's a version of the page (I have several, I'm so proud that DH has mastered the Walking Away shot) showing all of me plus some of the woods. You can click on it to see a larger version. The cards are from Becky Higgins Digital Project Life Coral kit and the template is Template B, the embellishments and background papers are from Trixie Scraps' Nature Walk.


Maybe this photo shouldn't be split up at all. Here's a version of the page made with the same kit and a  template from a mystery best-thing-since-sliced-bread program I'll be reviewing in the next few days.

Say it here and it comes out there ...

Do you ever find yourself yelling at the TV for someone to do or say something (usually in my case it's "For goodness' sake, object!" at a defence attorney), then they do it and you claim full credit? That's what happened to me and my friend Ruth Trice last week. Ruth is a very talented paper crafter who can do amazing things with all kinds of paper and stamps.  I'm complete rubbish with stamps but really wanted to include stamping in our tutorials and design ideas pages so I turned to Ruth for help.

Cue husband (well, probably both) wondering how two women can talk for hours about cards, pockets, stamps and the like. Since Ruth is an independent demonstrator for Stampin Up ! we talked about the kind if things she could make - and teach us about - with Stampin' Up products. [OK, they had their one ! after the Up and any more would have my English teacher, who wouldn't be keen on the loss of the g either, spinning in her grave ...] We'd both noticed the occasional pocket-y page layout and how Ruth was able to make the exact size 3 x 4 card with one of the products and wondered how long it would be before they offered more pocket scrapbooking products.

Then the announcement came about Stamping Up working with Becky Higgins to offer Project Life within Stampin Up. It was as if they'd heard us! It makes great sense for both companies and it's great for us! I'm coveting the new corner punch already as I like the fold flat Stampin' Up punches. There's one not even got across the Atlantic yet that has my name on it.

It's interesting that the Stampin Up cards are not going to have rounded corners. It made me wonder if Becky Higgins' company is going to offer an option of square corners at some stage. Folk who like rounded corners can make square corners rounded. Obviously. Those who like square cornered cards cannot do the reverse. There is therefore a section of the market lost to Becky Higgins and it's the people who don't like rounded corners. I would imagine someone has noticed this. Personally I like rounding corners, it's a relatively mindless but vaguely creative activity I can do in the wee small hours when sleep has gone walkabout.

Ruth and I are working on an ever increasing number of projects, including a gazillion ways to alter Project Life cards, but to whet your appetite here's a fabulous page she made using Stampin Up products. You can see more in our Facebook group and on Ruth's Facebook Page Artful Stampin.


Did you know that Ruth has put together some great kits for you to get a head start on your pocket  pages? You can find them and see more of her creations on her blog HERE

Eat More Ice Cream

Well, we could stop right there, with that instruction in the title!

On Shrove Tuesday we took about 100 photos of us making pancakes. Note to self: Must clean kitchen before taking photos in kitchen or it will be embarrassing. I couldn't resist giving this tub of ice cream its own page. I should pin it up in the kitchen as a reminder to get some more of it. I used mostly Just Jaimee's Ice Cream. The rosettes are from Sahlin Studio's Pure Happiness and I used a mask by Lindsay Jane. It didn't take me long to make the basic page but I kept tweaking it for ages moving the embellies around.


 Here's a different version using the same kit:

Those days when nothing happens

I like the idea of documenting our daily lives even though I don't do that PL thing as such. Week numbers?? You won't get anyone who has ever owned a timeshare wanting those on a page!

Some days nothing happens. As in this day when it took two attempts just to get out for a coffee (the UK sunk under all the rain this winter ...) I made a paper and digi version of this. As you can see, in the digi version stuff escaped and biscuits appeared. I used Raspberry Road's Coffee Shop. The February photo overlay is by Ali Edwards. I have SO many coffee kits and even have a Pinterest board about coffee. I should get out more. For coffee.

Click on the photos to see a larger version.


We have so many coffee photos I had to do something different with some of them. here's a hybrid 4" x 6" where I used the photo and an embellishment cluster from ML Designs' Good Morning. I deliberately left some white space around it.   I like white space. Literally WHITE space. It makes the photos stand out. There's a Design Ideas article to follow on that very soon.

It's April!

Our new buffet challenge for April is on the Facebook group and already we have some creative interpretations plus twofers, threefers and more. See if you can beat them!

The rules - even though there aren't any - are on our main site HERE.



Speaking of rules, we do have them for the Facebook groups to make sure they're nice places to be. Otherwise they end up being just another "buy this" group like so many others on Facebook.

You can see our list of groups and find out about how they work on this page. You didn't know we had so many groups? We lose count too! Feel free to join as many as you like and tell your friends!

Put Divas' Detectives On the Case

If you have found yourself searching for a scrapbook kit with a particular theme or just the right colors, put Divas' Detectives on the case.  We make it our mission to stay on top of trends and help digital scrappers in every way.
We've noticed many people asking for help finding kits with specific themes or colors and recognized a need we could fill.  With that in mind we created Divas' Detectives, a Facebook group of fellow scrappers dedicated to helping make your dreams come true.  Well, your dreams of finding that perfect kit anyway!

So click Divas' Detectives Facebook group and join us.  In addition to finding the kit you're looking for, you can help other scrappers make their dreams come true as well.  It's a win/win.

The Photo Challenge - March 2014

Scrapbooking is all about the photos. We, so the mantra goes, I don't personally believe that. To me it's all about adding "stuff" to the photos. Our buffet challenge on Digi Scrapping Divas this month IS all about photos ... make any page you like - or show us one you made earlier - showcasing photos from one of more categories. Some are easy peasy, some might need you to play around on Picmonkey or a more cunning and clever program. Shout if you need a tutorial!

The Epic Fail Challenge

We have challenges every months on the Divas Facebook Group. You can read about them on our website challenge page HERE. Yes, I know I keep forgetting to post them on the blog...

We also have some "Hey, let's do this!" challenges and right now we have am Epic Fail challenge. Did your day go wrong? Did you do something stupid? Did inanimate objects take on a life of their own? Make a page about it!

The weather in the UK has been dire recently with lots of flooding. On the south coast where I live we've also had high tides and storms to contend with and this is what happened to some local beach huts (between Boscombe and Southbourne for the UK peeps, and I cheated - the ones on the left are at Durley Chine a mile away). I used a quickpage by Cinzia Loosemore, the alpha is from Trixie Scraps, All About Me, The Littles.



If you'd like to see another Epic Fail page complete with sorry tale about the worst cruise ever go the The Ship's Rail !

Sometimes old colours just work

I bought "Waiting For Spring", a collab kit from Little Butterfly Wings and Juliana Kneipp, at the weekend. I intended to use it for a layout about waiting for Spring complete with terribly clever macro shot of a clematis shoot but that will have to wait for another day. Let's face it the wet weather in the UK is a joke and folk might just laugh if I made a page about Spring.

I got distracted by this collage background and the "Let's play outside" sign. Both reminded me of childhood photos. I tried many many times to correct the colour in this photo of my Nan, brothers and cousin in our back garden but it never turned out right. On this page it doesn't matter, it's fine as it is.

It gets worse ....

My last post was about documenting the disappointment. Right up there in our fancy header it says "cruising" does it not? Well, here's a twofer - a page about the most disappointing cruise ever.



I used mostly Scrapyrus' Anchor My Love. I can't even bear to write the story again. You can read about it on The Ship's Rail

Not Your Grandma's Grammar

by Yobeth Puckett

To say it's not your Grandma's grammar would be an understatement. Children in the United States aren't even being taught cursive in school anymore and grammar has been on a slippery slope for years!  I'm afraid to think where texting is going to take us.

I don't claim to be an English major but some things are just annoying. Homophones, for example, are one of my pet peeves.  Here are just a few of the frequently mixed-up words I see:

• to/too/two
• their/there/they're
• hear/here
• passed/past
• your/you're/ur

In the examples above, I added ur as my prediction for where we're headed!  I hope you realize these words do not mean the same thing.  Let's take their/there/they're and use them in a sentence.  They're going to sit with their family over there.  You get the gist.

Now let's consider punctuation.  A comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence.  The quote below is from writers.com website.  It is a perfect illustration and made me laugh.

I hope I haven't made too many grammatical errors while typing this post. 
English was never my favorite subject and a refresher course I took a few years ago reminded me why!

Feel free to send me any of your pet peeves in the comments.
Find more posts by Yobeth at scraptiousdesigns.com/blog.

The December Buffet

We're doing something a bit different with our daily word challenge for December. Instead of a fixed word per day you get to choose any number of words you like from the buffet table and see how many twofers, threefers etc you can get. I think we have a eightfer so far and it's only 4th December!

Here are your words:


Don't forget to show us your pages in our Facebook group!

Are you checking our Digi Scrapping Freebies group every day? Some freebies are only available for a short time and you don't want to miss out. This page was made with a free MMS template Home For Christmas by CatDesignz:

What About Close-ups?

What do you think about close-ups?  I love close-ups but I can remember the day when my main goal with photos was to get as many as I could on a page, in an album!  Nothing fancy just a photo album.  I was doing great not to keep them in photo envelopes and boxes.  Film and developing wasn't cheap so I never had very many photos!

I've changed over the years I guess. Today, we can get such great digital shots, we can take way more than we need, delete what we don't like and use the cream of the crop for our scrapbook pages. Now I want them in a digital scrapbook with lots of papers, embellishments, and journaling.

Depending on the occasion, I may still want to put several pictures on a page but for the most part I like one or two photos per page now.  And when I have a photo that I really love, I like to blow it up almost full size and zoom in for a very tight close-up.  Digital photography and digital scrapping make it so easy.

Another technique is to use a photo as a background image then have a few related shots grouped together.  There are a lot of special effects that can be done if desired.  In the layout below I changed the background photo to black and white then reduced the opacity slightly.  I used My Memories Suite photo tiling technique to divide the photo up across three photo boxes.  Put these scrapbooking ideas to use and make your pages pop.

Documenting the Disappointment

No, I don't scrapbook the very moments of disappointment and disaster. Only when it's funny, as Jessica Rabbit would say.

Friends and avid readers (OK, those are the same thing) will have noticed a recent foray into pocket style scrapbooking about which more later. Or you can take a peek at my new website Easy Pocket Scrapbooking. It's not all there yet as the W word is getting in the way but you get the general idea and yes, I am doing some of the paper version too and no, I'm not getting involved in the P365/P52 malarkey.

Here's the left hand side of DH John's Grand Day Out at the Bournemouth Air Festival. It's full of hope and excitement with the obligatory walking away shot. I wanted that to be a big photo but it looked a tad dull so I added the word art overlay by Karla Dudley's Anywhere frames set. She is so good at these, I have several sets. You can get them at Pixels And Company. I recoloured the PNG file in PSE 11 (easy peasy, I'll do a tut when I have time) and then I added a shadow which is no doubt against the rules but Rules Schmules. Add a shadow to anything you like. If it looks good leave it, if it doesn't then you can undo it. I really don't know why the self appointed Rule Makers make such a big deal about shadows.


Now where to begin with the credits for these pages ...I used mostly Digital Design Essentials' Par Avion and Sarah Sullivan's Fly Away With Me. The weather card is from Sahlin Studios'/Britt-Ish Designs' Mouse Project and I used a few elements from Scrap Orchard's August 2013 Mega kit Friendly Skies. I used a striped background paper from the Par Avion kit then added a smaller plain paper on top to get the frame effect.

So on the right hand side it all goes wrong for poor John :(


Let's hope the Vulcan does fly again. They said it wouldn't fly again last year but it did. John did at least get a video of the Chinook and you can see that by scanning the QR code. It's the first time I've added this to a layout. It was very easy, you can get your code at Unitag and it can link to anything you like, it doesn't have to be a video. I ignored the whole idea of QR codes on layouts for a long time as I thought for some reason they could only go to videos and you can count the videos I've made on one hand. Most of those are the "what's the matter with this camera, why is it taking a video?" kind of videos  that require much bleeping out!

Newsletters - Love Them or Hate Them?

What about newsletters?  Do you love them or hate them?  I have mixed emotions myself.  Each morning I scan down the email list from scrapbook stores and designers.  I'll usually pick out the ones I don't want to miss and leave the others for later or delete them altogether.

I get a couple of store newsletters that I really like.  One is the home of several of my favorite designers.  I love getting their weekly newsletter to see all the new releases.  The other usually includes a personal story of life in Germany by the store owner stationed there.  I look forward to her stories and her great photos.

There are a lot that give wonderful, high quality freebies.  I'm thankful for those.  Be sure to check the quality before having anything printed though.  It's very disappointing to get a scrapbook printed then find out some pages were created using low quality freebies that don't print well.

I prefer a clean, uncluttered look.  I don't like extremely busy ones  with ads from beginning to end of a very, very long newsletter.  Especially if they're  two or three columns wide!  It's like they're trying to put half of their store in every newsletter.  Ugh! 

But most of all, I don't like the ones that really have nothing to say; they just want to say they put out a newsletter!  Mission accomplished.