August Daily Word Challenge

August is a bit different ... instead of giving you words to use as inspiration we're giving you words that are 1) Alphabetical, and 2) All about scrapping/photo techniques or types of scrapbook page. They are mostly techniques that you'll already know and where you don't know them we'll provide the tutorial. Plus there's plenty of help available on the Digi Scrapping Divas Facebook group, of course!

By the time we get to September - when we have another fun month of challenges planned - you will have tried a whole lot of techniques you'd never thought of using.

Here's the list:

Each day on the Facebook group we'll give you hints/links to the tutorial and suggest alternatives if you're completely stuck. You can still use the words for inspiration, for example the word "texture" could be a photo of a child's favourite blankie as well as a textured paper on the page.

You'll see we're determined to get you using quickpages and Picmonkey. There are plenty of links to free quickpages in the Freebies group and everything we'll show you on Picmonkey is free. The conversations that  go

"How did you do that?"
"In Picmonkey. It's easy and it's free"
"Oh, I don't use Picmonkey"

are getting silly. Why would peeps not use something that's free in order to do what they want to do?

Hint: Never let a control freak make the monthly word list ...

Layout Sketchbook on Amazon's Top 100 Bestsellers List

Three weeks ago I published "Scrapbook Layout Sketches" a Kindle eBook on Amazon.  Since then I've checked every day to see how many have sold or been checked out by Prime members.  Amazon updates the numbers throughout the day so I have been known to check more than once during the day!  Today I was very excited to find it was #20 in Papercrafts and #91 in Scrapbooking in the Crafts and Hobbies category.

I would love to get some feedback from anyone that has read it.  You can log in to Amazon to post a review.  In addition, Amazon follows up on books that are purchased and they'll send an email with a link to give a review.  Easy, peasy! It only takes a couple of minutes and I'd really appreciate it. 

If you haven't gotten Scrapbook Layout Sketches yet, clicking the image below will send you right over to Amazon.

Behind The Scenes

.... was our word challenge on our Facebook group today although this stunning page by the very talented Jonyce Ruiz would also fit our "Spontaneous Moment" challenge today.

The journaling reads:

"Three years ago, my Grandma lost her battle with cancer. I love my Grandma more than I can even say. Thinking about when we lost her, brings tears to my eyes. Remembering the special moments brings a smile to my face. My Grandma had a love of life that was infectious. She was spirited, honest and loved her family more than anything. There are so many special memories I have of her, one of them being my wedding day. As with most weddings, there were bumps along the way, but moments shared with my Grandma I will always hold close to my heart. She didn't always agree with me, but I knew that she respected me and my opinions. I love her so very much and miss her more than I can express. She was an amazing woman. I wish she were still here to meet Sarah and see what beautiful girls they are becoming."

How's that for journaling that tells even a complete stranger all about Jonyce's Grandma? It's like we were there when this photo was taken. The whole page is an inspiration and will be treasured by Jonyce's daughters.

I love these Behind The Scenes wedding pages. We can't get to my brother's wedding as hubby has just started on insulin injections and can't travel until everything settles down. I spent ages on the phone yesterday trying to explain to Mum that I need photos of everyone getting ready. It will be interesting to see what I get.

Writing and Publishing an eBook

Writing and publishing a book has never been easier!  Have you ever dreamed of being a published author?  I have!  Technology available today makes writing and publishing an eBook within every aspiring authors reach.  If you've decided to write a book there are many things you'll need to consider.

There are an abundance of formats to choose from.  You may recognize two of the most popular formats.  One is EPUB which can be read by Blackberry Playbook, Apple iBooks (iPhone, iPad, iPod), and Barnes & Noble Nook to name a few.  The other is KF8, also known as Amazon Kindle.

I chose to write a Kindle eBook.  Here are some of the things I really like.  First of all, it's easy!  You need a word processor such as, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, Pages for Mac.  I use Microsoft Word.  Amazon has a huge, worldwide customer base and I thought their royalties were generous.   I think the behind the scenes faqs, helps and reports are great too.  I have a Kindle myself and a lot of other people have Kindles.  If you don't have a Kindle you can actually download a Kindle reader for free on you PC, iPhone, iPad, iPod, laptop, Blackberry, Android & more.  And if you are a Prime member on Amazon, and the author participates in KDP Select, you can borrow books and the author still gets paid royalties.

If you use Microsoft Word you can set up the formatting that works best for Kindle and save it.  Kindle doesn't "like" a lot of spacing or returns but you can set the formatting for the entire book and save it as a template for future books.  Word has spell check and grammar hints but you can also use paperrater.com to check for spelling mistakes, grammar, plagiarism, etc.

You'll also need a Cover.  You can hire a freelance artist to design the cover or you can do it yourself if you have a digital design application to create a .jpg file.  If you design it yourself you'll need access to artwork, either your own or public domain.  And you'll need public domain or purchased fonts.   Of course you'll want your cover to "pop".   It needs to catch the shoppers attention, have clearly legible fonts, few words and contrasting colors.

You can use keyword searches to decide on topics.  How-to books are great.  If you have an area of expertise search some of the keywords associated with your topic.  See how much competition you would have and what the price points are.  You don't want to select a topic that's already saturated!  If the topic looks like a good choice you'll need to set a competitive price.

Here is the cover I designed for my book "Scrapbook Layout Sketches".  I created it with three different background colors then before uploading it I asked a couple of friends for feedback.  We all agreed on this one.

And here are links to my eBook on Amazon.  If you are in the United States click here. And I just found out, duh, there's a different web address for my friends across the pond.  Here's the link for the UK.  If you get my eBook I hope you'll consider giving me a great review.

July Daily Word Challenge

Our daily word challenges are strictly "No Rules"! Use the words how you like - they could be the subject of your photos, the title on your page, a jumping point to something completely different or just vaguely inspirational. Also we don't expect you to make a new page every day. You can show us something you made any time.

Here are the words for July. I made the page with Fayette Designs' Beach Therapy:



Show us your pages on our Facebook Page!

Do You Have Embelliphobia?

I often hear people comment that they don't like adding embellishments to their scrapbook layouts.  When they do add them, they keep it to a minimum!  As a self professed cluster queen I can't even imagine that! I think it must be some kind of phobia but when I googled it I couldn't find a phobia for a fear of embellishments. So I made one up.  It's embelliphobia.   Maybe the first time you tried it you weren't satisfied with the results so you gave up.  Maybe it looked something like this....  Not good.

But fear not for there is a way to conquer your fear and turn a haphazard mess into a smashing design.  Check out this article for pointers on some essentials to bring order to chaos and face your fear!

Not in MY newsfeed!

Are you sick of the latest "Exciting News! We're brain dead and can only copy and paste rather than construct actual sentences for ourselves" post from designers on Facebook? The one that says "Hey, we can now advertise to you all day long on Facebook"??

Well, here's the thing. I'm on Facebook to catch up with family and friends and join in my groups. I'm sure I do my fair share of responding to external ads on the site and making money for Facebook but I'm not there as advertising fodder for the "I'm too thick to think of anything to say other than 'here's my new kit'" brigade. If you're sick of them too all you have to do is hover over the "liked" button on their newsfeed and uncheck the "Show in Newsfeed" option. You can then add them to an interest list if you like. I have a Digi Designers list. It's public, you can see it here (you don't have to make your lists public). I look at it several times a week when it suits me, not when it suits them.

It's up to you what you see in your newsfeed, not up to the people whose pages you like!


If you want to hear the latest news and get freebies from your favourite designers you can simply sign up to their newsletter. Make sure you use one of your junk emails. I have one that I only use for newsletters and suchlike. Never give any store your private email addy!

Daily challenge words for June

Another month has gone by really quickly and we're already collecting blog trains on the Freebies group. On Digi Scrapping Divas we have lots of new members (welcome!) and a new month of daily word challenges. Remember you don't have to make a new page every day. We're happy to recycle so come and join in the fun!



This page was made with Catdesignz' Midsummer Papers and A Butterfly's Touchhttp://www.mymemories.com/store/display_product_page?id=CDCR-CP-1301-26979&r=CatDesignz

Scrapping life before it happens

Sometimes it's good to get ahead of the game! We just booked a vacation apartment at one of our local beaches only about 25 miles away. We had a "staycation" last year in one of Britain's worst summers and now we REALLY need a summer holiday, as we call vacations here. I was so excited I made a page before we get there! I used all kinds of kits for this one but just ask if you need to know the designers. The block design is from a Simple Set template by Lindsay Jane.

If You Build It, Will They Come?

There is a line from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it, he will come”.  That line worked great for the movie but we live in the real world.  If you are an excellent cook some people may say, “Wow! You make THE BEST Mexican food! You should start a restaurant.”  In fact, you may actually make the best Mexican food in the world but that won’t guarantee success.  The truth is, if you build it, they may not come!  Sometimes people with cheap, inferior products are successful while the guy with the fantastic product fails.  Obviously you have to have more.

Consider this, two businesses are located in close proximity, they both sell reasonably priced, quality products and the owners have the finances under control. One will succeed the other will not.  Business ‘A’ welcomes you when you walk in the door; they are happy to answer your questions, they give you their undivided attention and show you they appreciate your business.  When you leave you realize your smiling. Life is good!  On the other hand, no one at business ‘B’ notices when you walk in. One of the employees is texting her boyfriend and the other one is a little ticked because she waited on the last customer and she’s tired of “doing all the work”.  She ignores you.  You find what you’re looking for but can’t decide between two items.  You aren’t really sure what the differences are.  You leave the store without ever being acknowledged and make a mental note not to come back.

 

Lesson number one for success, customers want to be appreciated.   So if you build it they might come, but if you treat them bad they may not come back!

Read the full article How To Fail In Business.

Front Door

Are you following the Daily Word Challenge in our Facebook group? The challenge the other day was "front door". Own front door is a disgrace. Someone - that would be DH - cleaned out the drain with acid and spilt it and the painted door looks as though it has chickenpox. Not to mention the wooden porch that has been a Fix-It project for ten years ...

Fortunately my Mum had just had her front door painted when I took this photo and she always has a wonderful display of plants. I used a Scrap Your Heart Out template by Janet Phillips and the alpha is from In My garden by Natali Designs.

It's Blog Train Time with CatDesignz!

We've had loads of fun with the new CatDesignz kit, Spring Comes Softly. Here's my Dad with my Auntie and Uncle showing it off for you:


Do you like the stacked paper background? That's good because the set of stacked backgrounds is free for you!

CLICK HERE to download them free at the MyMemories store. 

MyMemories is having a store-wide sale giving you 25% off and you can use this coupon code Catz25 for an additional 25% off anything in Catherine’s store.  The coupon code and store-wide sale are both good through May 6th!

You don't need My Memories software to use the freebies, you can download regular files. If you would like to try the My Memories program and get $10 off AND $10 to spend on kits go HERE.

Would you like some tips on making your own stacked paper backgrounds? That tutorial is HERE.

Step aboard our blog train to collect loads of fabulous goodies to go with this kit:

CatDesignz
Ann
Linda
Sharon - That's me!
Yobeth
Digi Scrapping Divas
Laura

Have fun!

Focus on what matters

Storyteller 2 is here! You'll be amazed how the ideas in Storyteller 2 will transform your scrapbooking and make life easier so you can concentrate capturing those memories. CLICK HERE to find out more.

Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

So, I got PSE 11. I actually bought it last November when it was cheap on Amazon. I then left it in its box for months because I hated PSE 7  (or 8, or whatever I had before) so much I couldn't bear to look at it. I could never find anything. I don't mind a learning curve, it all exercises the aging brain, but I object to a constant headache from a black screen and stuff plainly being hidden to make people who use it think they're clever.

PSE 11 is a whole new ball game. The interface has been much simplified and the black screen is gone. This simplification has caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the PSE snobs. As I mentioned on the Divas blog last week, it reminds me of Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory: "Windows 7 is much more user friendly than Vista. I don't like that."

I signed up for two courses on PSE 11 which I'll tell you about in great detail later. I've been through a bit of the general PSE 11 one and haven't looked at the digital scrapbooking one yet. I just introduced myself last week on the forum where they were obviously appalled at the thought of someone making thousands of pages, owning two websites and teaching scrapbooking when she has used OTHER PROGRAMS. Horrors!

I've written a few tutorials on PSE 11. How did I do that when knowing nothing about it? Well, I've used PSP so I understand layers and much of what you need to know is blindingly obvious. If you have PSE 11 get it out of the box because you will be able to follow these tutorials without studying anything else. Here they are:


Using Masks in PSE 11

Using Templates in PSE 11

Why am I writing them now before I've learned anything? Partly because I wouldn't want the peeps running the course to think I'd stolen any of their material to write my own tutorials and partly I wanted to keep it simple and easy to follow. I know the tutorials are simple because I only know the simple stuff.

Will I switch to PSE for all my scrapbooking now? No, of course not, Memory Mixer and MyMemories a gazillion times faster. I do like PSE templates though and bought lots at 50% off recently. I like the block ones best. I can make those on MM/MMS but my hands are not as steady as they were and sometimes I accidentally shift a photo which spoils the look.

Here's an easy page I made with a Simple Set template by Lindsay Jane (kit is mostly Sea Breeze also by Lindsay Jane):

Lots of Freebies on ....er, Freebies

Unless you've been living under a rock you'll know that this Weekend/all week is iNSD. (Inter) National Scrapbooking Day. The Inter bit always makes me laugh. Let's be nice to those countries we couldn't find on a map if our lives depended on it because we like the way Paypal converts their currency for us. The daft thing is I would have assumed National Scrapbooking Day was an international thing anyway and included me. I don't need to be thrown a grammatically incorrect crumb, thank you very much.

There are tons of freebies out there and we have them listed in a permanent doc on the Digi Scrapping Freebies group if you get a bit lost. There's an article too on Coastal Scrapbooks to help you Build Your Stash With Freebies.

Obviously the freebies are to entice you to spend but since you spend all year anyway feel free to go nuts without buying a thing, especially from irritating people who want you to jump through silly hoops to get the freebies. BAD stores!! Very bad. The deal is you get our eyes on your blog/site/Facebook page and we get the freebies. The deal is not that you get to waste our time with stupid treasure hunts. Shame on you if you can't master that simple marketing rule. For those who need help (or those customers who like to know what goes on) we have an article about Using Freebies In Your Marketing

Here's another couple of points for the stores to consider while we're at it:

1) iNSD sales should be 50% off or 40% if you're going to be mean. Do not waste our time with a mere 30%.


2) Your customers started spending on Wednesday or Thursday at the stores where the deals started early. If you wait until the weekend to have your sales many of those customers will have no money left to spend in your store. Duh.

Have fun! And if you'd like to do some actualy scrapping instead of spending the weekend downloading stuff we have several challenges on our Facebook group and a new list of words for May: