One of the most fun things about digital scrapbooking is that we are able to re-use digital products over and over, making our hobby even more economical and more fun when we renew and repurpose our favorite papers and elements.

I love to discover new ways to use elements from kits, providing more versatility for the products. I admit I have a love of Christmas/winter-themed kits, and love to find new ways to use the elements… not just for my Christmas season pages, but all year round for a variety of occasions.  Do you have some older kits that you have used so many times they no longer pique your interest? Today I hope to give you some ideas on how to use some of the elements in new ways, to see your elements in a new light, and to find different ways of using them in future projects. I’m excited to share a few ideas that I’ve used in the sample pages that appear below. I used Photoshop to create my pages.

The first page I’ll share — “This Is My Happy Place” — was created with a kit by River~Rose called “This Is Your Day.” If you are creating a birthday page, this is a fabulous kit to use. I wanted, however, to use this kit for an everyday life page about my dog, Taz. The papers fit the color/design I wanted to use, but I wanted to change some of the elements to better suit my page design and my topic. Here’s a look at the page…

To create the page shown above, I repurposed a bunch of different elements from the kit, as follows:

• I chose two candles from the kit… rasterized these layers after adding them to the page (you can also create a smart layer)… and then with my marquee tool, I selected and deleted the ends of the candles. I then selected edit > transform (Ctrl + T) to shape them into long thin bars, placing them at the left and along the bottom of my photo.
• I also chose a layered flower and chose the blend mode “subtract” to give it a flat look with a beige edge color/dark center. I placed these flowers on the left and at the bottom of my layers, which I duplicated to also place at the bottom right, under my photo.
• I chose the ribbon and with the lasso tool I selected and deleted part of it to shorten it up.  String from the balloon was selected and extracted to place along the bottom of my photo.
• The yellow heart made a fun little flower, by duplicating and turning the points in toward each other. I duplicated the flower so I could place one at the bottom of my photo and the other off to the left of the photo.
• I used the marquee tool to select the inner square of the giftbox element and tucked it under the paper layer to the left of my image.
• The last repurposing was with the word art “this is my day” …I erased the last word and created “happy place” with a font, adding a white stroke around it.

This second page I’ll share today — “Playtime” — was created with a kit by Anita Designs & Sahin Designs called “Dear Santa“. It’s a beautiful Christmas kit that contains some gorgeous papers and elements that I wanted to use to create another everyday page about Taz at the park. Here’s a look…

Here’s a rundown of the repurposing I did while creating this second page:

• First, I chose a tag and duplicated it twice. I merged all three together, created a clipping mask and clipped my image to it.
• Next, I chose the Santa element and with the magic wand, I selected one of the stars. I zoomed in as I was selecting with the wand to make sure I was only getting the star. I extracted the star, duplicated it twice, and placed the three stars at three points around the image.
• I used the magic wand again to select and extract a diamond shape out of the blue bulb (I liked that it looked like vellum). I duplicated the layer and placed both of them on the upper part of my image.
• The leaf from the kit was a darker color than I wanted so instead of recoloring it, I changed the blend mode to luminosity which took in the colors below it which was the blue/grey tones of my image.
• Out of the star matte I cut out a circle with the elliptical marquee tool and duplicated it, placing both at the top right of my image.
• The last repurposing was with the word art “it’s christmas time”, replacing it with “endless energy”. So by repurposing some of the elements, this Christmas kit worked well with my non-holiday page design.

I hope that I have given you some creative ideas on renewing your stash and repurposing elements to use with new/different kits. Now you can experiment and try extracting, recoloring, re-sizing, blending, etc. It’s a lot of fun!

Come to the forum to check out today’s challenge that goes along with this post! You can earn challenge points that can turn into awesome discounts from TDP’s shop if you participate in the challenge system throughout the month!

About the Author  Rae Clavett is part of The Digital Press creative team. She is a Canadian, living on the west coast of BC with her husband and labradoodle, Taz. She loves photo walks, coffee, chocolate, and her newest addiction — jelly beans.

The start of a new year is traditionally a time to reflect back on the old year and make plans for the year to come. I have to confess, I have never been good at keeping New Year’s Resolutions.  Oh, I am good at making them, but then life happens and it all goes out the window.

As I grow older I have found that making time in my life for things that I am passionate about – whether a hobby I had to set down when the kids came or a relationship that has been on the back burner – really brings new meaning and color to my life.

For example:

I LOVE running.  I have been a runner since I was a child.  I love the exercise, but more than that I enjoy the release from stress, the exertion, the time to get out and be away, the way my brain (which always goes 90 to nothing) can settle down into the steady rhythm of running and not think about anything else.

When my number 3 was born I had some serious health problems and the doctors told me I should never run again – apparently it was destroying my spine.  I was devastated, but I listened and gave up my favorite form of exercise.

That was three years ago.

Three weeks ago, after what has been a very hard year, I went out for a run for the first time.  And I LOVED it.  My entire week was so much better, my spirit was happier and my body felt better and less stiff than I have felt in years.

I know what my doctor said back in the United States, and I understand the risks, but I also know that I am such a better mother, wife and all around person when I have this hobby to release the stress in my life. (And for those who might be concerned – I talked with a doctor here in Thailand who is willing to monitor my spine and provide health care so that I can continue my preferred form of exercise.)

When I thought about our word for the month – RENEW – I immediately thought of this resurgence of running in my life.  The past 5 years have seen me slowly renewing the various passions I have set aside for whatever reason and as I pick them up I feel that I am becoming more truly the person I was meant to be.  The return to running has made such a profound difference in my life this past month that I wanted to scrap this renewal so that I could remember it.

(credits: Scissor Cut Vol 1 Template by Laura Passage, A New Me by River-Rose, The Original Torn Bits No. 6 by creashens)

So for those of you who are not so good with making New Year’s Resolutions, perhaps instead you could look into renewing an old passion that you set aside – or maybe just never pursued.  Passions are much easier to maintain because we have such strong emotional connections and even needs for them, and often our passions lead us to be healthier overall because we are enjoying our life more. Plus, in most cases we are much more motivated to continue our passions than we are to follow through on a resolution.  Just think about it for a wee bit.

If you are feeling the desire to pursue a passion, head on over to Challenge Forums now and check out the challenge I have for you this month that goes along with this post.

And Happy New Year!

About the Author: Erin is a work from home mom of three living in Thailand. She loves playing with her kids and anything artsy. She can often be found knee deep in toys with paint on her face. She is slowly learning the meaning of living an authentic life, and enjoying every minute of the adventure.

I am so happy to be joining you here on the blog this January 1st, 2016 — and to be able to wish you a very Happy New Year! And wow… I wonder what this new year will bring to all of us? 🙂

I am busy renewing my resolutions for this year… both in my private life and in my “scrap life.” Sometimes you have to look back and see the points at which things went wrong or could have been better, in order to plan for the future. So now that it’s January 1st, here I am to reflect on this past year and set goals for 2016!

Here’s how I have decided to document my goals for 2016…

Putting goals down on paper is a great way to document them so that they can’t be forgotten or dismissed. But for those of us who love to scrapbook in order to document our memories and lives… what better way to document (and hold ourselves accountable to) our goals than to put them onto a scrapbook page?

Regarding my scrap-addiction, my intentions for the coming year are as follows:

• Look through all the old scrap-goodies on my hard drive and see what can be deleted, as my style has changed over the years.
• Look for kits that I can re-use; I love to use older kits or parts of older kits.
• Again, I will try to do one page a week for the 365-project; I have not been able to complete this any year since 2008, but I want to try again!
• Spread more love in the galleries… knowing that if we all left 10 comments daily, the gallery would receive sooo much love.
• I really want to do some hybrid pages… I sometimes see hybrid projects that I really love, and I want to give it a try!

Further, I really intend to have some scrap time for myself. Over the years, whenever things were extra busy, I did not find the time the scrap. Whatever happens this coming year, however, I intend to stop doing other things (housekeeping?) but I will not stop scrapping! I love it, as it helps me to relax… and I want to keep it that way. In order to simplify, I have already given up my little bakery/cake decorating… and now, as for me, scrapping is very important!

So… what are your intentions/resolutions for 2016?

As you think about your own goals and resolutions in the coming year… please join us in the TDP forum for a fun resolution/goal-related challenge!

About the Author  Miranda is a mom of two teenage boys, aged 13 and 15 years old, and is also a fur-mummy for her 2 Bernese Mountain Dogs. She lives in the South of the Netherlands, close to the beach where she loves to walk with her dogs. In real life, she is HSE-responsible for few companies in the construction industry. She loves to bake and decorate birthday cakes and wedding cakes… loves to read Danielle Steel novels… and has been digiscrap-addicted since 2007.