Category: Inspiration

Celebrate Food!

celebrate food

Hello everyone! I can’t believe it’s already June! For us that means just a few weeks left of school but most important of all, my favorite fruits and veggies are back on the market’s shelves. My daughter and I love fresh mangoes, and we eat them by the dozen. Plain, in smoothies, or our favorite, drenched in lime juice with a sprinkle of chili powder. Yum!

Celebrate food

We love to cook and have people over to try our new inventions, so most weekends you’ll find us with a house full of people ready to be our guinea pigs sample what we have prepared. One of our favorite Celebration/Just Because meals to prepare is tenderloin in mustard sauce, with a green salad and mashed, cheesy potatoes.

As a reformed super picky eater (ok, not really…I will NEVER eat a raw tomato), cooking for my family and friends has become a celebration in itself. It doesn’t matter if all I’m making is a sandwich, food has become a focal point in our home. To us, it means getting together at the end of the day and sharing what went on in our lives that day, or sometimes, not even talking, but the fact of being together sharing a meal is enough to communicate our togetherness.

Of course there are some very special dishes that we only prepare once or twice a year, like my Christmas turkey (which I must say, not to brag or anything, but it’s the most amazing turkey in the world) or my hubby’s special birthday prime rib roast.

celebrate food

Of course, I also love desserts. All kind. If they’re chocolate, even better. Or cheesecake. Living in Mexico, there are some things that I can’t find very often, but when I do, I tend to eat them all in one sitting, like lemon drops or cherry Lifesavers or Milano cookies. When I do get them, it’s like a mini-party for me only as I don’t share them much. Hmm, ok, I don’t share them at all. Shhhhh!!

All in all, as you can see, food is a very important topic around me and mine, and we hold all meals as a celebration.

Celebrate food

What about you? I’d love to hear about your favorite foods in the cool challenge I’ve prepared for you in the forum here. See you there and thanks for reading! (If you want to send some lemon drops my way, I will love you forever and get extra brownie points…yum, brownies!)

 


Cynthia

About the Author: Cynthia is a CT Member here at The Digital Press. She lives in sunny (way too sunny!) Mazatlan, Mexico with her hubby and their 8-going-on-40 yo daughter, plus the 2 most spoiled Westies who ever lived. She loves reading, cooking, photography and of course, scrapping!

Celebrate the Small Things

Celebrate the Small Things - scrap about a small thing that means a lot!

Hi everyone! It’s the start of a new month, and that means a new crop of challenges in the forums here at The Digital Press. Each month we create a series of blog posts and challenges that correspond with one word. This month, we chose the word CELEBRATE.

Celebrate can be interpreted many different ways and we would love to have you join us as we explore these different aspects through our scrapbooking.

I personally gravitated towards the “Savor the Small Things” word art and so I was thinking about a small gesture someone did for you that meant a lot in your life, or a small thing that is helpful or sentiment to you. I chose to scrap about my iphone – a small thing that has come to be a helpful tool in my life!

Celebrate the Small Things - scrap about a small thing that means a lot!

So, what about you? Do you have a small thing that means a lot? A piece of nostalgia or an heirloom, perhaps? Or has someone done something small for you that was very meaningful or helped you at just the time you needed it in your life? I’m hosting a challenge over on the forums at The Digital Press and I hope you will come play along! Check it out at The Drawing Board: Challenges. See you there!

Amy H.About the Author: Amy is a wife and mom to three from Ontario, Canada. She’s always been interested in scrapbooking, but didn’t try digiscrapping until 2008 when she received PSE for her birthday. By then she had 1 year old twins and a baby, so the thought of just playing for 10 minutes, hitting save and walking away with no mess was extremely appealing! She’s been hooked ever since. She loves being the memory keeper in the family, loves taking photos, loves telling the stories. She’s also excited to know that these memories are recorded for her grandchildren to enjoy someday!

Creating a Heart Halo

It’s Tutorial Tuesday! If you’re anything like me, you like to recreate techniques you see on other layouts. I’m a sucker for paper layouts and saw a lot of them lately that included heart halos in some fashion. If it’s either cutouts or paper pieces, I love them all.

 

Creating a Heart Halo

 

My first layout with heart halos came out pretty, at least in my world.

Creating a Heart Halo
The image is linked to the gallery for the credits.

I hope now you know what I mean by heart halo. It’s a circle of hearts. With their bottom pointing to the center of the circle. I’m going to scraplift myself to show you how I did it.

  • Prep your canvas first, in my case it’s 3600×3600 px and get a solid paper in or leave your solid background.
  • The first thing you want to do is creating a virtual middle of your heart halo. I did this with two guides, one vertical, one horizontal. Click on View → New Guide and type in half of the width of your canvas (6 inch or 1800 px for me). Do that again and check the other orientation the second time.

Next you draw a shape.

  • Click and hold the Shape tool, choose the Custom Shape tool. Click on a fill color that is different enough from your background, no stroke.
  • In the Shape window, click on the little cog and on Shapes. Now load the „Shape“ collection. When you are asked to save before, you of course can. If you only used PS shapes this far, there is not much to save.
  • In the „Shape“ collection you will find the heart. Click on it to make it active.

 

Creating a Heart Halo

 

  • Now click and drag on your canvas and when you feel you got the shape like you want it, release the click and go back to your move tool (shortcut v).
  • Align the vertical center of your heart with the vertical guide a little above the crossing of the guides. Do this manually with your move tool active. There is no need to make it 100% exact. It should look something like this:

 

Creating a Heart Halo

 

The Math

Before you proceed, make a decision on how many hearts you want in your halo circle. In my first example both inner and outer circle have 12 hearts. This is the easiest to recreate, because you don’t have to do any math. I will show you later why.

I show you now how to do the math anyway, because in the upcoming layout, I will use 5 hearts in the inner circle. I will try to make it as easy as I can, even for the math challenged. One round of a circle has 360 degrees. If you want to evenly distribute your hearts around your circle (what I’m doing here), you have to divide the 360 degrees by the amount of hearts you want to have in your circle. In my example with 5 hearts in one circle: 360 degrees : 5 hearts =72 degrees. Math can be so beautiful when you combine it with hearts! So every heart will be 72 degrees apart from the next heart when you are having 5 hearts in your circle.

  • With that in mind, we continue with our aligned heart. Copy it (ctrl/cmd+j)
  • Click on one corner to make the Transform tool active
  • You see that little crosshair in the middle of the heart. Pull that one to the point where the two guides meet. It’s good to be as close as you can but don’t worry about placing it 100% correctly.
  • In the details for the tool you see that little degrees sign. Type 72 into it. Press Enter two times.

Before you pressed Enter two times it should look like this:

 

Creating a Heart Halo

 

You’ve now got two hearts and they are 72 degrees apart. Isn’t that romantic? Well, but you want more hearts. You can now proceed slowly by copying the second heart, align the crosshair and type in 72 into the degrees, or you can do it faster by doing more math.

  • Copy the first two hearts, have both copies active
  • Align the crosshair of the two of them with the guide crossing
  • Type 144 into the degrees (72 x 2=144)
  • Press Enter two times

 

Creating a Heart Halo

 

  • Now make the 5th and  completing heart.

In my upcoming layout I created two more halos concentring (is that a word?) my first halo. The middle circle has 10 hearts which are 36 degrees apart from each other (360 : 10), the outer circle has 20 hearts, 18 degrees (360 : 20) apart. You can see in this picture, that I didn’t work very exact. The lowest heart is not 100% aligned with the guide. It doesn’t matter though as you can see in the following layout.

 

Creating a Heart Halo

 

You can leave all hearts single as they are (*sob*) or you can group them or merge them to your liking. I merged every circle into a single layer for my layout and used the hearts to make cutouts. I also randomly erased a heart (*cry*). So that’s what I came up with:

 

Creating a Heart Halo
The image is linked to the gallery for the credits.

And I tried something else: I made several small heart circles and blended most of them into the background for an art jounaling layout.

 

Creating a Heart Halo
The image is linked to the gallery for the credits.

My second and third layout above have a multiple of 5 hearts (1 x 5, 2 x 5, 4 x 5). If you want to use a multiple of 2 hearts in a circle (like 2 x 2 = 4 hearts or 6 x 2 = 12 hearts like me in my first layout), you don’t have to type in the degrees and don’t have to do any math. PS has a standard feature that makes it easy for you. When you copied your first heart and aligned the crosshair, hold shift and click/drag one transformation corner to turn the heart around. The heart will move in 15 degrees increments around your circle until you let go of the corner. This way you can create up to 24 hearts in your halo (360:15), depending on which increments you use.

Of course you can use any shape you want for making halos. This is not limited to hearts.
If you have any question, feel free to ask in the comments. Also if you see a technique that you want me to explain, I will do what I can to recreate it for you and prepare a tutorial for you! Let me know what you like to see in the comments, too! Have fun creating!

 

AlinaAbout the Author: Alina enjoys sitting in front of her large computer screens too much. Apart from that she loves walking her dog and watching sunsets while being amazed of life in general. She is married to her best friend. Tries to manage the needs of her two cats and her dog and badly fails when they all want their cuddle time at once. Everything else is scrapping, taking photos and currently crafting. Having said that, she needs a bigger craft room.

 

 

Celebrate Your Family

Celebrate Your Family

 

Where would we be without our families? 🙂

People who unequivocally support us, get behind us in every thing we do – no matter how big or small. People whom we can count on, take them for granted – but not in a bad way…and who are the first to dish it out to us – like we deserve. Honest, undivided attention (well – not so much in this age of mobiles :)) and unconditional love – who can give these to us? … only our families.

Since this month is all about Celebrations here at The Digital Press, what better way to kick off the month, than with Celebrating our families ? 🙂

Coming from India, we use the term Family quite freely..really. The neighbour who’s been living next door for years…is family. The aunt’s sister’s husband’s brother who has been coming to our house for years…is family. Our extended families are quite close to us in both my own side and my husband’s side of the family. So where our own ends and the extended starts…we have no clue 🙂 Not really the aunt’s sister’s husband’s brother….but you get the drift 🙂

Its quite easy to get pictures of my son, my husband and few others in my memory keeping. However, I cherish the opportunity to capture few from the extended family who have had an impact on me and make me who I am today. Thanks to one of my aunts – I am a voracious reader. Thanks to a first counsin, I didn’t blow up every penny I earned and started saving early on…stories that are small, easily forgotten, but are important to me. The challenge is, we don’t meet with them often enough. So how do we go about documenting their details?

There are many ways we can do so. The simplest way to do so is on special occasions. When the family meets for birthdays, Christmas, christenings etc. There are enough opportunities to click the dreaded family portrait 🙂

CT Stacia captures exactly that through her layout below –

Celebrate Your Family

CT Krista captures her day with her Mom and kids beautifully through this Mother Day layout.

 

Celebrate Your Family

 

Now, special occasions….thats easy 🙂 Another photo op is when we meet up. It doesn’t matter the occasion, whenever I meet up with the family, it is an opportunity to click pictures – possibly because we meet once in say two years – so not very often. Therefore everyone is enthusiastic about the pictures.

Like in this layout below – Not a peep from my cousins about so many pictures! 🙂

Celebrate Your Family

Another example is this layout below of my son with his grandparents, doing an activity that they love to do everytime they meet – feeding the pigeons together.

Celebrate Your Family

If capturing new pictures, like in the examples above, is not an option … then just pick up an old picture and scrap away! 🙂

CT Stacia captures little details about her Mom here, through this sweet layout which is truly a timeless treasure.

Celebrate Your Family

With these ideas, I hope you get inspired to scrap some stories close to your heart, with people who don’t often get featured in your pages.

I am hosting a challenge in the forum to celebrate our families. Hope you join in the celebrations there 🙂

Pallavi

About the author: Pallavi Sureka is a wife and newly designated stay at home mom to 3 years old Rajveer. She currently lives in Mexico City but her family moves around a lot. She has previously lived in Calcutta, Pune, San Francisco, Chicago and London. She reflects all these places in her pages as she captures her everyday stories.

CELEBRATE the Everyday

CELEBRATE the Everyday

 

For the month of June we are focusing on the word: Celebrate

I am super excited about this month’s word because for me, this is the reason I scrap – to celebrate those everyday moments in life.  To celebrate the small accomplishments along with the big events.  Yes, this month is huge for weddings, babies, etc. but what else can you celebrate in your life?

Searching for inspiration on Pinterest, I came across several quotes that inspired me:

CELEBRATE the Everyday

Sources (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

 

As you can see, the word Celebrate can be used in many different ways.  I love how happy the word is and how it conveys a feeling of being positive.  Yes, we may have our down days, but there are so many ways we can look for elements to Celebrate.  Of course, we also have our jump out of our seats and cheer days as well that give us cause to Celebrate.  How about you?  How do you view the word?

Each month, we like to encourage you to step out of the box at times with our challenges. Below are the list of upcoming challenges for the month that focus on Celebrate. For more information about our challenge system please read this post in our forums.

CELEBRATE the Everyday

This gorgeous challenge schedule was created by creative team member Alina, using the brand new store collab Summer De-Lite that you can purchase for only $4 for the first 4 days of the month! We look forward to seeing you in the forums and here on the blog! Have a great June!

 


About the Author: Rachel Alles is on the Creative Team here at The Digital Press.  She is fortunate to share her life with her loving husband, Doug, and two blessings: Madeline and Maxwell.  The three of them are her main source of inspiration for her pocket and traditional style pages.  When she’s not scrapping, she enjoys anything Disney related, learning more about photography (and attempting to turn the dial off Auto) and dabbling in home decor projects.

Summer Planner Pages: Hybrid Style

Summer Planning: Hybrid Style

Real life happens! Work, children, school, sports, scouts, doctor appointments, volunteer duties, house work…oh the list goes on and on! My real life has been crazy busy and shows no sign of stopping any time soon. Which is not exactly great for someone like me who can barely remember what day it is, let alone where I’m supposed to be! I’ve tried organizing myself using a calendar app on my phone, but that requires me having the time to type on that tiny little keypad and hit the right buttons to save my entry (um, fail times 100). I’ve also tried using scraps of paper to quickly jot down appointments but, while this is easy, I’ve lost the slips of papers too many times to count! So, a year or so ago, after being fed up of living such a scatterbrained life (I’m truly responsible – really!), I went the agenda/planner route.

I used to use one years ago and was on top of things so I figured it was time to give it a go again. But with 4 kids and a busy life, the days get filled up super fast. This is my past month – I can barely read where I am supposed to be and when!

Summer Planning: Hybrid Style

Luckily, the daily pages work out well, but I still like to see the overview of each month. Unfortunately, life gets pulled in so many directions, that the things that I really want to do, get forgotten about. So this summer, I’ve decided that I want to use the planner to really get myself organized and find some smooth sailing.

Wishing Well Creations by Laura Passage and Amanda Yi Designs have products are perfect for this! Laura’s Summer Bucket List Printable Planner pages will supplement my usual calendar pages and let me plan out the special activities that I want to do this summer (I LOVE making lists! And now they will be in my planner and not lost in a bag somewhere!). I’m also using them to plan meals (what a novel idea…no more last minute desperate phone calls to take out places) and organize my thoughts. Amanda’s Summer Bucket Stickers help highlight important dates and just look cute.

Summer Planning: Hybrid Style

Here is what I did:

I used Laura’s Summer Bucket List Printable Planner pages which easily and perfectly sized down to fit my smaller binder. I printed them double-sided on cardstock so that they will hold up and ink won’t bleed through. A simple trimming and hole punch, plus a bit of corner rounding, and they are good to go!

To use Amanda’s Summer Bucket List Stickers, I created a file sheet in Photoshop with the stickers I wanted to use. I imported the sheet into my Silhouette software, traced the cutting edges with the trace function, set the registration marks, and sent it to my printer. I used sticker paper for this.After it printed, I then loaded it into my Silhouette Cameo, and after a few registration fails (oh real life you can be bothersome! Haha), it fed through properly and cut out the elements exactly as planned.

Summer Planning: Hybrid Style

 

 

Summer Planning: Hybrid Style
Summer Planning: Hybrid Styleer-6

Now life should be organized, smooth sailing, and stress free! One can dream, right? 🙂

 

LoriAbout the Author: Lori Pereyra is a member of the Creative Team here at The Digital Press. She is a stay at home mom to 4 children and loves capturing life…the good, the not so good, & the perfectly imperfect… and documents it all through photos, paper & pixels. She feels this is modern scrapbooking at it’s best!