It's a My Digital Studio Party!

Welcome to our My Digital Studio Party - you might call it a Blog Carnival, hosted by Stampin' Addicts. It's is all about My Digital Studio, also known as MDS - the digital papercrafting solution released on October 1 by Stampin' Up!  Each stop on the carnival will feature at least two projects created using My Digital Studio.  Be sure to visit all 16 sites to see what you can do with MDS between now and November 1.

For my projects, I chose to make a 2010 calendar, an 8x8 scrapbook page, and a 6x6 card.  First up is the calendar.  I used a calendar template available in MDS first, and then added my images.  These are shots of our family vacation to the Big Island and Moloka'i last summer.  I added the image on the top page of the calendar, and decided to add the same image as a background to the calendar part of the page, but with some transparency to the image.  I used the color picker tool in MDS for the background color of the top page, choosing a color from the picture itself.  MDS uses your computer's fonts, so I chose a favorite to type out captions for each month.  The calendar template was in gray, so I went in and made everything black so it would stand out a little better against the background image.  I added my own family events for each month, along with moon phases (I'm an amateur astronomer, so a calendar isn't complete without moon phases).  My photograph of the calendar doesn't do it justice (wrong camera setting), so I'll try photographing it again during the day to see if I can get a better shot of it.  The paper it's printed on is thick, kind of like the slick feel of Whisper White paper (but heavier than WW).  It comes spiral bound, and you also create your own cover for it.  Shipping was amazingly fast - I ordered it on a Saturday night, and it arrived on the following Wednesday!

My second project is an 8x8 scrapbook page from an album I'm making for my youngest.  She just got back from her class trip to Catalina Island, and while she was gone, I got started on the scrapbook using the images I had taken the day I helped drive them down to Long Beach.

She had a wonderful time and took about 120 pictures with her own digital camera while at Outdoor Education Week on Catalina, so I'm going to have fun this weekend sitting down with her to work on her scrapbook using MDS.

My last project is a 6x6 card that I created using the Christmas Jingle designer kit that is available in MDS.  I just love this cute deer - which is also available as an individual stamp in the current Stampin' Up! catalog.

MDS features embellishments like the brads, ribbon and focal image in my card above, as well as many designer series papers to use for backgrounds, and stamp images like the sentiment I used here.

My Digital Studio is such a versatile program - there's even more you can do with it, which will be shared by other bloggers on our blog carnival, so make sure to visit everyone's site.  You have until November 1 to view all of the projects created by the sixteen of us participating in the blog carnival.  Thanks so much for stopping by, and if you have any questions about MDS, I'm here to help!

My Digital Studio Blog Carnival Participants:

DMDezigns/Dawnmarie: My Digital Studio - The Birdseye Overview
HowManyCats?!/Comeka: Digitize Your Sketch Library with MDS
Yapha: Turning Templates into Treasures
Willysgirl/Sarah: MDS Xmas and Extras
Hollylogic/Holly: MDS as a Design Tool (or How Not to Slice Up All Your Brushed Gold)
Lyssa: Playing with Stamps You Don't Own
Lilysinkpad/Sara: Simply Scrappin' Kits Go Digi
JulieA/Julie: Wanna Little Music with Your Slideshow?
lovetostampandscrap/Cheryl: Creating a Calendar to Beat All Calendars
Melina Stamps!/Melina: Man-Scrapping with MDS
BroncoMom/Joyce: Build Your Own DSP
Britiney: Clever Album Covers - A Piece of (Cup)Cake
S1itcher46/Kim: Hybridizing and Cataloging Collections
Kelli: Side-by-Side Test: Is it Actual or Is It MDS?
Scrapbookmama/Ellie: Keeping the Spotlight on Your (Adorable!) Subjects