Redone Cover

Remember when I shared with you in my July 24 post the cover I'm planning to use for my Maui 12x12 scrapbook album that I'm creating while we're still here on vacation?  Well, I believe I mentioned in the post that the photo I used was one I'd found in a Google search and I was hoping to redo it with an actual shot I had taken while on vacation in Maui.  Well, the cover has been edited and it now includes an image I took on Kahana beach, right out in front of the condo we were renting, and those are my daughter Arianne's footsteps!  I like my image much better, especially with the personal tie-in now.

Thanks for popping by, and I hope to have another two-page spread to share with you tomorrow!

Ka'anapali Beach

Aloha from beautiful Ka'anapali Beach, one of the top beaches in the United States.  Our youngest wanted to make a return trip to this beach on our trip to Maui as it has a nice sandy bottom and the water clarity is always pretty good.  Not much to look at while you are swimming, but it's a beautiful stretch of beach.

Sure am glad we decided a few years back to get a descent underwater digital camera - it sure came in handy today with almost every shot in this layout coming from that camera, a Fuji FinePix WP (the hotels on the beach, lower left of the second spread, and the shot of our oldest in the middle of that spread came from my trusty Argus).

Glow Putt Mini Golf

Our youngest got her wish - to play around of Glow Putt mini golf after dark.  We've played a round (or two) on each of our four trips to Maui since 2006.  The owner even recognized us when we walked in!  I needed some bright colors to go along with the glow-in-the-dark mini golf pictures, so I used the Ice Cream Parlor suite.  I think it accents the photos pretty nicely.  Now if I could just get my DH to stop blinking!  He had his eyes partially closed in every picture I took, so I ended up using one of them anyway.  A fun way to cap off a nice evening out with my family.

Sunset at Ka'anapali Beach

Hello and welcome to today's scrapbook pages!  I'm sharing with you today some great sunset shots we got while at Whaler's Village in Ka'anapali, Maui.  One of the better sunsets so far on this year's trip.  I was feeling a bit tired when I created these, so I opted to use two MDS templates for my scrapbook pages.  Although they are simple pages, I wanted the photograph elements to jump off the page, so that meant larger pictures.  Again, it's another layout that my DH would really like because it's mostly pictures with some detailed copy to chronicle the event.

  

Daffodil Delight is one of my favorite colors from the newer color palate at SU! and it coordinates nicely with the retired Crushed Curry polka dot ribbon, don't you think?  Mahalo for visiting today - I hope to have more to show you tomorrow!

Maui Ocean Center

Aloha!  Today I'm sharing the pages I made of our recent trip to the Maui Ocean Center.  I started out using an MDS template to create the right page, and then adapted another template to create the left page.  I really like how the layout evolved as I was working with it.  I chose to keep the background with Whisper White textured card stock to match the background of the rectangular logo I picked up off the internet (which I then made as an oval).

Hope you like today's scrapbook pages...  I have more for tomorrow!

More Scrapbook Pages to Share...

Well hello again!  Today I'm sharing the second two-page spread I created using My Digital Studio during our vacation here on Maui.  One things my girls love to do to kill a little time is to play ping pong in the basement of the resort.  They've been down there to play a couple of times now, but the pages are from their first visit to the table for this year.

I found the ping pong paddle artwork while searching Google Images and paired it with the Contempo Alphabet.  I really like the way it turned out.  The honeycomb green DSP is from the Green Tea download.  I love how our oldest's shirt matched so well with the color of the paddle art, so I continued the theme by adding Dusty Durango to the pages.  My DH loves to see me add lots of copy to my pages and use large pictures with smaller titles and not so much 'white' space, so this is one he really likes.

I hope to get creative and have more spreads to share with you soon.  Each double page spread takes me about two evenings to create due to scrapbooking on my netbook and not my desktop back home, but it sure has helped by hooking up the netbook to the plasma tv here in the condo we're renting.  Let me tell ya, I love being married to a 'geek'!  He takes good care of me.

Pages 2 and 3 of Hawaii Scrapbook Album

raAloha!  For the past three years, I have brought stamping supplies with me when heading out on our family vacation to Hawaii.  This year we decided to travel light and not check any bags (take that, airline company!), so that meant not being able to bring along the typical stamping stash I usually bring with me.  This year I decided I'd do it digitally instead, so I'm scrapbooking from my netbook.  It's definitely a love/hate relationship because I'm really pushing the limits of my netbook by digitally scrapbooking on it, but as long as I can remain patient and wait the tons of time for it to render the page every time I want to make a change, it's all good!

Today I have for you the first two vacation pages I created using My Digital Studio.

I learned how to use the new alpha punch to fill my letters with designer series paper (I also learned how to add background images to my MDS directory so if I want to, I can punch from a picture instead of from DSP, but I'll share that later).

I hope you like my pages!

 

 

Vacation Scrapbooking

We're here on Maui enjoying the sounds of the surf from the condo we are renting.  My techie DH set me up last night by hooking my netbook up to the plasma screen - wow, is it cool to see your 12 x 12 pages larger than life!  Scrapbooking on a netbook is a S-L-O-W process, but I'm managing to get some pages done.  I'll share a few over the next few days, and will hopefully keep them coming for a bit.

Today's page is the album cover I'm considering.  The photo isn't mine, but I hope to shoot something like it so I can use my own photography instead of something I found on the internet.

I love the font - I saw it on someone else's Hawaii scrapbook pages.  It's a free font called Hawaii Lover.  Just Google it and you can find it on the web.  I'll be using this font throughout my album.  Tomorrow I'll share the first two pages, with two more the day after.  So far that's all I've got finished, but I'll share them as I get them finished.

It's Been Pretty Quiet Around Here...

... and I do have something to share with you, but not just yet.  You see, I'm participating in a non-convention goer wow swap over at Stampin' Addicts so I can't show you yet what I created, but let me just say that I LOVE the new Mocha Morning specialty paper!!  Our swaps were due to swapmeistress Jen by July 13, so I need to wait until I get my set of swaps back before I can share with you what I made!

In addition to working on my swap card and making Christmas cards, I finally started using my Cricut Expression machine that my DH got me for Christmas this past year.  I also own a Gypsy and the Cricut DesignStudio software, so I've been having fun creating things for my bulletin boards at school on CDS, transferring those files to the Gypsy, and then cutting them on the Expression.  I've learned how to weld images and how to remove cut lines from a cartridge image to tailor it better for my needs.  What I really wish I had was Sure Cuts A Lot 2, a software program that worked with the Cricut that essentially allowed you to cut ANY shape.  Fellow SU! demo Wendy Weixler shared a cool thing she did last year to decorate her laptop but wouldn't ya know it?  Once I finally have the time to learn how to use my Cricut, wouldn't you know it, Sure Cuts A Lot 2 is no longer available because of litigation over the product's use on the Cricut, and I missed being able to get a copy by a few mere days when I went to look for it.  Drats!  I'm still hoping a copy of it will pop up on ebay someday...

Well, I'm off to yearbook camp down in San Diego later in the week - should be lots of fun as I know NOTHING about putting together a yearbook!  I volunteered to take the yearbook class at the end of this past school year as our current adviser is moving to another school in our district, and I REALLY didn't want to have to teach one class of 7th grade science again.  I know I'm going to learn LOTS and I'm starting to get pretty excited about going to camp - and now I'm not feeling too bad about not going to SU! Convention, as it's on the same four days as yearbook camp!  I still would love to go to convention one of these days...

July's Batch of Christmas Cards are Done!

Well hello there, and happy 4th of July weekend!  I finished my July set of Christmas cards last night, and am now up to 54 Christmas cards that I've made in 2011.  My goal was to make 5 a month, having 60 minimum to use by December - so I'm a little bit ahead of schedule!

This batch of cards is based on one I made for my DH back in November of 2005.  It's been updated a little with a sentiment on the front and white organza ribbon instead of silver cord.  I used Craft White ink and embossed with white embossing powder on tree 2 and 4, then used Silver Encore ink and embossed with silver EP on trees 1 and 5.  I used Gold Encore ink and embossed using a retired SU! product, Hologram Highlights EP for the center tree.  I hope you like them!

It's hot and muggy today - we've got some tropical moisture coming in courtesy of Texas, they say, so we might see a little lightning over the local deserts tonight and tomorrow.  Temperatures have been hovering near the triple digit mark for the past couple of days, but the forecast is for a slight cooling trend over the next week.   Could be worse, so I can't complain too much - we had a VERY mild spring (here's hoping summer will be mild, too).

Happy 4th of July to all!