Surviving the Heat.

What do you do to survive the heat?  I like the quiet coolness of my craft room where I can create to my heart's desire.  Long gone are the busy days of caring for family, so time is more available to me now. 

Along with creating, I love the technology that's available to me to use and explore.  I think one of the best gifts I ever received was one from my sister-in-law when she not only gave me a Paint Shop Pro Program by Corelle, but she taught me how to use it.  It was a very intense time as I worked through the lessons she had taken at a night school class, but so worth the effort. 

Having and knowing how to use the program enables me to enhance or alter my photos for my scrapbooking pages. I often clean up a not so spectacular photo, or even alter it by layering it with another photo, maybe even taking someone in or out of the photo.  Well you get the drift.  So in doing all that, I sometimes create digital pages that I use as screensavers on my PC.  I'm still very much a touchy feely kind of scrapbooker, I love the paper and embellishments that are available and the ability to create through my Silhouette machine.   These digital pages however, enable me to see family photos in the scrapbook style I love, on my PC.  Here's such a digital page that I made of family in England as they awaited the arrival of the Olympic torch going through their town recently.

Now here's a photo for a touchy feely page I have ready to do where I've added someone into the photo.            

This is the before....

   and here's the after photo.......I see the difference, can you see the difference....LOL!

I usually make note in my journalling when I've digitally altered a photo such as this.

We've had the pleasure of helping someone lately as she created some beautiful touchy feely pages for her son's 30th birthday album.  Nancy was a newbie scrapper when she came to one of our Friday Crop and Craft Nights.  We had no idea what her goal was at that time.  Believe me they were lofty goals, but she attained them....kudos to Nancy for her dream, desire and drive.  She created a couple of double page layouts on the friday night, but more than that, she was like a sponge, listening to and taking in all the suggestions we offered her. 

Can you believe Linda's surprise when Nancy came into the store a week later with numerous file folders containing her photos and a layout she had chosen for each of them.   They worked diligently finding papers that would do justice to her photos and the chosen layouts, then home to create them as she wasn't able to attend our next Friday Crop and Craft Night.  Back came Nancy in a week or so with more file folders, layouts and photos and again we chose paper for these sets.  Nancy and I talked about what to do if she wasn't able to get all the pages done, however that was a moot point.  On the next Friday Crop and Craft, just a month after she began this daunting task, we worked at putting the extra pages she needed into her album. With longer posts and chipboard spacers, the album opened cleanly and displayed her amazing work. 

WELL DONE to a newbie scrapbooker who has found her creative talent.  Nancy's taking a couple of weeks off right now, but we look forward to seeing her again as she begins her next project without the same timeline to deal with. 

Here are a couple of examples of the pages she created.......

I'm off now to scan the photos of Linda's two girls in their dance costumes.  They had a very busy weekend of four dance recital performances.  I'll show you the cards that Linda created using their costumes as the inspiration.  Their teachers were extremely pleased to receive the beautiful cards.

Until next time, happy crafting....
Lilian