Digital Scrapping: The Great Outdoors

This page makes us of Cathy Zielske's layered template no.8 from Designer digitals. The patterned paper is from a free Shabby Princess 'Happy Go Lucky'.

The amazing word brushes are a kit from Shimelle's Digital Nature Brushes at Two Peas. They are very versatile, fully changeable and they completely inspired this page.

I didn't intend to leave it in "default Cathy Zielske green" but it made the blues pop beautifully and no other colour worked, so blue it was.

The pictures are from Yosemite National Park in California. It was stunning. I am really loving clean and simple digital scrapping lately. It is quick and gets the story down on the page swiftly and neatly! What do ya think?

Digital Scrapping: Kotor

This page is 100% digital made with elements from Shimelle's Digital line, from the "Long and Winding Road" kit over at Two peas. The around words are by Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals. The word "travel" has been cut from Shimelle's Travel Journal Log printable which is a bargain $0.99 !!. I love her writing and she has lots more wordy stuff over there too.

This is A4 size so it was quick to print, straight into a folder, cheap, quick and cheerful page.

I'm not usually a green girl but I'm glad I did this page, using new kits is pushing me to try new things.

The photos are of a place called Kotor in Montenegro, which is the southern most Fjord in Europe, it was stunning!

Exciting news: Shimelle's Digitals...

So what's my exciting news? Well a little while back Shimelle from Shimelle.com put out a creative call for her fab digital scrapbook line HERE at twopeas.

and well...
I'm officially one of her Baker's Dozen!!!!! Along with the 12 other fab cupcakes:

allison http://hugharts.blogspot.com/
anso http://glitteradventure.blogspot.com/
avital http://www.CreativityPrompt.com
dolly http://dollysdreamings.typepad.com
elisa http://hybrid-alien.blogspot.com
helen http://lovingthetraditional.blogspot.com/
karen c. http://redartscrapping.blogspot.com
karen m. http://talesfromthescrapheap.blogspot.com/
kate http://libertycottage.blogspot.com/
nadine http://hello-love.org/
rani http://www.scrapyoga.typepad.com/
sheri http://www.auntierere.blogspot.com/
yvonne http://yvonnes-inkyfingers.blogspot.com/

Please check out their amazing blogs!

I am so excited to be working with such a great team, they have been great encouragers already. I'm also really excited to do more digi-scrapping now that I'm learning photoshop elements, but to be honest I love that digital can be used anywhere, on cards etc.

So for this great announcement, each of us decided to work with Shimelle's kit 'The Long and Winding Road' and what I love about this is that we all came up with something totally different!! Ah creativity at it's best!!

The kit includes: "A kit filled with vintage tones and autumn textures. The Long & Winding Road mini kit includes: 5 patterned papers (.jpg) 1 maple leaf (.png) 3 vintage postcards (.png) 3 epoxy circles (.png) Coordinates with The Long & Winding Road add-on kit, a free download from Two Peas Digital!"

Not only that but there is a FREE add-on kit to go with it, to give you a taster of these digital kits!

It costs $4. That's less than £2.50. You'd pay that for five papers alone, and look at all the fab freebies you get with it! The postcards are GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!!

So what did I come up with? Well here's a snap from my trip to Venice in 2007 and instructions on how I got this page looking like this:



1. Visit picnik.com and used a 1960's and semi-sepia action on my photo.

2. Used all the elements of the page from "Long and Winding Road mini-kit" by Shimelle's digital downloads, layered them up in Paint.net (free and fab way to see if you like digital scrapping - learn the use of layering - it' SUPER easy!)

3. Used *ank font in a burgundy tone

4. The postmark is from Designer Digitals by designer Katie Pertiet "Vintage Postmarks Brushes and Stamps" and made that burgundy to co-ordinate it in. I plonked it on using Photoshop elements but you can put a black version on easily in paint.net.

Et voila!

It was so simple to make and I'm thrilled with how it turned out! I may alter it slightly and actually cut the postcard out of card and layer it on top to give it a hybrid feel, but seeing as this is the first design call, I'll stick with digital.

So there you have it ! Our news! Here is to more fab layouts using Shimelle's fab kits! Go check out the other girl's blogs to see what they did with the kit!

Digital Scrapping: Christmas Tree

Digi-scrapped this page using digitals from Shimelle Laine's collection here and "traditions" was a freebie from an old Shabby Princess kit which I re-coloured. The photo has a "glow" but is not re-coloured. I said in my last digi-page post that I felt these pages had something missing, but actually on this layout I really like it being flat and uncomplicated. The focus is really on the tree and it looks neat and clean when printed on glossy paper.


If you fancy having a go at digital scrapping, but don't have the confidence (or money!) for Photoshop Elements, try learning about "layers" with Paint.net, its a free "upgrade" from the basic "Paintbrush" that comes free on your PC. Get it HERE

It is a great way to see if you like digi-scrapping or not, and whether you might like to learn more techniques in the more advanced software such as photoshop elements (PSE). This page was 100% made with Paint.net and although I'm beginning to learn bits of PSE, I often favour Paint.net as I find the options, menus and selections really simple and I like simple!

Of course digi-scrapping doesn't need to be always digital on a page, you can print the papers from kits out, print titles, etc. the world is your oyster!

PS - Hopefully (apart from a few tweaks) this will be the last overhaul of Liberty Cottage, I've felt all out of sorts as I couldn't find a background I could put up with for more than a few days, but now I'm all pinked up, I think this could be a keeper! :)