Believe

I thought this was such a cute picture of my niece, Jordan, visiting Santa. My sister had emailed it to me, and I had to try to do a layout for it. I lowered the saturation on the picture because I thought it gave it a nice sorta artsy look to it. I also didn't want it to clash with the red on the paper I used. This layout didn't take me as long as some of my previous ones have. I'm sure that's partly or mostly because I'm not making the paper like I was doing over the summer. I still may at times, but I was doing that more to match my pictures better. Anyway, I'm pretty proud of this layout. The red paper was from a set that scrapgirls.com was offering if you made a $10 purchase. It was designed by Melanie Johnson. The two papers on the side are both from Brandy Murray's Christmas Chronicles set. The green edge was recolored from the original brown. The frame/mat was designed by Paula Wright, and the swirl on the top was also in the Scrap Girls bonus set, designed by Carrie Stephens. The word art that says "The wonder of the season" was designed by Ariadna Wiczling.

I knew that I wanted to title it Believe, just because the layout focuses on how Jordan is looking at Santa, and the whole childhood belief in Santa. I was excited, because Scrap Girls had another collection they were offering with a purchase, and I saw that they had a "believe" word art. However, when I got it, it looked too casual with the rest of the layout. I kept doing different things, like changing the colors, or adding paper as a clipping mask, but I didn't like the look of those either. I finally decided to go with a font, and to keep the color gold. This was another Christmas font from theholidayspot.com. I typed it in gold, then duplicated the layer and offset it some to give the letters more depth. The snowflakes looked funny, though, so I deleted them from one of the layers. I added some glow and gave it a dissolve blend, so it would shimmer some. I was finally satisfied with it, so it was done. Yay!

Christmas Card 2009

I wasn't planning to make our Christmas card because my layouts have usually taken me a long time to do. But, we wanted to use the picture of us at the ICE exhibit in Orlando, and none of the predesigned layouts looked good with it, so I decided to try it. I thought it went a lot quicker than I expected, which is good. Maybe I'm getting the hang of this more. I got all of the supplies from scrapgirls.com. I used the Rippled Paper paper template by Brandie Velasquez, the Holiday in Lights paper template by Brandy Murray, and the snowflake is from the Christmas Chronicles, also by Brandy Murray. I got the Merry Christmas font from theholidayspot.com/christmas/fonts. I was proud of this part, because the font did not contain the white, so I put typed Merry Christmas on a white background in Photoshop and then erased the background from between the letters, and anywhere that it wasn't supposed to look like there was snow. I've since discovered the magic wand and polygonal lasso tool, that might have made that part a little quicker, but it wasn't too bad.

Since these went out this week, this technically was the first layout I've printed, although I mentioned in a previous post another layout that I haven't shown yet because it's going to be a gift. But, I received the actual print of that layout in the mail today, and I cannot wait until Christmas so I can give it. It looks sooo good! Just wanted to share that part.

Ice, Ice, Baby.

I haven't written in a while. Thanksgiving was good. It was so nice to be off for the whole week, and I was able to get some things done with my scrapbooking, including organizing some of my files. Poor Jason had to work the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving, so I just stayed in, which wasn't too bad since it was cold those days. I am not one of those who wake up when it's still dark to get in the crowded stores and malls. Sure, I may get some good deals out of it, but I like my sleep and don't love crowds. It was hard to go back to work, even though it's only for 3 weeks, and then I get another 2 weeks off. That's just going to make it even harder to go back, though!

We went to the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando last night with Jason's parents and his brother and his wife. It was fun and very cold! I didn't realize that they'd give us parkas, but it's a good thing they did, even though they weren't that attractive, because the temperature is only 9 degrees. You're not really in there very long, though. I thought there would be a little more to it, but after you go through the exhibit, they have free hot chocolate and there was a little Christmas show. It was a nice little deal to go to, and we got some good pictures from it. Our nephew, Judah, is so cute. He's just learned to walk, so that's fun to watch. It's hard to believe that he's almost 1. They had an ice slide that Jason and Justin slid down. The rest of us decided not to because at that point we were so cold and there was a good line.

This week is going to be a busy week, since I'm singing in Idlewild's Christmas presentations. I think it is fitting that this will be my last offiicial thing with Idlewild, seeing as that was what brought me there 22 years ago. I never look forward to the lack of time during this week, but really, I love the singing and I'll get to hang out with some of my friends :)

I usually have lots of topics to blog about running through my head, so I hope to get on here a little more in the upcoming weeks.