Evolution of a Wanderer

I have always loved travelling.

There's that thing they say at home about people like me, that we probably have a mole on our feet that's why we can't stay in one place at any given time. Well, my feet are as mole-free as it can get, but I think my soul's feet are another matter.

For Weekend Wanderings, a blog to chronicle my wanderlust throughout the years, I made this graphic. I know it's a little simple than the other graphics I've been posting lately. But as of now, the blog's pretty new so my mind was more on writing for it than making a digiscrap layout.






I have yet to make a banner for the blog too, as I am still thinking about the whole look of the page. But to be sure, when I'm done, I'll post it here as well.




{credits: freedigitalscrapbooking.com andrea rascaglia frames; peppermintcreative.com miss mint tropical popsicle; designerdigitals.com katie pertiet quote challenge 32507, kellie mize ad challenge 100106}

Oona's First Nine Months! My First Album!

My name is Laya and I am a Scrapaholic. (Hellooo, Laya!)

This happened beacuse we just had way too much footage of Oona being the triggerhappy proud parents of this little girl. We hardly knew what to do with the batches of pictures we accumulated.

I was surfing through arts and crafts websites to see what I could see, when I came across digital scrapbooking.

When it came to photographs, I was a glue-and-scissors kind of girl and it never crossed my mind that I could do this digitally. I was calling myself all kinds of stoofid because I used to jazz up static pictures with graphics in my video editing days! Duh! Why didn't I think of that in the first place?! My creative mojo really IS on an all time low!

But where to start, where to start? I couldn't possibly be making ribbons, buttons and stuff from scratch! It would take me too long and I was stumped for design. (Really no mojo to speak of).

It was after beating myself up for running out of creative juice that the universe pointed me in the direction of ScrapFlair. Maybe the universe got sick of my self-pity because not only was it a free downloadable program, ScrapFlair had ready-made templates and elements that were included in the package!

Oh joy and happy days!

Additional freebies are downloadable on the site too. So as soon as I started figuring out the program, I was downloading as much stuff as I liked.

It helps that you join the online community as well even if as a non-member, you can still read through the posts under a lot of helpful topics. The forum posts are very helpful and informative. As a member though, you can post your own questions, ask help for your specific concerns regarding tips and tricks and post in your own gallery to get feedback. You also get an email newsletter with what's new at the site and new kits that the designers launched.

At this time however, I'm still building up my own collection of pages inspired by the Scrapflair designs to post in my gallery. So far, I managed to finish Oona's First 9 Months, an album of my pregnancy.

I'm glad everything (except layout templates) are in a format that's editable. I wanted greater elbow-room so I ended up using Adobe Photoshop to make my own layouts, to resize and add effects to the elements themselves.

Since I wanted to add a lot more stuff to the scrapbook I was making, I had to make some of my own "stickers", labels and other graphics.



I also mixed in other elements I downloaded from other design templates.

Using ScrapFlair is a great way to get started on digital scrapbooking. This was all I needed to get me out of the creative funk I was having. From then on, I was able to move on to other projects using other resources that the scrapbooking community selflessly share!

{Credits: Scrapbookflair Sweetie Pie Collection, Aqua Glass Collection,
Princess Collection; Digitalscrapbooking-free.com Heart Sentiments by Lisa W;
Freedigitalscrapbooking.com Child of Mine Set}

THE EVENT REMINDER

{Credits: Shabby Princess Sweet Serenity, Festival, Promise Collection,
CottageArtsHopeSentimentPak,
Free Digital Scrapbooking Delight In Life
and DigiKeepsakes Vivaldi Alpha}

As usual, I had to send reminders to everybody.

I was nervous because less than half of the people we'd invited had RSVP'd and most of those were regrets. What in the world were we to do with 100 pax worth of food?! So using the photo from the first draft, I flipped the layout to come up with this. I was sure the others had forgotten that the event was nearly upon us.

Thinking up witticisms like in the godparent invite was a challenge though. So I ended up with something a little ordinary compared to the first salvo.

Sigh.

Anyhoo, the good news is that most of whom I sent this to responded. I even posted this as an event on Facebook just to cover all the bases.

Sweet Sixteen

{Credits: Designer Digitals KPertiet_Web111807, mterasawa-web10608}

I made this for my sister, Diday. I was rummaging through old files and came across these pictures, thought forever lost. She's now turning 18 in December, so as this was two years ago, it was a trip down memory lane.