And once again the weather pulls the plug ...

... and the latest New England storm has us out of power again.  And the prediction for power return is a week .... again?  Oh dear ....  blogging from dh's work and the library and any odd place I can is not the greatest.

Soooooo! Instead of reading my blog today read Jenni's blog and get a great description of the kits available at midnight tonight (CST, i think).  The main kit has one of GREATEST JBS red/black releases yet.  Oh go take a look! And it looks like you can pick up an extra pack of the main kit papers!

It's Halloween!  You'll be up late anyway - and you deserve a treat!

Have a creative day, and hoping my New England friends stay warm this week!

betsy

A Favorite Kit for sure!

I'm totally in love with the Jenni Bowlin Mercantile November kit.  It features the newest Jenni Bowlin paper line - the Red & Black Extension 4 - one of my favorite lines to date!

You'll see what the dt has done with the kit on Hallowe'en midnight, but here are a few images from me:

And wait until you see the Mercantile Project Kit and and add-ons - totally cool!

I was soooo good with my October daily until recently!  It's the 28th already!  I *think* I've taken photos every day - I just have to put it together!

Here's one of the pages in the book so far:

Three days to get this all together!

Come to our Jenni Bowlin ScrapFest!

It'll be fun!

There will be chats at 9pm CST thurs, fri, sat, and sun with a door prize at each one!
We will begin posting untimed challenges in the message board and continue posting them throughout the weekend.  Winners for the untimed challenges will be chosen on Sunday October 30th at 3pm CST.

And! the Design Team will choose our December Kit Club guest from the crop participants!

So, grab a button from my side bar and hope to see you there!

It's all taking place on the JBS forum right here!

a lovely palette and a digi sale

This color combo from the October Mercantile kit has got to be one of my favorites.  Can you tell by my blog?

and speaking of the kit, here's my contribution to the gallery this month:

Sweet dearest oh so photogenic niece

this was definitely a summer to remember

got the rock idea from Country Living Magazine

more on this later!

I was so very proud of myself, since I am "The Slowest Scrapbooker in the World", that I actually produced 5 projects this month.  I'm counting my October Daily which uses the main kit mostly.  I'm now adding bits and pieces from past kits as below.  The gold foil leaves are from Tinsel Trading in NYC.  The Exclusive Postcard Stamp in the main kit can be used for so many things!  I'm actually going to try and mail a handmade postcard using this!

I'm keeping up with my daily photos for October and every 6 days plop them into my template, print them off and scrap.  This one above is of dear mom, who after years of me coercing her try scrapbooking, finally took the bite!  She's excited - how cool is that?!

And now .... a digital designer sale!

Oooooo! How I love Jen Martakis and her digital designs.  Can you tell?  My blog uses her designs and I pretty much have used her digital products to change up my blog all the time!  Check out her entire inventory on 2Peas - she has templates, brushes, alphas, and of course absolutely wonderful kits of paper and embellies!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a creative day!

and we have a winner!

Post number 2! has won a pass to Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party!  Congrats Kathy R!

I'll send Shimelle your email address!

Thanks for playing everyone!

It's Party Time!

There are online classes for everything these days, and Shimelle has been teaching online scrapbooking classes for years - but she's decided it's time to kick it up a bit and go from online class to a four-week online party, and you're invited.  Pretty Paper Party (http://www.shimelle.com/paper/1258/pretty-paper-party-a-new-online-scrapbooking-class/) is the party to attend if you have a collection of paper stacked up for a rainy day, if you have more scraps of paper than you know what to do with (but you know you don't want to throw them away!) and if you've ever put a piece of paper back in your stash because it was just too special for the photos at hand.  Through printable prompts and tutorial videos, Shimelle and dozens of special party guests will share beautiful and innovative techniques you can achieve with the paper you have already collected.

And I am soooo very excited to have been asked to be a special party guest!  Do you have patterned paper at home? Of course you do!  Then you'll love what i'll be bringing to the party!  You'll be looking at your paper in a different way after this party ... I promise you!

I'm giving away a pass to the party right here on my blog!  Just leave me a comment on this post telling me what your favorite party cake/cupcake flavor is and I'll pick a random winner Monday night at 11:00pm Eastern time.  If you don't have a blog yourself, please remember to also post your email in the comment!

Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party starts Monday 10/17, but don't worry, it's fashionable to be late, there are no deadlines, and you'll have permanent access to the class!  If you've already signed up for the class, you'll be refunded or will be able to give the class to a friend.

So hit the comment link below and let me know ... what is your favorite party cake?! See ya' at the party!

Documenting My Days

and so the month rolls on and I'm documenting a piece of each day for my October daily.

Here's how my layout looked on the screen before printing it out:

This is truly going to be an easy way to create my little book!

Some shots after 6 days:

I'm going to add these lovely gold foil leaves as I go along.  I found them in New York City.

some favorite photos will be full size: 3 x 5 inches ...

I'm still working with the wonderful October Mercantile kits!  Can't wait to show you how I used this old blueprint paper from the Antiquarian kit in a layout:

and this creative way to display your photos will have to wait until the full reveal on the 10th:

Thanks for visiting! Have a creative day!

Getting that October daily ready ...

After playing around with a bunch of different ideas, I finally decided on the photo / journaling format for my October daily.

There's a lot of talk on the message board about how we are approaching this, so I'll share my way here:

I'm creating the template for my mini pages in a word processor - I use Mac Pages - but something similar can be done in Word.

This is the template.  The green boxes will have photos in them.  They're small - only 2x2 inches, so I have a space for a larger photo that will be included now and then.  This same template will be copied and used every six days.  All I have to do is change the numbers, photos, add my journaling, and print it off.

The colors I chose for the print match the mini book I made from the October JBS Mercantile kit.  To match them nicely, I simply pulled the internet image of the kit up on my screen, and used the color-picker in my Mac Pages to "choose" the colors I wanted.

Here's the general idea:

click image to view larger

I just love it when your computer makes life easy for you ... !

so .... I'll be waiting every six days I think to print my photos out .... if I can wait that long ...  ;)

If you've never used a color-picker, you should try it!  PSE has a color-picker that does allow you to get the color code for anything on your screen.  You can find a bunch online, too - apps for your Mac and programs for your PC. Many are free or very cheap!

Time for a change ...

. . . a blog change!

Change is good isn't it?  Keeps things fresh and keeps you on your toes.  I wanted to practice my newly acquired blogger skills and update the ol' blog.

Aren't the graphics beautiful?  These are from a Jen Martakis Designs digital kit: Watercolors. So pretty!

And it's October!  Which means a new Mercantile Kit !  I've created four projects already and my mind is happily spinning on the fifth.

Here's what's in the gallery for me so far:

Here's a little mini I created with bits and pieces from the kits - the base of the mini was created from the little vintage file folders in the Antiquarian kit:

The exclusive stamp is the vintage Post Card stamp - so many uses for that stamp!  I'll be using this mini for my October daily - join in the fun here!

And check out the projects in the Mercantile gallery from the dt.  A-mazing!