Last week I immersed myself in many digi projects. Most taking the form of selecting, purging and organizing what is left to do in iPhoto that I didn't get to during my Digital Detox. To give myself a break, I made a few layouts and finished up Claire and Caden's - on Family Day. The irony? My kids were busy elsewhere!
I enjoyed making the conversations layouts earlier, here, here and here - where my kids answered questions about themselves. These "amazing" layouts give me a chance to offer observations I've made about each of my kids - recently. This is a great project to slip into their scrapbooks (when I get them back from the printer once I find/decide where to send them - 8 1/2 x 11 is not a normal size in these parts!). Years ago I got bogged down with making four similar yet different layouts for each of the kids to include in their books and stopped due to utter ovewhelm. I think I may just have twigged on the thing that will make their books a bit more complete!
I enjoy Cathy Zielske's layered templates and will make more, for sure. I have, of course, downloaded a bunch of other templates and I've spent some time trying to manipulate those I already have to make them more functional in other projects. I'm stuck on a few things, but that's part of the fun. The fear is almost all gone - whoot! The intimidation and not wanting my layouts to look like CZs is almost all gone too. I love her work and it is distinctly her work - I think I've found a way to incorporate the best that is CZ with what I consider to be the best of me.
A lot of my new found comfort is the discovery of digi-paper I like. I'm thrilled to have discovered Michelle Martin over at Designer Digitals as she has some lovely papers; as well as Ashalee Wall at Design Pink Ink with her gorgeous paper collections. I'm far more a photo + story + paper scrapbooker than I am a bling and dimension scrapbooker - even digitally, so it was a thrill to find simple and sophisticated patterns and colours.
The only thing left to conquer are brushes and overlays. Working on it!