Meet the Element Team Chat at TheDigiShoppe

This AAM (all about me) page is for the 'Get to know the Element Team' Chat at TheDigiShoppe.com. Each designer did an AAM page from the kit that we made to give away as prizes to the chat participants. They have to answer trivia questions about us LOL! (this pic was taken Easter Sunday 2006)

Here's the kit I used to make the above page.

Sneak Peak of NeelyPurple DigiScrap Kit

My latest creation, NeelyPurple, will be available for free for personal use download after the new oScraps.com server goes live this week!

This isn't the official announcement but...

I'm just so excited, I have to share a little tidbit! I've been talking with some very talented ladies about becoming designers for oScraps
So.... the official announcement will come next week but I just have to share that I have just received the second set of papers from one of them and they are fabulous!!! She is fabulous! I just can't wait to show her off!

WOO! Alyx lost his first tooth tonight!!!

He's been using his aunt Libby's trick for getting loose teeth out... eating lots of apples! It came out very easily with no pain and no blood. He's so excited!!! He's already put it under his pillow for the toothfairy! I'm gonna have to design a tooth kit now....

it's official now, so I can blab...

I am now a member of the elements team at The Digi Shoppe. We will be designing lots and lots and lots I'm sure :) So, my already busy life just got a lot busier :) but its a good thing! Go check it out! It is a very cool site with some wonderful people!

We got the final box in yesterday and the hubby has been hard at work getting it all together before we take a road trip to Dallas early next week! More on that later....

For now, I've got to run!

Psssst... I've got a secret!

Lookie, lookie what showed up today... we are still expecting 1 more box. Fingers crossed it will be here tomorrow. Why is this important enough to post a picture on my blog. Because I think so! LOL! J/K.... its going to dramatically affect oScraps!!!!


More on that big news to come....

Freebies, Internet Explorer, Email Issues, Coding....

OY! I thought I was a designer LOL. Who knew that putting up a little freebie site was going to make me need to learn so much about stuff I still don't know about... Wow, that makes no sense whatsoever.

All I do know at the moment is that some, but not all Internet Explorer users are having problems registering with oScraps and some internet service providers appear to be blocking the block of IP's we go out through... did I say OY! already?

Anywho, if you fall in either of these categories but still want a free membership at oScraps.com then just email me at oscraps@gmail.com and we'll get you set up!

{Pssst, there is a new kit coming out in the next couple of days, so you'll want to get your membership setup quickly! And, yes, the new kit will be free for your own personal use!}

Tool to help combat digital piracy...

[b]Placing copyright symbol in image name information[/b]

Ok, so its a new *to me* tool, but maybe some of you don't know about it either.

In Photoshop CS2, there is an automation script that will take an entire collection of images and batch 're-save' them with the copyright symbol embedded in the name of the file. Even if you open the file and rename it something else, the copyright symbol stays in the top bar where the open images name is. Of course, this won't stop digital pirates, but it will make it harder for them to claim they 'didn't know'...

How to do it...

1. Open all the files you need to process
2. File ----> Scripts ----> Image Processor
3. Choose your options in numbers 1, 2, & 3
4. #4 Enter your Copyright information
5. Run

There is the option to do it from a file instead of opening all the files, but my file structure tends to be very messy with different versions, etc. Plus, this helps me find the exact files I want to put into the zip file. I haven't found a way to make it work on .png's yet.

Hope this helps!

Holy Cow Batman!

Wow, I'm not so sure my poor little server (let alone me LOL) can handle the response to oScraps!

I've had over 75 members sign up in the last 1 1/2 days! Its so exciting!!! And, a little scary. I guess this means I need to keep designing! Or atleast designing faster LOL!

I feel like such a dork now. I had a little breakdown the other night. Whining to the hubby about how I was worried noone was going to like my designs. Well, apparently the word is spreading and spreading quickly. So, I'm going to stroke my own ego and assume that means that a few people liked my designs enough to tell their friends! Yay! Go me! LOL.

Ok, enough of that. Guess, I'll get back to designing. Or maybe I should fix some dinner and do some laundry since those are just 2 of the things that have been sliding so I can sit in front of the puter....

Talk to y'all tomorrow (hopefully!)

Monochrome Blonde!

My latest creation is now available for free download at http://www.oscraps.com .
Is it odd that the first layout I do with my Monochrome Blonde kit is of a brunette? ;P This my dear friend, Raina and her son, Ian on their recent visit here from Florida. Ian is growing so fast! We haven't seen him since our trip to Disney last October. What a brilliant boy he is turning into!!!

Oh Yeah.... forgot to mention oScraps is back up!

Sorry about that... its been up for hours now LOL.

UGH!!!! Popularity has a price....

The oScraps server is down. /sigh I'm not sure what we are going to have to do. We've already ordered a dedicated line for the server but apparently thats not going to cut it. I think we're going to have to investigate some other options.

Only problem with that is I'm not sure I can afford to keep the site up if I have to keep increasing my bandwidth every week. I suppose I could always start charging for some of the kits. I'd really like to keep the site free, but at this point, I don't know if I'll be able to.

Ah well, I'm going to go do some searching and see what my options are... and hope that Anthony calls at lunch so I can find out how to get the server back up. He's in a class this week so I can't just call him for tech support like I normally would LOL.

See you later, hopefully with better news!

Alyx's Award Winning Drawing!

We finally got to see the picture that Alyx had drawn for the Reflections Program! Nothing like him drawing a picture in September 2005, getting a letter in January 2006 about the award program, getting the award February 13, 2006 and getting the picture March 30, 2006! When he showed me, he said, "Oh yeah, I do remember drawing this now! The paper wasn't big enough for me to fit both dinosaurs on it, so I just had to put the head and neck of the other T-Rex. See, these T-Rex's were fighting... cuz that's what T-Rex's do ya know... but then the big meteor came and hit and the earth and the volcanoes started erupting and these dinos didn't notice because they were fighting. So, when the ash and dirt covered them they died both together and later a paleontologist can find their bones both together."


Woah! I was so excited to get the picture that I hurried up and digi-scrapped it. Now that I write this, I realize I need to re-work to include the above journaling LOL! Well, thankfully that's the beauty of digi-scrapping --its easy to change things!

Kids spell love M-O-M!

This layout is for my birthday pic with my munchkin. I used my new oscraps 'Fleur' kit. Fonts used were Country Blueprint and Dali downloaded from dafont.

The journaling reads

Kids spell love M-O-M

This quote originally read “Kids spell love T-I-M-E.” by John Crudele. But, in our world, Alyx spells love M-O-M! He tells everyone else, including his dad and grandparents, “I like you”. He saves all his I love you’s for me.

My new scrapbook site is finally up!

Ok, so it took longer than "about a week", but my new digital scrapbook designs site is finally up! I decided to quit trying to reinvent the wheel and just get it up and rolling before I rendered myself completely bald from frustration. Its not how I want it to ultimately be, but I'm happy with its current incarnation. So, without further blah, blah, blah'ing on my part, here's the link -

http://www.oscraps.com

Exciting things on the horizon.

I haven't updated in awhile because I've been busy, busy, busy working on a new project. Hopefully I'll have something to show off in about a week!

Hornets Game

Alyx and I got to go to our first NBA game tonight - the displaced New Orleans Hornets vs. Portland Trail Blazers. I have no idea who won as we left at halftime. We had a great time, but the noise and how late it was getting made it time to go... Here's the pics!

LOL! Yes, I am a red head now...

Boy, you are an observant lot! Yes, I colored my hair on my birthday. It was starting to get pretty dried out from the highlighting, so I put a temp color on it so I could go longer without bleaching it again.


It was supposed to be "light golden brown" but ended up red. Ah, well, so many of you noticed it in Alyx's award pics and seemed to like it so well, I may keep it. What do you think? A lot of you first met me as a redhead, maybe it just brings back fond memories LOL...

{these pics were taken on my birthday last week}

Alyx's Reflections Award Ceremony

We went to Alyx's PTA Reflections Award Ceremony last night. He won 3rd place in the Kindergarten - 2nd grade division for his school in Visual Arts. That's 4 classes of Kindergarten and 4 classes of 1st and 2nd graders!!!

We have no idea (well, we know it was a dinosaur, of course) what he drew and have not gotten to see the picture. I hope we get it back! When we do, I'll post it here as well!

He was such a big boy, walking to and across the stage all by himself!!! We are just so proud of him and he is so very proud of his trophy!!!

Here's the Pictures.

Its My Birthday!

Wow! I'm 37 years old today. Scary.

I've got a ton of stuff on the ol' to do list today. One of those things is updating this page since I haven't done it in 2 weeks or so, so here are the pics from the last few weeks. {Click the titles to go to the albums.}


Incredible Pizza
We went to Incredible Pizza for Alyx's 6th birthday. I picked Alyx and Ethan up from school and my mom picked up Lauren and Andrew and met us there. That was the absolute best time to go there because there were maybe 20 other people there and there was no waiting anywhere! We had the best time!!!

Alyx's Birthday Party
We had Alyx's birthday party at Burger King. The kids had such a great time playing! When we were done there, we all came back over to our house to bust the pinata. That was a riot!!!

Jessie got a new camera
Mark & Pam showed up at Thai food with a surprise! An 8 month old baby... None of us realized how long it had been since we had seen them since only Anthony knew they were even expecting LOL! When we got back to our house, we were going to have margerita's but we were out of sweet and sour. I got a couple of recipes off the net and tried concocting my own but that didn't work out so well. I ended up making Val and Jessie some Bailey's Shakes and Jessie introduced me to a new drink - Sunny D and Amaretto! YUM!

Lilla {the new puppy and a bunch of humans}
Doug and Neely got a new puppy. Her name is Lilla and she's adorable! Since Jessie brought her camera again, we had a bunch of pics!

Jessie poses
We have really been getting on to Jessie lately for refusing to pose for pictures. I have threatened her with posting all the bad angle/full mouth/etc. pics if she doesn't start posing. Laura and I decided to teach her how to pose for the camera and she finally got it! It was quite an amusing process though...

Phew... I think that's it for the new pics. Anthony and I are going out to dinner tonight at a very swanky restaurant {Thanks Dawn & Jason for the gift cert!} and we have to dress up a bit. If we get a picture, I'll post that tomorrow!