Simply Gray by Lady Bug Designs

Another great new kit by Lady Bug Designs, this one in soft shades of gray with a touch of peach.  It is loaded with gorgeous papers, elements, 2 photo masks and several cluster frames.  You can find it at the Digital Design Den store here.

I had fun playing with this one - two layouts so far.  The first is a tribute to my sweet Tessa.  She's been gone almost two years and I still miss her so very much.  She was the sweetest little kitty.

And the second one is my great, great grandfather.  The photo is in pretty poor condition so I blended it into one of the papers in the kit.

Abbey Rose - Latest Kit from Lady Bug Designs

The latest kit from Lady Bug Designs, Abbey Rose, is now available in the Digital Design Den store.  It is a lovely soft kit with beautifully textured and patterned papers with 46 elements.  Right now it is 25% off and you can find it here.

Here are two layouts I've done so far.  The first one is an old photo that was found in my father-in-law's collection after he died.  There was nothing written on the back, so we don't know who these ladies are.  I just love their clothes, especially the hats.  And the fur muffs for their hands - I had a child-size one when I was a kid!

The second one is a photo of my mother and father on their wedding day in 1938.

New Kit From Ladybug Designs

Home and Family is the sweet new kit from Ladybug Designs and is available here at the Digital Design Den.   Right now it is on sale for 20% off.  It is perfect for scrapping family times and vintage photos.  I just did two layouts with it - the first of my stepson and his girls, the second of their cat, Fred.

More on Star Kissed

Just got two more layouts done using Star Kissed, the wonderful new kit by Lady Bug Designs, available at the Digital Design Den.  You can get it here.  And right now it is on sale - 25% off.

And here are two more layouts using Star Kissed.  This first one showcases David Whitfield, a wonderful English tenor who left us way too soon.  Anyone remember his hit song, Cara Mia?  Back when I was a teenager (many long years ago) I had the pleasure of meeting him in person and actually getting a photo taken with him.   It was one of the highlights of my life.

 The photo below was taken just last year when we were hiking on the Overlook Trail in our Metropark system.  We had a chance meeting with this deer and fortunately, I had the camera with me.

Star Kissed-New From Lady Bug Designs

Lady Bug Designs has just released a sweet new kit called Star Kissed.  Lots of lovely soft colors here, just perfect for spring and on into summer.  You can get it here at the Digital Design Den store.

I've done two layouts with this kit so far - two more are in the works.  The first one is our grandson who is currently in China as an exchange student.  I downloaded the photo of him from Facebook.  He was just getting ready to go on a boat trip somewhere in China.

The photo of orchids is from our trip to Longwood Gardens several years ago.

Still Life

The March Focus on Photography challenge at the Digital Design Den is to create and photograph a still life. My flower arranging skills are sadly lacking and the lighting in our house is not really good for doing still life photography.  Since nothing is blooming in our part of the world yet - way too cold - I used a silk flower.  My SOOC image needed help, so I went to work with textures, gradients and adjustment layers.

This is the image straight out of the camera.  It was way too dark for me and I really didn't like the background.

And this is the image after I worked on it.  The first thing I did was crop it.  Then I added a layer mask and did away with the background.  Next I added the Sweettart texture by Kim Klassen - she has lovely textures on her blog, pay her a visit and see for yourself.  I did erase most of the texture from the  flower and vase using a layer mask.  After that, I added a pale white to pink gradient, then did a levels adjustment.  And I think the finished product looks much better.

Snow and Ice

For a little over a week we had some lovely weather - warm, in the 40's - and we actually saw the grass in our yard!  But, sad to say we are back to cold, snow and ice.   We have had a series of weather fronts go through dropping the temperatures, changing the rain to ice (that was fun - NOT!), and just over the weekend we had another 8 inches of snow.  And there are two more fronts on the way with snow, sleet and freezing rain.  Enough already!!!  With the weather being what it was, I've been spending a lot of time on the computer playing with patterns and textures and I designed a small mini kit which I hope you will like.  I called it, what else, Snow and Ice.

You can download it from Box.net     (Sorry, link expired)