Home again!

Had a great time visiting with my sister and her husband for the weekend and then my parents for the night last night, but it is good to be home. DD took lots of great pictures that I'm anxious to get to. Haven't done any scrappin' for days! Been some stuff happening at home that kinda knocked the wind out of me for a bit, but hopefully I'll get back at it soon.

Got some great scrappy mail today! Actually, it probably came while we were away but I just got it today. Two card kits from ScrapShotz gals- one from Carla and one from Wendy for a card kit swap. Can't wait to play with them. I have another from Carla that I got a week or more ago that I haven't played with yet either. I'm hoping to get to all of them tomorrow.

Got some great news yesterday! Creative Crafts and Stickers message board is going to stay open! The store and gallery are still going to close but there was such an outpouring of love and good wishes that Jen decided to leave the board open so we could all still connect. Yeah!!

Now, I need to try to catch up on some of the poker game challenges at the Sisterhood of Scrap blog.

Tuesday there was a challenge to share a tip or technique. I have been enjoying creating hybrid layouts lately. There are so many great digital papers and embellishments available and it's great fun to use them on paper layouts. Digital embellishments are great fun to play with because before you print them you can make them as big or as little as you like and you can also adjust the color on them so that you have the color that you need. How you do this depends on the program you use. Once you have it the size and color you want you just print it off and cut it out to add to your layout. A great way to give a digital embellishment more depth on your layout is to layer it a couple of times, and maybe even popdot it. I did this recently with a layout. I wanted to add digital flowers. I sized and colored them how I wanted them first then I printed off a number of copies of them and cut them out and pasted them on top of one another to give the flowers more depth. I was really pleased with the finished porduct.

Today's challenge is to share at least three sites that you get inspiration from. That's pretty easy. My two favorite scrapbooking forums at the moment are Creative Crafts and Stickers and ScrapShotz. I love how fun and friendly the people are at both boards. Ally, at Creative Crafts and Stickers, is an amazing scrapper! I just love her work, and she also creates great sketches. Carla, at ScrapShotz, is amazing with cards! She is the card queen in my books. She regularly posts card challenges with sketches in the forum and also at her blog. I believe she creates most, if not all, of the sketches. Two of my favorite digi designers are Amy and April. Both these gals create wonderful digital kits and elements that you can check out on their blogs.