Authentic Scrapbooking

Lately I've been thinking about scrapbooking, and how being authentic in our pages leads to freedom and creativity. 

Which led to my blog post for The Lilypad this week:  Authenticity in Scrapbooking.  Take a read if you're interested. I think if we put more of our authentic selves into our scrapbooking, we will love the pages we make even more. I find that my most favorite pages of all time are the ones where I look at it after some time has passed, and I love it because it was honest and authentic, and true to myself and the stories I told. :)

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Loving…

I hadn’t uploaded and processed my photos in a while. Tonight after I uploaded my photos from all my cameras and went through them in Lightroom, I felt so blessed.

Right now, I’m loving…

The AC Amy Tangerine Calendar Stamp


Going to The Rock Church last Sunday with our friends Monika and David.




The Asian Chicken Salad at Urban Plates. (Went there for the first time on Monday 2/18.)


Living 15 minutes from the beach.




Late to the party, but I finally got an iPhone.


And a cool case that looks like a Polaroid camera.


Love my very own geek who is building his new computer.


My super-cuddly cat Noodle.


This alphabet roller stamp I got on Etsy.


Coloring wood veneer stars (or anything wood veneer) with the Sharpie glitter paint pen.


Making this goodbye card for my friend Cassi.


Having a ramen dinner at Santouka with Cassi and her family. (But NOT loving that she’s moving away. :(


Going to visit Sally and her twin babies.


The Salsicce pizza at Pizzeria Bruno.


Eating at Pizzeria Bruno with Dejah & Roby and Randy & Rena.


Another work week is starting. I’m not ready, but I feel truly blessed. :)

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Phew

This week I submitted the 2013 budget at work. It's been a long 4 months of intense work to finalize it. Lots of changes here and there. Lots of negotiating and lots of work to get every detail right. Millions of dollars being shifted around. Hundreds of people to budget for.  I love this milestone every year at work.  It signals the intense amount of work and extra hours are done. Perhaps work can return to normal now, for a few months. 

Todd and I usually celebrate my annual budget submissions with a night out. I'm looking forward to this weekend.

People often ask me, how do I do it? How do I hold down a full-time job (sometimes more than full-time), have fun, exercise, and find time to create things and to blog?  Sometimes it's very difficult. Especially during the months of October to January, when I'm so busy at work. Truth is, if you're passionate about something, you make the time. You will never just "find" time. If something is a priority to me, I make the time. I give up other things like watching TV.  Or even adequate sleep sometimes.  And no, I can't do everything I want to get done. But if it's something important to me, I make it happen.  :)

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Come Fly With Me

One of our favorite places to take visitors to San Diego is the Torrey Pines Glider Port. You can go there and watch people take off and land for free. There’s even a little sandwich shop with surprisingly good sandwiches there.



When Todd’s sister Amy was here a couple of weeks ago, we took her there to see people fly.


I’m always amazed and delighted at the sight of paragliders taking off over the ocean. One of the coolest things in the whole world!


I love seeing all the gliders lined up over the coastline.




Occasionally there’s even a hang glider or two.




And yes, it’s always windy there.


Speaking of flying… this is what I did for my birthday a few years ago. I even got some great photos out of it.




And a video.
Kind of makes the paragliding look pretty tame huh? :D

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Write Click Scrapbook | March Sneak Peek

I can’t believe it’s the 20th of the month again. Time for the Write.Click.Scrapbook. March gallery sneak peek!



Can you guess what the March gallery is all about? You get three guesses. If you guess right, you get… the pride of guessing it right! :D

Here are some more sneak peeks from some of my Write.Click.Scrapbook. teammates:

Amy Coose
Katie Ehmann
Aliza Deutsch
Valerie O'Neall
Lisa Ottosson
Amy Sorensen

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Project Life | Page Planning Using Lightroom

I came up with a method to plan my Project Life pages last year using Adobe Lightroom. I process all my photos inside Lightroom. AND I organize and tag my photos in Lightroom. So it made total sense for me to create some templates inside Lightroom so I could see what my photos looked like together on a 2-page spread.



Then a couple of weeks ago, my friend Liz (Paislee Press) blogged about some things she’s doing differently this year for Project Life. One of the things she’s doing is a mock-up of her 2-page spread using Photoshop. So I commented on how I do the same thing, but I use Lightroom because it’s easy to drag and drop the photos. That led to me doing a video tutorial on how I do my Project Life page planning in Lightroom.

You can watch it slightly bigger at Youtube. 

And as a bonus, you can download my Lightroom print template here if you don’t want to create it yourself!

Download: Listgirl’s Lightroom Print Template for Project Life Design A.

After you download it, here is how you import it into Lightroom.

1. Save the file somewhere on your hard drive where you can find it.
2. Open Lightroom. Click on the Print module in the upper right hand corner.
3. Go to the left side of the module and you will find a section called “User Templates”. Right click on that and click on “Import”.
4. Find the folder where you saved the Lightroom template. Select the template and click “Open” at the bottom of the window.
5. The template should import into your User Templates and you should be able to see it on the left side in Lightroom.
6. Click on the “Listgirl | PL Design A Spread” template on the left side of Lightroom. Start dragging your photos into each slot.

Make sure you watch the end of the video on how to save your print template as jpeg files so that you can look at it for reference when you’ve printed out your photos and ready to put your page spread together.

Let me know if you have any questions. Happy Project Life page planning! :)

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Studio Calico Sunday Sketch

I was so excited a couple of weeks ago when Nicole Harper at Studio Calico invited me to do a layout for their Sunday Sketch today. She sent me the sketches and off I went to create a layout.


Credits: Studio Calico Block Party scrapbook kit; Darling Dear Vellum die cut shapes; Simon Says Stamp "Just A Love Note" clear stamp set; Simple Stories letter stickers; Evalicious badge button, tags, labels, rubber stamps; Freckled Fawn washi tapes; The Twinery Caribbean twine; One Little Bird Designs digital kits

As strange as it sounds, I had never used a sketch to do a paper layout before! I’ve used Photoshop templates a-plenty for digital layouts, and even created and sold them for a couple of years. But this was new territory! :)

This is the sketch I used. I took the basic structure and flipped it upside down.





The big arrow circle, envelopes, and the adorable luggage are all One Little Bird digital elements I printed out and cut. The airplane and potty people circles (and the I ♥ banner) are Evalicious stamps. The circle stamps were exactly 1” and I punched them out with a circle punch!


More Evalicious and One Little Bird goodies.




I adore the Typeset alphabet stickers from Simple Stories Sn@p line. I cut out the “anywhere” with my Silhouette and machine stitched it to the layout. Another stitch across the top of the border and I was done!


You can play along with Studio Calico’s Sunday Sketch and get a chance to win a $5 GC to their shop! Head over there and check out the details! :)

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Tutorial | Coloring Digital Doodles

I blogged at The Lilypad this week with a tutorial on coloring in digital doodles using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. I used Kate Hadfield’s Colour In Valentines to make a cute and colorful Valentine’s card.

Here’s the before. The card comes as a black and white line drawing or doodle.
 

And here’s after coloring using Photoshop.


Of course, you can also just print the black and white drawing out and use your art supplies to color it in. But knowing how to do it digitally is cool too. :)

Here’s the video tutorial I made. Short, sweet, and easy!

Happy Valentine’s Day. Hope it’s a sweet one for you!

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Freebie | Stacked Paper Hearts Template

Once upon a time, I was a digital scrapbook template and kit designer. I sold my designs at my own little store, and at Little Dreamer Designs. I am currently on a hiatus from selling digital scrapbooking products. With Valentine’s Day coming up, I thought I would give one of my templates away. It would make an awesome last minute gift for someone!

Stacked Paper Hearts digital layout template for Photoshop & PSE


Download: Stacked Paper Hearts digital template

Here’s a layout I made using the template.

Credits: Stacked Paper Hearts template by Listgirl Designs (me); Sweet & Tart digital kit by Paislee Press; Holiday Jingle page kit by Michelle Coleman (retired)

I had it printed 12x12 and framed it.

See what a nice gift it could make? :)

Hope you enjoy the template! If you make something using it, please let me know by leaving a comment on the blog or emailing me. (Email link in the Connect section on the left side of my blog.) I would love to see it! Oh and please don’t make stuff and sell it. Personal-use only.

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Older And Wiser?

Last week Todd celebrated a birthday. We came home from work and Todd opened my gift to him.


It was very heavy!


It is one big@ss book! I bought him the Modernist Cuisine At Home. Because the normal set of Modernist Cuisine cost way more!




Then we headed to Todd’s birthday dinner at Amaya at the Grand Del Mar. It’s one of our favorite restaurants for celebrations. We shared a Roasted Baby Beet and Fig salad appetizer.


I had the Lobster and Crab Pappardelle. It was SO delicious.


Todd had the Crispy Branzini (a kind of fish).


We sat in a big booth.


We had Lemon Meringue ice cream pie for dessert.


The whole meal was pretty spectacular. It was a nice way to celebrate Todd getting older. :)

But is he wiser?  On Saturday morning, he and his sister Amy competed in the Tough Mudder.  I didn’t go, because between traveling and the event, it was over 6 hours. I had to get some things done at home, so that I could hang out with them the rest of the weekend. Todd brought his waterproof point-and-shoot Olympus camera.

Tough Mudder is an 11-mile hilly course, with over 25 obstacles. He and Amy went shopping for the team outfit, LOL.


It involved crawling on mud, under barbed wires.


It involved jumping from high up into muddy waters. The person about to hit the water is Todd.


They persevered and finished, and earned their orange headbands! They are tough! I’m so proud of them!
 

So Todd is a year older. Not sure if he’s wiser for competing in Tough Mudder again. :p Hopefully he will blog the event like he did last year on his blog. :)

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