My NW Arkansas Vacation album

I finished my NW Arkansas vacation album today, tweeked all the layouts and uploaded them to Persnickity Prints.

http://www.persnicketyprints.com/

If things go as expected I should have my album in hand by Friday or Saturday.  I guess that means I better find an album to put them in! 

Since that project was completed

 [it's all on my Facebook page  http://www.facebook.com/poki04?v=feed#!/album.php?aid=92614&id=1410039905 if you want to see it]

 - I had to find something else to do!  (Gee, that's tough, huh?)  I was on one of my favorite forums DigiScrapObsession  and found that Joni Gray has started a new ABC album challenge - I had to play, using pictures from my trip.  A is for Autumn!

DIGITAL CREDITS:  Overlay Kimberly Cameron "Fabric overlay"; frame - Austin Memory Scrapper "Fall Splendor"; swirl - http://colorwithcaryn.com/ "Fall-o-ween"  All other parts, my design.

Vacation in NW Arkansas

We're in Rogers, Arkansas, visiting with relatives.  My sister and I took a walk in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon.  We decided to walk down to the golf course.  Down was nice, UP was a totally different story.  We contemplated calling the house to ask them to come pick us up.  But decided that would leave us open to just too much teasing ... so we toughed it out.  I got some great close up pictures of flowers growing on the edge of the woods.  Didn't go into the woods since it is loaded with poison ivy!!!

My first 2 layouts for my vacation album:

DIGITAL CREDITS:  leaf element - Shannon, Cornucopia of Color blog train (2008) http://scrappyshannon.blogspot.com/ ; frame on page 2, Tantrum - Summer's End blog train (no other info available)  All other elements by poki

Two more layouts with clipping masks made by me!

I have been having fun today - much more fun than cleaning house!!!! (I did sweep the bathroom and kitchen, wash the dishes and vacuum the living room in preparation for class tonight, but there are more fun things to do!)

My friend Pat asked if other shapes could be used as clipping mask.  So ... to answer her question, I had to check it out.  The results:  TICKLED PINK with my great niece Gaby! 

I had often seen freebies with text attached to the top, and they were supposed to clip the photo you layered them over.  But until today, I had not been successful - but now that is a different story. 

It may be a good thing that my notebook computer, "greenie" is going with me next week on vacation.  Separation anxiety might be too much for me .... or maybe not!

Working on Christmas projects too

I spent several hours last night creating "Quick Pages" (that's a misnomer, since they are not QUICK to make, just quick to USE!) which will be bookplates inside the books we are giving the Clark children for Christmas.  I made a bookplate for Blake's Christmas present last year, using his picture in it, and he was thrilled with it.  He took it to school to show his friends that HE was in the book!  LOL!  I hope the Clark children like it too!

All of the digital papers and elements were created from CuttleBeez Scraps (Brenda Pfingstler) URL:  http://www.cuddlebeezscraps.blogspot.com/  Art work by Trina CLARK of http://digiscrapkits.com/
I used two kits - A Little Bit of Christmas and Country Christmas to create the bookplates.  Here they are without the pictures.  The pictures will be added as a separate layer behind the frame.  I didn't want to load them with the children's pictures in them, just for privacy purposes. 

My "dream" project

I've been wanting to create a strip layout of this photo of Turquoise Lake and Mt. Elbert for a long time.  I had seen a layout done by someone a long time ago, and just didn't want to cut and paste an actual photo this way.  I learned a trip last month to create transparency around an image, and I "dreamed up" that you could use the Pre-Set shapes in PSP X2.1 to create a clipping mask.  I had to get right up and come try it this morning.  And AMAZINGLY my idea worked.  It wasn't simple.  I drew rectangles on 5 different layers and merged them. Split the RGB channels to find the darkest one - BLUE, as usual.  Converted to negative image and layered it over the photo.  The time that it took - about an hour - was probably just because I'm a newbie!!!  I LOVE THE RESULTS - it was worth the hour!