I am both nervous and excited for what God has in store for me these next few months.  Over the past few years my main job has been to be wife and mom for my wonderful family.  On the side I have run this website, taken a few grad classes, scrapped, read, and well slept when I could. lol  Things have changed very last minute for me and I'm looking at doing a student teaching practicum and completing my master's thesis this upcoming semester.  As being a wife and mom will still be my full time job, I've got to cut some things out of my life for the next few months.

I set a goal for this site for Nov and Dec to see if enough people would be interested in my classes/templates and if I could earn enough money to justify the time it takes to keep writing new classes and creating new templates.  I did not reach that goal.  So I'm taking that as a sign to step away from this venture for a bit.

All of our current classes and templates will remain in the store and you will still be able to access them all by signing up for a month access to our class forums for only $10.  This one month access will let you view and download all of my templates and the following classes: DigiScrap 101, Shadows, Blending In, Perfect Pictures, Tips for Text, Picasa, and Customizing your {Blogger} blog.  It is an amazing deal!!!  The subscription will not automatically renew, but you can always purchase it a second time if you didn't pick up everything you wanted.

I will not be adding any new classes for the next couple of months.  If I have time I will try to put some free tutorials and templates up on the blog and facebook, so you may want to check in there periodically.  Wish me luck as I'm starting this crazy semester.  I know God has big plans.

I usually try to share with you a template from our store on Fridays, but today I want to feature our free templates.

Come and participate in the challenge with us!

Christmas is coming and one of my favorite things about Christmas is spending time with the people you love.  And I love to give those people gifts.  However, I'm not a big fan of spending a lot of money on things people might not ever use, so I'm often looking for fun handmade Christmas presents.  Today I thought we'd talk about presents we can make with our scrapbooking supplies!

First up, let me show you the gifts that my son and I made for the teachers and staff at his school.  I'm so excited with how they turned out!

Credits: Merry and Bright by geniaBeana Scraps, font is Segoe Print

I carefully took the cup and rolled it on it's side around a sheet of colored paper and tried to draw a line along the edge.  Then I cut it out and scanned it and used that as the template.  It looked like this:

When I decorated it I got this:

Then I printed and cut them out and rolled them into the cups.  I used a piece of 2 sided tape at each end to keep it secure.  Then we filled baggies with the drink mix and tied them closed.

In case you are interested, here is the drink mix recipe:

1 (18oz) jar orange breakfast beverage crystals

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup red cinnamon candies

1/3 cup instant tea mix

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. ground cloves

Combine all ingredients; store in an airtight container.  To serve, stir 1 1/2 tablespoons of mix into 1 cup hot water.

So what else can you make for Christmas with scrapbooking supplies?

Check out my Scrapbooking Christmas gifts Pinterest board!

Have you checked out their site before?

I was initially drawn to their site for this:

What is it you ask?  Well it is a memory logbook.  It is a calendar/journal specifically designed for scrapbookers.  How cool is that?!  There are monthly and daily pages.  There are pages designed with spaces for you to journal, sketch pages, doodle, make notes, etc.  And there are pages with fun questions to answer about your life and your year to use as scrapping inspiration.  You can actually see all of the pages on their web site if you are interested.  You can buy it spiral bound as pictured here, loose leaf, or in digital format to print yourself, or I suppose even just use digitally.

I was poking around their site and found a couple of other things that may interest some of our readers here.

*They have a book of weekly challenges to inspire your layouts.  You can check out some samples on their site, and you can buy it separate or combined with the journal from above.

*They have a gallery where you can browse for inspiration or share your latest creations.

*If you are interested in finding more, here is their introduction page.

Have fun and keep scrapping memories!

We had a fun Grand Re-Opening celebration in November and are ready to keep going strong in December. This is month of busyness for a lot of us. We have tons of holiday parties, dinners with friends and family, gifts to buy, exchange, and open, and decorations to put up. Just a quick reminder to focus on what matters, record some family memories, and love on those special in your life. I was recently reading in an online forum some people who were not sure what they should be doing with their time. My response: "At the end of your life, what will you have wished you did more of?" I believe that at the end of my life I will stand before my maker and savior and be held accountable for my life. I hope that I can say that I did everything to my best to Love my God an Love my Neighbor. For me right now that means raising my kids and taking care of my family. Scrapbooking fills two roles for me in this bigger picture. It helps me to preserve our family history and memories. It also give me an escape to refresh myself - life with three little ones full time can get overwhelming at times and I need to take a break at times to come back with new life and energy that they deserve from me. So what is your purpose? What do you want to fill your December days with this year?

Facebook Fan Freebie

Are you a fan? Head on over to our facebook page and click the like button to get an exclusive freebie! Right now it is a template from a recent layout of mine, but it will be changing in the next few days so keep checking back.

Free Member Area

I continue to add PSE Tool videos to our free member area. You can learn all about the tricks and options for each of the tools along the left side of the Photoshop Elements screen. So far we have the following tools covered with step by step videos:

• Move Tool
• Magnify Tool
• Hand Tool
• Eyedropper Tool
• Marquee Tool (Rectangle and Elliptical)
• Lasso Tool

You can click here to watch them.

I also added a tutorial for you on how to cut up individual letters or elements from a sheet that might look like this:

Subscriber Area

December is upon us which means we are ready to feature another class. This month, instead of putting up a new class, we are going to go back and feature our Organizing with Picasa class. This is a fabulous class that lets you organize pictures, scrapbooking supplies, layouts, or really any graphics on your computer. I wrote this class, back when I fist got Picasa and shared all of the different things I was finding to do with it. Now I want to update it and share with you exactly what I'm now doing. Watch out soon on our blog for a video showing off how easy and helpful my Picasa method is.

If you want to follow along with this class or check out any of our other classes, simply sign up for a membership and have immediate access. Oh, and you may want to wait a day or two and check out our facebook page for a coupon!

In the Store

Our Perfect Picture and Tips for Text classes are now up in the store if you would like to just pick up a class individually.

Check out Template 30!

Also in the store are these fabulous rounded edge templates to help you round edges on your pictures or papers.

Keep Up to Date with Digital Scrapbooking Classes

Subscribe to our blog to keep up on all sorts of inspiration, class news, and free tutorials!

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There are many times in digital scrapbooking when you will find a sheet of alphabet letters or a sheet with a combination of different elements. However, you won't want to put the whole sheet on your layout, so what do you do?

Here is an alpha sheet that I have from Color Fall by Shawna Clingerman that I want to use.

I just posted screen shots to show you how I got just the letters I wanted out of the sheet.  If you have a free membership,  you can check it out here.