RobinsCraftRoom.com

Making a Difficult Project Easy!

Aloha, all!

     I made this project originally for a blog hop that featured Stampin' Up!'s digital papercrafting product, My Digital Studio.  Even though the blog hop is over, I still enjoy showing off this fun Stampin' Up! product, and hope you enjoy this blog post!

     My project for today is one that I would absolutely never have considered undertaking with paper!  I saw an ad in a magazine that caught my eye in an instant – big bold colors and a graphic design that really appealed to me.  I immediately wanted to try to make a greeting card inspired by the ad.  While I do this a lot, I just could not see myself cutting out all those little strips of paper, let alone lining them up and gluing them to a card without pulling my hair out!

     My Digital Studio to the rescue!  With My Digital Studio, I could start laying out strips of digital paper and resizing them – longer, shorter, wider, thinner – with no trouble – and no wasted paper! 

     I began by opening a blank 12" x 12" page, and making some horizontal digital strips that looked to me like they would be a good approximation of the pattern in the model's shorts.  For this picture, I used Pacific Point, Calypso Coral, Night of Navy, Whisper White, and Peach Parfait.

     The next step was to make the same pattern in vertical strips, and then arrange them all together into a pattern that would be the basis for my diagonal design.  I then "grouped" all the strips together, rotated the group 45 degrees and exported that page to a .jpeg file.

     Working on another page of the My Digital Studio document, I located my new .jpeg picture file (using the browse feature), created a photo box; dragged the diagonal picture into it; and cropped the picture to make a neat square.

     Now that I had the basic design, I made three copies of it and arranged them into the large square that you see in my finished project – and it was just what I wanted for my bright and cheerful Birthday Card!

     There just isn't enough space in one little blog post to make this a full tutorial.  But the great thing about My Digital Studio is that there is a whole online community that is dedicated to helping all of us learn all the ins and outs of this fun – and powerful! – program.  It's called "MyDigitalStudio.net" and is open to anyone who wants to learn more about My Digital Studio and share projects with the rest of the community.  And there's always your own Stampin' Up! Demonstrator who's there to help you, too, especially if he or she is certified in My Digital Studio.

     If you have any questions about My Digital Studio, please let me know!  I've received Stampin' Up!'s certification and I do work with it a lot.  If you've got a puzzle, it will be a lot of fun for me to try to solve it – if I don't know the answer already!

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Happy 2012!

Hau'oli Makahiki Hou – or Happy New Year – All!

     I just love living in Hawaii, but especially in the winter when I don't have to deal with the snow – and where I can actually remember the season's greetings in Hawaiian!  Besides that, there are flowers everywhere, which is something I did not experience in January when I lived on the mainland.  While I'll share my New Year's card with you in a moment, I just have to share a photo of this flower, which is blooming right now where I can see it from my kitchen window.

     This lovely Bird of Paradise will be around for many days to come!

     Also around for many days to come is the year 2012.  I am ALWAYS needing a calendar.  Figuring out that many of my friends and customers could also use a calendar, I decided to make them a New Year's card with a calendar built in.  As I was running out of time for hand-crafted projects in 2011, I remembered that Stampin' Up!'s My Digital Studio now has a trifold card design that would be perfect for me to include a calendar!  So back I came to my computer and this is the card that I ended up making! 

     I sent quite a few of these out this morning, and I actually had time to make a "real" bow out of the Sale-A-Bration ribbon set that inspired the design of this card.  So this card is just a little bit hybrid – mostly digital, and a touch of "real."  The flower stamps and the papers, as well as the beautifully thin ribbon, are all going to be part of the 2012 Sale-A-Bration catalog – and you can get them all for free with qualifying orders during the Sale-A-Bration sales period!

     But back to the card.  I found a digital image of the 2012 calendar and put that in the middle section of the card.  I left a blank white space in the third section of the card for me to write a note when I send it out.  I just love the colors – and the Stampin' Up! printing service does a gorgeous job matching Stampin' Up!'s colors!

     Here is the back of the card.  If you want, you can print just as much on the back as on the front.  Fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator, Patty Bennett, used this format to include lots of pictures of her and her family along with journaling about their 2011 activities.  Each panel is 3-1/2" high by 5" long, so plenty of space for that. I just wanted to show off the pretty papers that are going to be available!

     So here we are in 2012!  I hope that it's all that you want it to be – and that you'll have lots of time to have fun with paper crafting!

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Hybrid Trick or Treat?

Aloha, all!

     Those of you who read my blog posts regularly know that most of what I share with you are greeting cards made exclusively with Stampin' Up! products – stamp sets, inks, papers, embellishments – everything in the current Stampin' Up! catalogs!

     But today you might not recognize at least one of the items on the card as being in a catalog.  But it is!  Can you guess what I'm talking about?

     Of course it's the skeleton!  If you look at the Holiday Mini Catalog, you'll see that the skeleton on my card is a lot smaller than it appears in the Piece of Poison stamp set AND it's facing the other direction!  No, I didn't shrink the stamp and work some fancy magic to get it this way.  I used My Digital Studio and the Piece of Poison Digital Download found on page 8 of the mini catalog.  That is one of the thousands of fantastic things that you can do with My Digital Studio.  I made my card look exactly as I wanted without being tied down to the stamp in the catalog!  So my card – with Stampin' Up! stamps, ink, papers and embellishments (love that ribbon and those brads!) is a hybrid – a mix of digital and 3-dimensional products!

It's a Create With Connie and Mary Challenge – with PRIZES!

     I made this card for the Create With Connie and Mary Weekly Challenge this week.  This week's challenge and those for the next 5 weeks are special because they're a part of the Create With Connie and Mary Holiday Edition subscription – BUT we get to share them with everyone, not just those who've purchased the subscription.  Fun for me since a lot of projects on which I've been working this month are limited to subscribers.  I know a lot of you have already subscribed (because you've told me!) and I hope some more of you will think about it, too!  The projects this week have been so much fun (when I have time I'm making at least one of them from another designer for sure).

     The Create with Connie and Mary challenge this week is a sketch challenge, and you are invited to submit your very own project, too, by commenting on the Create with Connie and Mary Blog.  If you are a subscriber to Create With Connie and Mary – Holiday Edition, you'll also have a chance to win a prize!  Here's the sketch.  I would be SO happy to have one of you win that prize at the end of the Holiday Edition!

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A Big Reason I LOVE My Digital Studio!

Aloha, all!

     Though I don't post much here about Stampin' Up!'s My Digital Studio, I use it quite a lot – and not just for digital scrapbooking! 

     I make greeting cards!  You might think, "Hey, she has all that paper and ink and all those stamps and embellishments; why would she want to go digital?!"  A very good reason is that Stampin' Up! frequently retires a lot of those papers and stamps and so forth.  They have to in order to add new stuff to their catalogs.  But where does that leave us when something we love retires?

     Up until 2009, it left us in the lurch.  NOW, however, a ton of that "stuff" lives on in the digital world of Stampin' Up! – through My Digital Studio.

     Take today's card.  I really needed a Bon Voyage card for some friends about to go on a cruise of a lifetime.  But Travel Journey Designer Series Paper as well as the stamp set, Sentimental Journey were RETIRED!  What to do?  Go digital, of course! 

     OK, now I have a confession to make.  There are some stamp sets and papers that I just can't let go!  And I happened to have some scraps of Travel Journal paper stashed away in the craft room – right next to that wonderful scrapbooking stamp set, Sentimental Journey.  So our friends did receive a stamped and embellished card.  Of course, I could have had the digital version printed professionally and then added in the still current Pumpkin Pie Ribbon.  But I didn't have time – I had like a day's warning that a group wanted a card to sign!  And, no matter how well I calibrate my printer, ink jet is just not the same as the wonderfully printed cards made by Stampin' Up!'s printing service.  So here, carefully stashed at the bottom of this blog post, is a real honest-to-goodness card made with retired products (gasp!). 

     Hey, compare the two!  Is My Digital Studio not wonderful!  And from now on, when I want the Travel Journal paper for a project, I really am going to have to go digital – because the scraps I now have left are really, really, teensy.

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OK, I Give Up! More Snow Stuff!

Aloha, all!

     The last time I posted I said that I was so OVER snow.  And I just sit and read about snow, I don't live in it.  I can't imagine what you gals and guys who've been living with so much of it this winter are going through (well, yes, I've been there/done that – 50 inches the last winter we spent on the mainland).

     But when there are grandchildren involved and their mother (a photographer) takes pictures of them, I have to give in.

     Both of these scrap pages are made with Stampin' Up!'s My Digital Studio, and both feature photos of one grandchild each.  The photo layout is one of the built-in layouts provided in the software package that comes with My Digital Studio.  I modified it just a bit, added the background paper, some snowflakes from digital "stamp sets" and some journaling backgrounds made with digital "punches."  All digital!  Not a speck of paper wasted trying out different colors for the mats!  And (best of all) no added clutter in the craft room!  That's the real plus because it seems to be in a constant state of disarray as I am cleaning up after Christmas and getting the new Occasions Mini Catalog stuff set up.

     If you have any questions about My Digital Studio, I'll be glad to help you with them!  I've taken all of Stampin' Up!'s tutorials and have a lot of practice doing lots of fun pages (fun is my mantra for 2011!).   There's also an online resource for everyone who uses My Digital Studio – MyDigitalStudio.net.  Lots of great samples and discussions!  If you're not quite sure you want to buy this software, go check that website out – you'll be hooked!

     And whether you're making cards or scrapbook pages or anything else creative today, have fun with it!

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Countdown to Christmas! It’s Here! Last chance for Blog Candy, too!

Aloha, all!

     Well, I've made it to Christmas Eve!  You'd think that I've forgotten how much time it takes to decorate a house for Christmas AND how much time it takes to write notes in Christmas cards and make sure they have enough postage AND shop for Christmas dinner!  And you'd be right!!!

     OK, Christmas at the Messenheimer household is not that complicated.  No children or grandchildren visiting this year.  But we do have guests coming for Christmas Dinner, and we have a friend from New Mexico arriving the next day for a whirlwind trip.  So it just yesterday occurred to me that I couldn't just act as if this is just another weekend.  Because it isn't!

     This all brings me to why today's card is what it is -

     It's a My Digital Studio card!  You haven't seen one here at Robin's Craft Room for a very long time.  It's not that I've not been using My Digital Studio – I have!  But I forget that I can make fun greeting cards with it!  And so can you – all you have to do is buy it and I can teach you how to use it!

     But back to my card.  What you see here is paper from two different sets of Stampin' Up!'s Designer Papers – and they're DIGITAL!  Everything on this card is digital.  What fun I had making this – and how quickly I was done with it.  It had to be quick because I still have tons of stuff to do before tomorrow!  Can you believe I haven't put my husband's Christmas present together yet?  I thought putting toys together on Christmas Eve was a thing of the past when our kids grew up.  Not so!

     One activity of the day was having said husband go out into the garden and cut down a few Norfolk Island Pine trees.  They have to be cut anyway every year because they get too tall too fast.  They're pretty when they're 8 to 10 feet high.  Not so much when they get up to 40 and 50 feet!  So every year, we cut them down and put two of them on our lanai (patio).  This is one.  Not too many ornaments on it, though.  All of my good ornaments are either paper or fabric, and neither does well in the humidity of a lanai on the windward side of a Hawaiian island.  Between just plain moisture and mildew, it would be a disaster.  BUT I can use my Sizzix Big Shot to cut snowflakes out of beverage cans, and that's what you see hanging with some of the glass balls. 

     As an aside let me tell you how sturdy these glass balls are – the tree has fallen twice, and they haven't broken yet!  Amazing what all that paint on them will accomplish.

     And the last chance for the blog candy – I've got a new book that has all my 2010 card layouts plus lots more in it!  Each layout has at least one example of its use (from my blog posts) and some have more as I've used them myself over the last month.  Actually, this card used one of them, too!  So you can use the layouts for Digital cards, too!  The blog candy is that I will be giving away two copies of my layout book in advance of its publication to two people who've commented on my blog this month.  All you have to do is comment on a blog post and tell me why you'd like a copy of the book!  As soon as Christmas Dinner is over, I'll get all the comments out and I'll e-mail two of you with information about your prize.

     So don't delay – this is your last chance!

     Have a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

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Our Furry Family Members

Aloha, all!

As I said last week, we have a new garden cat, whose name is Honu, who has made our indoor cat, Cholla (from New Mexico, thus the name of the cactus that is ubiquitous where we lived) just a teensy bit jealous.  In fact, we have to keep some windows closed as the cats have taken to trying to claw each other through the screens!  Not so bad this time of the year when it’s not really very hot at all.  Hopefully they’ll get over it before spring arrives and starts to warm things up a bit!

I managed to catch both cats in something of a Christmas pose, so just had to make a quick scrapbook page with Stampin’ Up!’s My Digital Studio. 

This digital papercrafting program is just so neat – and things ship quickly, too!  I’m going to start on some Valentine’s cards for my Stampin’ Up! friends before long.  If you’d like to be on the list to receive one of the cards, just add a comment below and then I’ll e-mail you to get your address!  I’ll need the information by January 23rd so I can get my order in and still have time to mail them before Valentine’s Day.  I’ll certainly remind everyone about this a few times between now and then.

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A Quick My Digital Studio Card

Aloha, all!

As I said last week, we have a new garden cat, whose name is Honu, who has made our indoor cat, Cholla (from New Mexico, thus the name of the cactus that is ubiquitous where we lived) just a teensy bit jealous.  In fact, we have to keep some windows closed as the cats have taken to trying to claw each other through the screens!  Not so bad this time of the year when it’s not really very hot at all.  Hopefully they’ll get over it before spring arrives and starts to warm things up a bit!

I managed to catch both cats in something of a Christmas pose, so just had to make a quick scrapbook page with Stampin’ Up!’s My Digital Studio. 

This digital papercrafting program is just so neat – and things ship quickly, too!  I’m going to start on some Valentine’s cards for my Stampin’ Up! friends before long.  If you’d like to be on the list to receive one of the cards, just add a comment below and then I’ll e-mail you to get your address!  I’ll need the information by January 23rd so I can get my order in and still have time to mail them before Valentine’s Day.  I’ll certainly remind everyone about this a few times between now and then.

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I Finally Made a Calendar – With My Digital Studio!

Aloha, all!

I finally made a calendar using My Digital Studio from Stampin’ Up!  I am so pleased with the result, and have sent it off to be printed by Stampin’ Up!’s printing service.  I love that I can put a photograph behind the grid page, and change the font styles and colors wherever I want.  I especially liked that I could use the color picker and pick up a color from the flower that is the main picture on the calendar and make that the color for the text for the Month and Year.

Here’s a short (less than a minute) video that shows all the pages.  I can hardly wait to get the printed version.  (And I sincerely hope that I didn’t make any serious mistakes calendarwise!)

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Our Rainforest Garden – Part II

Aloha, all!

Ah, the rain continues!  But with rain in Hawaii always comes rainbows, at least when the sun has a chance to peek through the clouds!

This photograph shows the view I have from my kitchen window.  A friend told me, upon seeing this picture, that she’d gladly wash dishes all day if she could see this view!  I have to tell you, that washing dishes all day gets old, even WITH this view.  It’s better just to stand there with a cup of coffee and drink in the beauty of my husband’s garden (yes, he’s definitely the gardener!)

As with yesterday’s photo, I framed this up a bit with My Digital Studio.  There are tons and tons of embellishments for scrapbooking pages (and cards, of course!).  But I really didn’t want to clutter this photograph up on a blog with too much of that.  By the first of December, I hope to have a complete 2010 Calendar to share with you that will show off more of what  My Digital Studio has to offer.  

Also as I said yesterday, I hope to have my webinars fully up and running by the first of the year.  I have several "guinea pigs" who are taking my webinar training now, and they’re helping me make sure that I’m going to have the best product possible once I start offering it to you.  I could use a few more "guinea pigs", though.  If you’re interested, please send me an e-mail and let me know.  We can set up a one-on-one session if there’s somethign you’d like to learn about My Digital Studio.  Or I could invite you to one of the group sessions that I’ll be hosting in December.  Just let me know!

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