Template Freebies: 51 and 52

It's Christmas!  Have I mentioned that I love Christmas?  In honor of my favorite day in my favorite month of the year,  I'm giving you my last two templates of the year.

Download template 51 here.

I haven't done a lot of digi scrapping lately, I've been more into gelli printing and paint  (I'm sure I'll share some of those little things with you later), but my plan for this template is to use the photo spot for my favorite picture of the year.  Then, I'll write some of my reflections and what this year has meant to me.

Download template 52 here.

I find that this time of the year, I have a lot more activities on my plate. More activities means more photos, so I tend to want to do layouts with collages rather than the larger photos I'm drawn to earlier in the year.  This template has room for 13 photos, but if you wanted fewer, you could use some of those spots for paper or elements.

I hope you've liked the templates this year.  I would love to hear from you and see the projects you've used them for.  Link to them in the comments section!

Merry Christmas!

7 more layered digital templates!

We're getting down to the end of the month, and I have lots more templates left to catch up on my giveaways.  Today, I have 5 for you.  I hope you enjoy them!

Download here

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Live Crop Reminder...and some templates!

I'm usually a 12 X 12 scrapper, but I did Lilah's baby book in 8.5 X 11.  Today, I'm giving away some templates based on layouts in that baby book.

Download Here

 Download Here

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Also, I wanted to remind you about the LIVE CROP I'm hosting for 3 Scrappy Boys on Thursday November 21 at 9 PM EST via Google+ Hangouts On Air.  If you're not familiar with Google+ Hangouts, I would strongly encourage you to check it out. It's an awesome piece of social networking software that allows audio, video, chat, and screen share capabilities and much, much more.  We'll be doing this event via Google+ Hangouts On Air, which has the additional benefit of publishing a live feed to YouTube.com and making replays available via YouTube. The live You Tube feed means that you can participate even if you don't have a Google+ account.

November 2013 Main Kit

Let's talk a little about what we'll be doing during the live crop.  It's going to have 4 parts:

1) Make and Take using the November 2013 3 Scrappy Boys Main Kit,

We'll be making a Thanksgiving home decor project that turns into a mini book when you're done using it as a decoration.  In addition to the items from the kit and adhesive, I also used the following in my Thanksgiving Tree project

• 3 ft of orange ribbon
• gold embroidery floss
• buttons
• paperclips
• cereal box or other chipboard packaging
• small tree branch or twig
• silhouette cut file or .pdf of leaves to make the pages
• kraft cardstock
• hole punch or crop a dile
• binder ring
• pen/markers/stamps for embellishing pages

If you want to work on your tree during the live crop, I'd advise cutting the leaves ahead of time and having them ready to embellish.

2) A live, scrap on your feet challenge taken on by yours truly,

I'll have 20 minutes to make a layout using scrappy prompts chosen by the roll of a die.

3) A gathering of project ideas for the November 2013 Main Kit from around the internet.

4) A giveaway of an embellishment prize pack from 3 Scrappy Boys.

To make sure you get the invite to the room once it's open, you have some choices: 

• "Like" 3 Scrappy Boys on Facebook--I'll be posting the room link there when it's open
• RSVP for the event via Google+ I'll post the link there.
• and/or, if you want to get a personal reminder and invite from me once the room is open, email me with the subject "3SB Live Crop" and I'll send you an email when we're ready to start.

The Half-Way Point

We are half-way through the month of November, and things are really about to start getting crazy, so lets take it one step at a time.

First, I wanted to remind that I'm hosting a Live 3 Scrappy Boys Crop on Thursday, November 21 at 9 PM EST.  There will be 4 main components of the crop: 1) a make and take project using the November 2013 Main Kit, 2) an impromptu scrapbook challenge (don't worry, I'm the only one racing the timer), 3) Inspiration for how to use your November Main Kit, and 4) A Giveaway!  One lucky winner will get this embellishment prize pack from 3 Scrappy Boys!

Melissa at Simple Sketches has a new sketch out today.  I love how she always pushes me just a little outside my comfort zone.  Usually, it's by tilting elements on the sketch, but this time, she included the dreaded circle.  I don't use very many large circles in my layouts.  I don't know if it's because I'm too much of a perfectionist, and I'm worried I won't get them cut just right.  In any case, I never cut a circle larger than 2 inches without being prompted.  

I started this assignment quite a while ago, and even posted my partial progress on the 3 Scrappy Boys blog 

Unfortunately, when it came time to finish this layout, I couldn't find it.  I know!  That's just insane.  How could I lose a layout.  I don't know.  I just don't have any idea where it is, so I couldn't finish it at last weekend's crop (the only time I had allotted to work on it).

Apparently, I was way off my game that day because in addition to losing the layout I needed to finish for an assignment, I also forgot to bring any patterned paper.  (Crazy!)  My only excuse was that I was really excited about some of the mixed media things we were working on at the crop that day.  Since I didn't want to let Melissa down, I went ahead and made a different layout without patterned paper.

The background is tiers of crumpled tissue paper, and I brought in color with cardstock and art papers I made using a gelli plate.  Isn't this a fun little layout?  I especially like the brass paperclips in each of the embellishment clusters.  It's such a small detail, but I love a touch of gold.

I still have something like 30 templates to give away before the month is out, so I better pick up the pace. Let's do 4 today.

You can download the first template here.

This template was based on a paper layout.  I did using my October 3 Scrappy Boys Trio kit.

I loved how the journaling formed a frame all around the page. Click here to download the next template, which is also based on a layout I made using that kit.

Download Here

Here's another template based on my work for 3 Scrappy Boys.  I made this layout using the April 2013 Add On Kit.

Here is one last template based on a paper layout using my October 2013 3 Scrappy Boys Trio Kit.

Download Here

Revisiting my Simple Sketches layouts with Templates

I've had the pleasure of being on the design team at the Simple Sketches challenge blog.  Melissa never fails to come up with inspiring sketches.  I love that many of the sketches push me just a little outside my comfort zone.  Today, I'm giving away some of the templates based on the paper pages that Melissa's sketches inspired.

Melissa loves to work on an angle, when I tend to like things straight up.  Naturally, I was a little nervous when I saw that this was my first assignment.

It took me ages to get this page together, but I love how it turned out

I knew it would make a great digi template.  I'm sure I'll use this one over and over.  You can download it here.

My second assignment was more within my comfort zone, and the resulting layout is definitely one of my favorites this year.

I didn't turn this one or the next two into templates because they were so close to the sketch. but my 5th assignment was outside my comfort zone again, so I had to change it up a little.  I love how it turned out; it makes me happy to look at.

You can download this template here.

Another Day, Another Template...or Two...or Three

If you've been reading my blog lately, you might have noticed that I've been going back quite a bit and picking up things that I'd meant to make a habit when I started this blog at the beginning of the year.  The subtitle of this blog (at least for the time being) is "tales from my year as a SAHM," and it's November!  It's hard to believe  that the year that I allotted myself is almost over, but like anyone who has spent 82% of her life in school, nothing motivates me quite like a deadline.  

I have decided, that during the month of November, I'm going to catch up on my template giveaways.  We are currently in week 43 of 2013, and the first week of December is week 48.  So, I'm giving myself until November 30 to get up to 48 layered digital templates given away.  Last week, I gave out number 12.  (I know I'm ridiculously behind)  Instead of doing a bunch of layouts with my Digi Scrapbook Day Weekend, I dug through my photographs of this year's paper layouts; I went through my digi layouts; and I got down to work building templates, which is why I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to reach this goal.  This weekend, I built templates 13-41, and they're all ready to give to you throughout the month of November.  There are still a few left to put together, but 7 seems like a completely reasonable number of templates to build from scratch. So, without further ado, let's give away My Rainbow Coalition Templates 13, 14, and 15. (Templates are for Personal Use: see TOU in the sidebar.)

Template 13 was pictured at the beginning of this post and you can download it here.

You can download template 14 here.

Template 15 can be downloaded here.

I hope you enjoy these templates, and I hope you'll come back to share the layouts you make with them.

Happy Scrapping!

P.S.  I also have a post up today at 3 Scrappy Boys.  Check it out! There's a big announcement about our Anniversary Celebration!

Templates are back!

I know it's been ages since I've given away a template.  It was my intention to try to give one away every week this year. Clearly, that hasn't worked out.  I really would like to get back to doing more templates, so I'm starting again this week.

There are tons of templates out there that replicate the look of pocket pages, but none of the templates I've given away on my blog so far have been in that style.  That changes today.  Since I don't usually do digi layouts in this style, I approached it like a collage, keeping the major components at 3x4 and 4x6.  This is what I came up with

Once the major elements were in place, I just filled in the spaces left over with squares or rectangles.  Once the template was set up, I went to my newest digi supplies and found the Arizona Autumn kit from Gina Cabrera.  I'm not into a lot of the Native American motifs that have become so trendy, but I really like how they were done in this kit. 

I loved using Arizona Autumn to make this layout about a birthday party I attended last weekend with my girls.

What do you think?  If you'd like the template, you can download it here, and you can find some more of my templates for sale in my Etsy Shop.