Eloquent Meadows by Digital Ink

Another beautiful kit by Melissa Knopik who creates as the designer Digital Ink. This is called Eloquent Meadows and is very versatile. I'll be using this for my heritage layouts as it has soft, subtle textured plain papers and lovely elements, but the patterned papers are equally as beautiful and co-ordinate wonderfully with the plains.

Never too old to learn...

When visiting DST - Digital Scrap Talk - these days, the home page is like a blog with great articles which change daily. One I found a couple of days ago prompted this layout. It was a Portrait in Font/Text tutorial by Jennifer White (both written and in video format.
Basically, you make 3 brushes from words- one dark/heavy/bold, one light/faint/dainty and the third in between. These brushes are applied to an extracted, posterized, black and white portrait, each brush on a separate layer, which are then flattened into one layer. Add to a layout and adjust the opacity and it is done.




Here's mine using a lovely photo of Tracey in her teens, and the Welcome Kit from Plain Digital Wrapper. Newcomers to the PDW site can earn this huge colourful kit for free by posting a challenge layout, posting in the forum and commenting in the gallery. What a great joining bonus.

Go here for the information Welcome Kit

4x Gallery Stand Out at PDW

I must be on a roll with my digiscrapping as I have earned 4 accolades- Gallery Stand Outs in the last 2 weeks at Plain Digital Wrapper.

ArtgalStyle - Field Trip Ahead

Having spent a few days revisiting my family History research, checking past searches and looking for new avenues (only one slender branch expanded), I was ready to digiscrap again. Here's today's offering- Field Trip Ahead- lovely kit by ArtGal Style at Plain Digital Wrapper.






ArtGal Style Field Trip Ahead here

Layouts for memories

Now that I am on leave from work,, and planning my retirement, I am free to travel as I wish. Recently I made a trip to South Australia, capital city Adelaide and the wine growing region Barossa Valley. I visited in Autumn and was amazed at the beautiful colours in the trees and in the leaf litter. This photo was one taken in Hahndorf at the homestead, The Cedars, home to Hans Heysen an Australian landscape, still life and lifestyle artist from the early 20th century. I love his Australian landscapes- wide open places, towering gums, mysterious shady spots, far blue hills, but more so his lovely character studies of life in those distant days.
And listening to our informative guide when in his studio, I could almost see him prepping and creating for his large scale art works. I was impressed with how meticulous he was to his art and getting things to appear balanced, with sketches, grids, blocking, use of light- not so much different from my hobby digital scrapping, or Tracey's serious photography.

Scrapbook layouts for ScrapDZines

As a Creative Team member for Plain Digital Wrapper, I have the opportunity to scrap for a selection of great and diverse designers. This month I created layouts for ScrapDZines using her lovely Beach House kit.



My first page features my grandpup Missy on a visit to the beach, created for a PDW white space challenge using a monochrome theme, sepia image and one splash of colour.



The second page features an overexposed photo of a hidden lagoon. This page was for a DDR challenge using a photo I would hang on the wall as a painting.

A face lift for my revitalised blog.

Have spent the past few days digi-scrapping for Plain Digital Wrapper as a member of the Creative Team and found a wonderful digiscrap kit - Afternoon Delights by Digital Ink - to use to revamp my blog. (The designer, Melissa Knopik, allows blog use for non-commercial sites.)
Find the kit Afternoon Delight here:

And here are two pages I created using Afternoon Delight

New blog start for new lifestyle

Saturday 12 May 12
I'm currently on long service leave from work, practising for retirement and I'm loving every day so far- time to eat a leisurely breakfast, read the papers and do some mind puzzles before morning tea.
Afternoon sleep if I feel the need. Lie down to read my kindle, with lots of great books - thankyou Rob and Tracey.
No rush or bustle, no late afternoons at work. Time to walk while Rob feeds the horses. Time to relax. And time to spend touring, taking photos, digiscrapping, genealogy searching (revisit every step of my family history research and update this information and perhaps break down a couple or more brickwalls) and blogging.
So I plan to revamp this blog sometime soon.

First - one of my latest digipages- Billy RIP.(credits: All Baseball by ScrapDZines at Plain Digital Wrapper)

This page has prompted me to look at ways to sharpen those out of focus pictures from pre-digital camera days.