Wow, I've been neglecting this..

No LO for you this time, sorry.

A LOT has happened in the two months since I came around this way last... mainly my job taking every last ounce of free time I had away (and my sanity some days like today). While I DO love it, it's tiring some days and I come home wanting nothing more than a comfy spot on the couch with dinner waiting on me, which I get WAY more often than I deserve.

In major news (well, for us anyway) I FINALLY got the school board to listen to me and we're accelerating Connor through Kindergarten.. What's that mean? Well, he's cursed with a birthday 8 days after the cutoff, but blessed with a reading level that's FOUR grades over where he should be and a math level that's three grades higher than he should be. PLUS an IQ in the 140s. SO we had his IEP meeting yesterday with various teachers, principals, three of his four parents and the special ed. coordinator with the district and majority ruled to move him past K-5 next year to the second start to the right and straight on into first grade. In the words of his daddy "if he was born a week earlier, we wouldn't be having this conversation" and he was right, but we did it, they finally realized my child's smarter than the average bear. PLUS his "pull out" gifted teacher taught me third grade and she's WONDERFUL so I'm really excited about that.

I haven't really scrapped anything since Christmas or so, I'm dying to do Connor's field trip to the zoo, it's coming shortly, but it might have to wait until my life calms down some. I get about one day off every week and a half to two weeks or so and that's for errands I can't get done during the week, so scrapping's been left behind.. I AM keeping up with my pictures, just not scrapping them.

Speaking of pictures... my dream of my own studio is slowly -ever so slowly- coming to life. The company's been named, we just haven't gotten the license for the name yet, my hubby is - as I type- getting a refresher course in Flash so he can make my website and the logo is pretty much done... when the big reveal gets here, I'll link it up!!

I do have a flickr for the time being: www.flickr.com/photos/lkmadison so go take a look over there and tell me what you think!

Right now, it's time for bed, so I'm going to get as horizontal as I possibly can and crash out now.

thanks for reading!
~LSM

A massive catch-up!

So here's my caught up P365:

Week 4:


Kit by Digitreats, Template by M Originals again!

Week 5:


This kit by Vicki (Down by the Lilly Pond with Mel) and Template by M Originals.

Week 6:



This kit by Vicki, too and Template by M Originals

Week 7:



Kit by Vicki, Sorry, Mer, but this template's from Liz. Well, it's a combination of two of them, but I'll still give her credit!

Week 8:



Another Vicki kit and template by M Originals.

I have the LO of week 9 done, it's just ready for pictures and journaling! That makes Mondays MUCH easier now! And to keep up with my 4-week designer pattern, next week is somebody new!

I'm WAY behind, I know I know

So I'm completely caught up on P365, just not caught up on layouts. I've even already taken tomorrow's picture, cheating? yes, probably. Saving time tomorrow getting ready for school after a four day weekend? Oh yes indeed. (Tomorrow's picture is of Connor's first "poster project", his Daddy helped him on it over the weekend, I added two minor things and it's ready and sitting by the door).

P365 LO's will get posted as soon as I get last week's Monday and Wednesday pictures off of my phone and onto a computer... not a hard task, just a matter of bluetoothing it to hubby's computer and emailing it over. Sad when I see something and I say "can I borrow your phone?" and I click the picture and email it to myself so it's all waiting on me when I get home :)

And when I get the time, there's another WordArt coming soon, honestly, I'm all out of ideas but I need to scrap again. When I'll find the time for that I have NO idea, not that work is crazy busy but it does now eat a chunk of my day. How I had Mardi Gras off, I'll have NO idea, pure luck, I guess. I just hope I'm not slammed when I get there in 11 hours with a massively crazy maternity ward.

This blog needs to be pretty, too. It's still on Valentine's Day and those hearts but that'll change soon, it just requires time and patience, I have the patience, just not the time.

Maybe I can work on a killer one if I get to go with "the band" on a 2 week road trip to the Pacific NW - I'm sure I'll be DYING for something to do in that van for two weeks :). Other than clicking a picture out of the moving car every few seconds. Oh the Pacific Ocean, how I yearn to see thee.

Bedtime for me.
~LSM

A day early!!!

I actually finished a P365 on Sunday!! Yay!

It looks like 1970's wallpaper advertisement but I just had to make a fun one!

Digitreats papers and M Originals template!


And my first day at work is tomorrow.. It sounds exciting and promising, but ask me again after a week on the job and see :)

Weeks 1 and 2 of P365

So I should have posted this last week, but here's my week one of Project 365:


Smirk kit from Digitreats, template by MOriginals.

And here's week 2:


Digitreat's Giggle and MOriginals template.

Hopefully (if my ladies don't let me down, which I doubt they will) I can keep up the whole "kit by Digitreats, template by MOriginals" concept and do all 52 weeks like this. I'm a fan of continuity so we'll go with this idea until I get bored with it.

Today's picture is of a soggy light socket in the bathroom, but you'll have to wait for that LO to get that story. I'm just thankful I don't own the building because I wouldn't want to take apart two floors of bathrooms from faulty pipes.

Time to restart the computer and work on the logo for Mom's newest brilliant idea.
~LSM

I'm back!!

Wow so coming down with serious knock-you-on-your-butt-all-you-want-to-do-is-sleep sinus garbage helps me keep up with my scrapping!!! I've done SIX LO's in the past three days, that's a serious record for me. AND I have a new wordart for you tonight, in plenty of time for Valentine's Day! (I'm more than a month early, I'm shocked!)

Between Project 365 and Vicki's Challenge, I'm all scrapped out! The wordart tonight comes from my third (and probably my last) entry in her challenge. I got the idea when we were listening to the song during vacation over NYE and I've been meaning to get the right LO for it and I finally got around to doing it. All of the elements came from the most recent issue of ScrapNArt's Ezine, they're easy to get, it's a free subscription. (The requirement for the challenge was of someone you loved only using the three kids within the E-zine).

So, here's the LO:

I know, it's simple, but I was going for the "I left this for you to find when you come home and I'm not here" look. It's all from the OScraps part, except for the folded paper, that's Vicki's on a "multiply" layer over the weathered paper. The WordArt is here, 4shared doesn't like the PNG, but if you want it, let me know and I'll send it over, the link is for a jpg, as are all of the rest. I used "Pea Megan" for the unbolded and "Pea Shirley" for the bolded words, both are from Kevin and Amanda.

So, here's the other LO's I did for her challenge:




The black/red/white one contains the papers, staple and ribbon links from "Urban Love", the crown overlay, the overlay on the red, the heart, the black doodle frame are from "Love Letters", and stitches and date tag are from "Waiting to Happen". The bright and messy one, well, only the "love letters for you" note and the overlay are from OScraps while the rest is from "Waiting to Happen". So without realizing it, I have one of each kit.

Here's my Christmas ones!


Credits "Connor's First Guitar" for go to Pam for her paper, tag and frame; the alpha and the frame wrap come from Gunhild. And he's slowly learning to play, which makes it more amazing. In case you're wondering, it's a 1/2 size we got for $100 at a local music store, it's the only one that size my husband could actually tune!


Credits for "Connor as an Elf": The pouty son, well, he's mine (I had to take that picture, it was one of those "look at me" and I clicked it, it's my favorite of him so far), everything's Vicki's, except the bow, and that's an action from my dear friend (and mainly my inspiration) Deb.


Credits for "Elf on a Shelf": Template from Liz, circle letters from Pam. I HIGHLY recommend the book/elf for any parent with a young child during Christmas, it's adorable and works like a charm. The 24 pictures are from every day during December until he went back in his box.


Credits for "Only one Bite?" go to Gunhild, with the gingerbread layering styles going to Ray at the Adobe Exchange (Thanks Deb!). Of course, this LO was inspired by Santa, we decorated cookies two days before and made a big deal of setting them out and Santa only ate one bite! Of course, he left a note saying that he was too full after eating everybody else's cookies ;).

SO, now that my weekend CSI is over, I think it's time for bed.
If I get inspired for another Valentine's Day WordArt (I know there's tons out there, I just have to have inspiration), I'll set it free!
~LSM

He did it again..

So following my obsession with Photoshop and scrapping, one day I decided to share Deb's animal templates with my then 4 year old and he had a BLAST. Once he figured out the layers, he had a whole farm cranked out in a few days. She brags about him here when we spent our summer on Photoshop.

So anyway, I was trying to get ideas for my Project 365 last night and he kept begging for computer time, so I gave him some this morning and he didn't fail us! Here's his "airplane in the sky", all credits go to Deb again for layer styles and overlays, Connor just colored it. He now LOVES Layer styles "they look real, Mommy!" so now his coloring time is cut down to three clicks.

Maybe I should give him free reign and show him how to do my header and let him do it :).

When I show my scrapping, I always get the "How'd you do that?" or "I don't understand Photoshop" and my response is "if CONNOR can do it, you can, it's not hard"

I know it's not a wordart, but I've been gone for a week at the in-laws and internet time was limited to time at Starbucks because they don't even have cable and are still stuck in the 70's with fuzzy wallpaper and harvest gold all over their house. They use the oven so rarely that it cooked chicken breasts in 30 minutes on 325, it normally takes over an hour at 475 in our oven. 325 degrees set off the smoke alarm, they're under direct orders to not use it until we can get them a new one, I don't want them burning the house down.

I'll have one in a few days, I'm still on Thanksgiving pages I need to do to stay up to date, but I'll have one soon.

And yes, I'll change the header off of Christmas soon, too. In my house, the saddest day of the year is the day the tree comes down. :(.

Time to go find some food,
~LSM

A strange phenomenon..

Happened to our nice little southern Louisiana Thursday morning. We woke up to WHITE EVERYWHERE... It was on the roof tops, on the trees, covering the yard. Nobody knew what it was. All we knew is that it was BEAUTIFUL and cold (and wet if you played with it long enough.)

Our street looked like Narnia (and it doesn't hurt that we already have old-style street lights anyway). We soaked through our clothes with this mysterious stuff, and the wetter we got, the colder we got. None of us knew what this crazy stuff was. But unfortunately, there's very little of this stuff left, it seems like the sun is scaring it away. I want it to come back and make this place beautiful again. We don't know what the white stuff is, all we know is that we want it back.

I knew what I had to do, I had to make a word art describing our frigid conditions Thursday, so I did, it's here.

And the LO this time, well, I'll let you tell me what this strange white stuff was, we'd never seen it before. In fact, the last time everything looked like this was back in 1893 when it came down for three straight days.

LO credits go to Pam, with her Giggle and Skip sets.

Let me know if you can figure out what the white stuff is, for we have never seen anything like it before.
~LSM

O Star of Wonder...

Wow, having my own blog is encouraging me to scrap more often, I should have done this a long time ago...



So my 5 yr old got his very own tree for his room when we got the tree for downstairs (it was at Walmart for $20) so after two trees, two sets of ornaments, two tree skirts and one star for the top (we still can't find one we like for ours), and FIFTY FIVE Christmas cards, our total was $200 even. We were shocked but at least this year it'll look like Christmas around here.

So today's wordart is lyrics once again, but this time from a Christmas carol. I actually made the wordart for the page instead of the other way around. I figured this would work for many uses, not just tree topper LO's. Download it here if you want it.

Credits for LO go to the Walking in a Scrappy Wonderland crew: papers and star stitches come from Vicki's part; staple, curly ribbon (recolored) and green string came from Linda, and the blue ribbon came from Mel. The tabs came from Vicki's Candy Dream kit, the old photo "look" also came with Vicki, but it wasn't in a kit.

I didn't realize until I signed into 4Shared that the jpg for the My Favorite Things word art looks bad flattened, if you want the PS version, let me know and I'll send it to you. If you can't use the PS version, I can send you the shadows and the text separately, just ask.

I just wish it felt more like Christmas. Mother Nature needs to figure out if she wants to make us sweat or freeze us out and stop changing her mind. 65+ is not December weather.

Until I get more creativity,
~LSM

A funny..

So Connor's getting out of the shower tonight and he says:

"Here's my left" ::makes an L with his pointer and thumb::
"Here's my right" ::makes a backwards L with his pointer and thumb::
"Put them together ::makes pointer touch pointer and thumb touch thumb:: and you have a diamond so bright" ::bring hands to face so one eye looks through hole::

He just made it up on the spot, I thought it was adorable enough to share.

LO and a new word art coming soon, promise -- still working on DH's Christmas present so it's here on time.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours today. I'd list what I was thankful for, but it doesn't really feel like any holiday (other than July 4) outside with it raining on and off all day and about 70 degrees... better yet, I wish our July 4 only got to 70 degrees... I take back my statement, I just found something to be thankful for. My husband's band travels all over the US and got an offer to go to India this year. Fortunately for my sanity, it fell through. I don't know how I would have gone a week without him during a holiday or how I'd cope with knowing that he'd be over there right now during the Mumbai madness. If they would have gotten the gig, I'd be hysterical wondering whether or not he was ok.

So this morning, while watching the first few minutes of the Macy's Parade, this LO was completed. I got the idea for this word art from a frame at a craft festival. The original was a huge frame hand painted with these song lyrics on them and a little (maybe 8x10) framed picture of a couple at their wedding on the inside. So, of course, I had to use a wedding picture. It's really girly, but isn't all scrapbooking?

You can get the word art here and once again, LO credits go to Vicki. It seems like she's the only designer I use, but I promise I use others, really! Layer Style credits go to Deb - when I first saw those, I thought "I'm never going to use that" but oh how wrong I really was. These, I believe are all from her Sugar Shoppe color scheme.

Speaking of designing - I tried my hand at some papers/elements last night - without cheating, only using what came on CS2 - and realized exactly how much I rely on those layer styles and CU elements :). I made an LSU mini-kit that really isn't spectacular, but I'm getting there.

Time to go save the ladybug that's on the bedroom ceiling before DH gets it - we fight over them constantly, they eat his kilts but I'll never kill one, so we set them free when one wanders in.

So happy holidays, hope all those turkeys came out ok (and stay away from the canned cranberries, I've always wondered what was in that)
~LSM

The hills are alive

...With the Sound of Music

So here's today's "artsy fartsy stuff" (as DH calls it) - inspiration from none else than the Van Trapp family.

My LO includes a film negative from Vicki, Deb's grayscaled flowers and her "hotel wallpaper" overlay (honestly, I don't know how she thinks to take pictures of that) and her layer styles (that once were grayscaled and I colored) on the words. Naturally, the colors were inspired by our lovely Tigers that we all worship ;)

You can score the word art here and make sure to leave some love! Eventually, it'll be a zipped folder with the TOU in it, but for now, it's just a jpg.

I'm now out of ready made LO's so it's time to test the creativity and come up with some more for the next download. I may not be here tomorrow due to the family time, and we're going to see my husband play this weekend, so may not be here then either. We'll see. The creativity -and patience- might just pop up and I'll have 20 done between now and tonight. Ha. Doubtful.

I hope every one has a blessed Thanksgiving.
~LSM

Another one...

So the LO is a picture of my little Monkey and his best friend. Yes, I'm aware there's a button over his face, I haven't had a chance to ask for her permission yet, so he'll be "Button Boy" for now. What a better picture to use for this quote than of you and your best friend? I have this same picture scrapped on an 8x10 and framed on Monkey's nightstand, it has a completely different LO- but not with the quote. I know it's simple, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE this picture of those two and I couldn't add anything else to it without taking away from the picture.

I'm a princess at heart (what female isn't) so I have a soft spot for Disney. You can thank Winnie-The-Pooh for today's quote. And score it here.

Don't forget to download my TOU - I'm still getting this all straightened out so it's in a different download, eventually, it will be at the bottom of the site, but that involves dealing with xml within blogger and I don't have the patience for that right now.

I have loads more WordArt already made, now I'm just digging through archives of pictures looking for "the perfect one" to go with each one. I can move words around, but my creativity freezes when it comes to making LO's half the time. So as the LO's get made, the WordArt will be shared.

Thanks for the patience and enjoy some PoohBear!
~LSM

I almost forgot: today's LO is brought to you by Andrea - it's her "Feeling Silly" kit if you want to go grab your own copy. (Even the button over "Button Boy's" face)

My TOU

I almost forgot to post this, so here's the TOU that goes with that file, please download this, too!!

Thanks!

My First!!

I've always loved quotes and I've loved graphics, so here ya go. It's only appropriate for this to be my first for several reasons. a) I've always LOVED this song and b) it's the first I've made.

The example LO is part of my husband's anniversary present (he has yet to get it, our anniversary was in August - I'm not late, I'm just still working on it).

You can download the wordart here. My version doesn't have Elvis's name on it because I'm using it for private use and I know who sings it, but I have an obligation to credit the artist just because my husband is a musician and I just have to support them all. Of course, my copy is the brown/orange color, but it's easily color-able, if you don't know how, just ask and I'll walk you through it.

There's a really sappy story about the church in them middle picture -- I'll just say that the bells rang as soon as he proposed. Same bells rang when we had our first kiss - in the same spot he proposed a few months before. If that's not a sign, we don't want to get one ;)

Enjoy!
~LSM

Layout: All elements by AWP. (I'm not sure which kits they are from off hand, but her kits never expire, so you should be able to find it)

A beginning...

So basically, since I admire other designers for their work and what seems like HOURS of designing time, I've decided to do something constructive with my spare time. I've been a graphic artist in disguise for as long as I can remember (My Daddy, last I checked, still used the graphics I made for his website over a decade and a half ago) so here's my go at digital scrapbooking designs. If you don't like what you see, bear with me and cross your fingers that I'll improve to your liking :).

As soon as I get some kinks worked out, I'll be posting WordArt (with an example LO) for you to have because I think it's worth sharing. So check back in a few days and see what I've done!

Thanks for peeking!
~LSM