Welcome to the All About Me Challenge!

How often do you wish that you had just 10 minutes to yourself? A chance to unwind for a minute, sip some coffee or maybe a Diet Coke, and put your feet up on the couch. Just 10 minutes can do wonders. Well, this challenge is all about that. This challenge is entitled “Right Now.” What I want you to do for this challenge is find 10 minutes in your day just for yourself - early morning, after the kids have gone to school, on your lunch break from work, or late at night - whatever works for you. Take a deep breath, relax, and find a pen and paper or your computer and just write for 10 minutes. Whatever comes to mind - just write it. If something’s troubling you, get it out. If you’re feeling grateful and blessed, pour out your heart. If you’re simply in the moment and feeling comfy, describe where you are and what’s so comfy. The point is to just write for 10 minutes and then make a layout using that journaling. When you’re done, you’ll have a mini day-in-the-life layout. You’ll have a “Right Now” layout that will capture just a quick slice of your life right now.

My layout is super simple. The last layout I made didn’t use any patterned paper, so I really wanted to go back to using patterns and I kept the rest of the layout very simple. As you can tell from my journaling, the photo of my feet at the beach has nothing to do with where I was at that moment, but it’s what I was thinking about so I used it.

Supplies: Ali Edwards Layered Template No. 10, Caught Red Handed Kit, Contessa Paper Pack, Primes Paper Pack

Can’t wait to see your layouts!

~Steph

Welcome to this weeks 3 Kits 3 Ways Challenge!

The Designer Digitals Store is chock full of wonderful products to choose from . . . it is so hard to just pick three each week, but so easy to find exactly what I’m looking for once my mind is made up.  This store literally has everything we could possibly need in the way of digital products!  Debi, Bailey and I will use the three challenge kits in three very different ways . . . so here we go with the 3 Kits!

The first kit is LIfe and LIberty Solids from Jesse Edwards

Next is Sweet and Salty Icons from MIndy Terasawa

And, finally we have Katie’s Rounded Corner Clipping Masks No. 01.

For our 3 Ways this week we will begin with Debi ( Beehive50) and her simple and fun layout featuring Debi’s favorite subject . . . Soccer!  Debi is our purist this week and used only the three challenge kits.  Don’t you just love this fun page?

Bailey’s (Starlight9711) layout is all about a fun summer day with the family!  I love these rounded corner masks and love how Bailey used so many of them to set off her photos so perfectly!  Bailey these extras:  Word Strip Labels No. 04, Staple Its! Clusters, Travel Word Transfers No. 02 & Jelly Alpha No. 13.

My (readstoomuch) layout was made using a photograph of our youngest grandchild at the beach on her first birthday. 

I used these extras:  Bead Scatterings,  Birthday Zoobilee Kit,  CurvyCorner Stitched Blocks No. 01, Dorothy Collection,  Evie Kit,  Hello Summer Hand Drawn Brushes,  Nana’s Buttons, Notebook Paper Page Masks,  Painted Text No. 01,  Stamped Stitched: Summer Brushes,  Stitched by Anna Borders Ice Blue No. 01,  Vintage Flashcards: Summer &  Worth Repeating Expressions No. 05.

I hope that you love these kits just as much as Debi, Bailey and I do . . . and I hope to see the layouts that you create with them in the 3 Kits 3 Ways Gallery here at Designer Digitals.  Merrilee and I are teammates for this challenge and we love checking the gallery to see just what you have come up with each week.  For your layouts you need to use only the three challenge kits and any other DD products that you need want to use.

One way to tell the story of a page is to write actual conversation.  We know that when the mind reads conversation in print it is responds as though the talk were real.  That’s why these pages seems so immediate and so engaging. It’s like you are actually IN conversation.

There are lots of approaches to the method.  And it is important to remember that our one or two page format is tight and limited.  You can’t cover an in-depth subject but you can sometimes plant the questions or curiosities which will lead to an ongoing conversation in the mind of your reader. When you plan a page around conversation, think carefully about the essentials… the tone and the content you want to convey. Don’t try to repeat every word which was said.  Just kraft the words to be truthful to the speaker and tight enough for the page.

I drew my first two examples of this style from the Creative Team Gallery. 

Myra is a master a reporting her son Jake’s insightful considerations of life and it’s ultimate meaning.  Her method is virtual story telling at it’s finest.  You can hear her voice, her son’s voice and the sweet harmony between them. This recent page is a good example of her style.

The Best Life Ever

Another way of using conversation in a page to great effect is what Cassie did here.  She writes this page a dialogue between herself and her son.  By addressing him directly from the page and then asking him a question she immediately engages the reader in an overheard chat about the nature of her son.  It’s a vivid way to make the page come to life. And if you know the Mom, there is her typical tongue-in-cheek, ironic humor here, too! 

Auto Pilot

Finally, here’s another way to use dialogue … a little chat I had with myself, or with my own inner voices, to be precise.  Just a record of my day, my current state of inner landscape but told as a conversation within. Sometimes I pretend I am my own psychologist and sometimes, it works!!

Right NOW, I’m Sailing

Think about how you can use dialogue to tell you story and give it a try. 

Please share your pages with this technique in our PageKraft Gallery  so that we can all learn from you and enjoy your work.

Congratulations to Melissa Hill. Her layout love you everyday has been selected as the featured layout of the week where she won a $ 5 DesignerDigitals Gift Certificate for product of her choice!

This week’s Adobe Photoshop or Elements tip of the week is now available on video. This weeks tip is on Grouping Photos Within a Circle in Photoshop and PSE.