Apologies for not keeping up on my blog posting....

You know it seems that no matter how rightous our plans are "Life" always gets in the way of our intentions. This last couple of weeks have been a little hectic and "Life" certainly has taken a few twists for me lately. I had every intention of being a good blogger and posting at least twice a month, but with work and family it has been a challenge to do, I think I was keeping up with it some what for a while. The last two weeks have found me overflowing with crap in my life and have kept me from the computer and scrapping, much less blogging.

We have been spending a lot of time in our trailer at the beach enjoying our time out of town and away from "daily life" per say. We found our bliss quickly put to a hault last weekend when I got an emergency phone call from my son telling me that our home had been broken into. Needless to say we packed up everything and headed home. I won't go into all the details of the phone calls and the police investigation. I will just tell you that we lost quite a bit of stuff, over $7,000.00 worth of items from our home, mostly in heritage weapons my husband had locked up nice and tight in a gun safe that the creeps searched the house and found the key to. So the guns along with my 9 year old sons piggy bank (Literally a piggy bank) and games, some of my and my husbands jewelry (His wedding band), cell phones, etc etc it was a bit overwhelming. This is the second time we have been robbed by the way. I think what pisses me off the most is that the creeps stole my sons piggy bank in which he had all the money he has been saving for years because he wants to go on a trip to Hawaii. Talk about low life scum of the earth types. Who would steal a childs piggy bank? (ggrrrrrrrr)

To add to all the issues week at work (today actually) three teachers got laid off. (No I wasn't one of them, but since all of them had senority over me, I am slightly worried.) It was a very depressing day to say the least. Last week they laid off an admission representative and we had a feeling more was coming.

I actually feel bad even complaining about this with all the tragedy we are seeing all around the country right now. My heart goes out to those people who have lost loved ones, belongings, homes, memorabilia, etc etc etc in all the tornados and other weather related catastrophes throughout the country. At least I still have my home and my family. (Thank you GOD)


Good news though I am on a weeks hiatus from school so I am hoping to spend sometime scrapping some things and hopefully get some great layouts done. I did go on a small shopping spree today at Scrapbookgraphics, because I WON $8.00 at Studio Wendy when she was having a contest of some sort that I had not even realized I was eligible for LOL. So this is what I got and I hope to use them both soon to make some gifts and scrap some layouts.

I think this Action will work great on some new layouts.

and I think these templates will make great gifts for friends and family.

So that is my life in a nut shell right now and I am hoping to get back to regular posting and participation ASAP at least for a short period of time. I will post layouts for you all to see as soon as I get some done. Have a great night.





A brand new layout..

So I have been checking out a lot of the galleries lately and I have noticed a new trend where scrappers are splitting their BG papers on both sides of the layout and some I really like and some I'm not so sure about but I thought I would give it a try. I actually started working on this layout with some of my photos from Venice, but they just didn't seem to fit into the style so I changed to my Calico Ghost Town photos which I think were much more suited to the style of the layout. I still am not completely happy with the layout, but I really think that its because this layout has such a Heritage Layout feel with the colors and such and I have never really been able to get into the Heritage Style...Well because I dont like the colors to be honest. LOL I worked on this for so long though I just refused to start over by changing all the colors up so here is my Calico Ghost Town Layout that I some what like and some what dislike LOL

So I do like the papers split and I like the lace I added as a last minute detail. I'm not crazy about the title but I couldn't think of a better way to get it in there with the papers split the way they are. I spent hours just trying to get the title right. (I am happy to take suggestions) I added the green foliage in towards the end because I just had to have some sort of color. Ugggghhh.

Well, what are your thoughts and suggestions?

Hugs Kellie

A new layout and a free QP from me to you!

Happy Mothers Day weekend!! I hope all the mothers out there have a great weekend!! To celebrate my own motherhood I created this layout with some photos I took camping in Pismo last weekend. My son loves to camp and make smores by the camp fire at night, even though he doesnt really like to eat anything but the marshmellows. LOL He thinks it is great to catch the marshmellow on fire and then blow it out. Below is the layout I created of my son roasting and eatting smores by the camp fire. The kit I used is at least 4 years old because I am working from my laptop today and using old disks I had burned a few years ago. I am not even sure the designers are still working in the field anymore to be honest but I have the information below just in case.

Credits: Nancy Kubo-Thankful Kit, Katie Pertiet-Pinup Vintage Frames

Well, not only is it Mothers day this weekend for me but its also my Anniversary weekend. Technically my anniversary is the 10th but since that falls on a Tuesday I am pretty sure we will celebrate this weekend rather then Tuesday. We'll see what happens.

I guess your wondering about the FREE QP I promised you. Well, I decided it would be nice for everyone to have a special little QP to throw some great photos of your children in and display for mothers day so I made you your very own QP of the layout I created above of my son Wyatt. You can grab that QP here at 4shared. I really hope you like it and display your childrens photos proudly. Just pop your photos into the frames and hit print. Its really simple.

Have a great Mothers day!!!

Tutorials anyone???

So I have been doing some tutorial roaming again on the world wide web and well this usually ends with me saying WOW I'm going to give that a try some day, adding it to my favorites, and then immediately forgetting about it until my favorites bar looks like a complete mess of random links to unknown subjects. Hence the greatness of the blog. I can now share my tutorial finds here with you and then locate them easily again later if and when I ever remember that they are here and decide to give them a go. In the meantime though you have them to play with and learn from.
The first tutorial I found that interested me was this great tutorial from MissBehavin @ SBG on creating a 70's photo look out of your modern photos. Since I have fallen in love with photo filters etc I found this tutorial to be extremely interesting and hope I can use it soon.
There are other ways in PS to change the look of your photos as well including using the Curves Function. I found a good tutorial on exactly how to do that as well HERE.
Ever wanted an Extreme Makeover but can't get anyone to nominate you to one of those darn reality shows? Well, do it yourself in PS or PSE by using this tutorial by DSP. Here you will learn how to make yourself or anyone else look glamorous with just a few PS tricks of the trade.
Finally at Hummies World you will find many differing tutorials including this set of tutorials which help to improve your images.
So you like the written tutorials but you prefer to have someone tell you how to do it as you watch what is being done on the screen? Then I have the perfect tutorial for you and its spectacular!! head on over to Youtube and watch this video by Brandon to learn how to enhance your photos even more. This is a spectacular tutorial believe me.
Thats all the tutorials I have for you today but it should keep you busy for a short time at least. I will end with a couple of layouts i just completed and hadnt had time to share with you.

Credits:

Misty Cato-Brushed up text & Kristin Cronin-Barrow-Go Green both at SSD. 

Credits:

Studio Gypsy- "Repository 1", "Page Fluff", "Gratitude", "Gypsy Queen", & "Industrial"

Other Credits:

Studio Rosey Posey- "Cherish"

Nicole Young- "Vintage Show Drama Queen"

Had fun doing some gardening....

So yesterday my son Wyatt and I had some fun planting some vegetable seeds. We planted carrots, spinich, green onions, yellow squash, tomatos and radishes. I am hoping to use the activity as a small educational experience. These plants probably have no chance with us in charge of their daily feeding. LOL Whether the plants make it or not I did get some photos of Wyatt while he was engrossed in planting and made this layout using a kit by Studio Manu at Scrapbookgraphics.

Its funny how you start out with a layout and have a specific idea in mind and then end up creating something so completely different. That is what happened here. I had planned on using a more simplistic layout with bright colors and lots of springy colors. Then I ran across this kit and started to play with it and wlel it just all seemed to work out so well. I may have to go back and attempt to complete the original idea later with some of the other photos now.
Thanks for looking and have a spectacular day!!!

Tutorial and other great information

So I have been checking out a lot of the other blogs around town this week. I have found some great blog trains going on and another great tutorial was shared with me as well. This is one I will probably find a use for a lot myself. LOL
First let me give you the link to this great tutorial over at "The Lillypad". The tutorial teaches you how to deal with those troublesome dark circles under your eyes. No not by getting more sleep or applying more foundation, but by simply erasing them "POOF" gone in Photoshop. Check out the great tutorial HERE. I am sure you will find plenty of uses for this one.
Next I have located a few awesome blog trains this month and thought I would share the links to them here on my blog. The first train starts with the whole concept of fighting piratism in digital scrapbooking and picks up the pirate theme. How many of us love or have children that love pirates? Well grab your grog and head on over to the "Blog Train Blog" to plunder all the treasure you can. Leave some for me please!

Next another great blog train currently in motion but probably coming to an end soon is a beautiful springy kit. You can start the train HERE with a list of all the fab designers who participated in the train at the LDS website. Grab this last one fast as their April train should be arriving in the station soon and the goodies from March will depart quickly.

Have a spectacular day!!!

A couple new layouts

Hello everyone! Its been a crazy month here at the Salmon house. My son Wyatt is in another performance at the Star's Dinner Theater and today is performance day. I took a couple photos Thursday with my Cell phone of him in his costume for the show which turned out pretty good. I am hoping to get some good shots of the whole cast today. Here is a layout I completed with the photos of Wyatt at dress rehearsal.

I wanted to make a layout that was more masculine and I think the baby blue and brown really worked well for that. Credits: Sue Cummings "Basics"

Next I delved back into my Italy photos and pulled out this awesome photo of Burano Island off the coast of Venice. When I visited Venice I fell in love with this wonderful island which was full of color and so beautiful.

While on Burano Island my Aunt Mary and I stopped to have lunch and listen to a musician playing and singing in the outdoor restaurant. We also got to watch some older ladies creating the famous Burano lace. I think this was probably the best meal we had while in Italy to be honest. It was pretty good. I decided to use another photo as the title of the page so I wrote out the title Burano in a large black font. I opened my photo in my layers and placed it over my text where I wanted to photo to lay and then on my font layer I selected the font. I then reversed the selection, went to my photo layer and deleted the portions of the photo outside of the selection. I applied a stroke of about 15 I think and voila!! I used the blended templates collection by Studio Rosey Posey to create this layout.

Thanks for taking a look and I hope you have a spectacular day my friends!!!