Dinner, Shopping and Digital Coloring

I just have a few things to share - mostly enabling if you have a Costco near you.  We needed to stock up on some things and went to Costco today.  My only problem with Costco is that the money I save on the things I actually need such as coffee and paper towels, usually ends up being spent on things I didn't even know I needed until I saw them at Costco.  Oh well, I do find some great things there (and I didn't even check out the ribbons today).

In the book section, I found some scrapbook kits for $12.99.  They include 64 pre-designed pages (16 for each season) and lots of stickers - epoxy, glitter, vellum and dimensional. One kit is Debbie Mumm designs (her designs are some of my favorites from my quilting fabrics - she also has scrapbook lines at Joann's that I like).

The other kit is by Susan Branch - one of my absolute favorite illustrators (I think I have all of her cookbooks too!).  I normally don't like "pre-done" anything.  I enjoy coming up with my own page layouts and designs - but I think that the pages would be great if you were trying to catch up or do a quick album for a gift (if you also like the style of these artists).

Here is the back of the Debbie Mum kit - you can get an idea of the page layouts.  You could always "deconstruct" these and use bits and pieces of the pages on your own pages or for cards.

The back of the Susan Branch book shows a few of the predesigned pages in her kit. 

Here is a glimpse at the extras in the Debbie Mum kit - seven sheets of embellishments including epoxy stickers, vellum stickers,border stickers, glitter cardstock stickers, more cardstock stickers, letter stickers and some die cut tags and labels.

 

The Susan Branch kit has the same basic configuration of extras.  Even if you use very little of the paper, the embellishments alone are probably worth $12.99 (once again, if you like these artists).  You can also use these pages as inspiration for your own page layouts.

So, if you like the look of these, check your Costco.  You know the "Costco rule" - get it when you see it (because items like these come and go very quickly).

I also wanted to mention that you can give a donation to help with earthquake relief for the people in Haiti when you check out.  We were happy to do our bit and I think it is great that Costco is organizing this (the money goes to the Red Cross).

 

One of my other purchases today was this book (for $8.99).  It is full of black and white line drawings that can be photocopied and used for craft projects.  It would be great for practicing with Copic markers (another temptation that I have avoided so far).

I scanned a few of the designs and did some digital coloring in my Creative Memories StoryBook Plus 3.0 software.  The initial set up is a bit time consuming (but fun to do) and once you have all of your areas defined you can experiment with colors and patterns over and over.  I posted about doing this last summer when I used one of Dustin Pike's great digital images - here is a LINK to that post.

On the right is the original image and the image on the left is the one I "digitally colored," leaving the outlines black.

You can get different effects by changing the color of the lines between sections.

 

Here is another example - the original line drawing is at the top right.

Here is a closer view of my "coloring."  I used some digital paper for some of the areas on this one.

You may wonder about the "dinner" in the title of this post.  Well, tonight we finally went out for our anniversary dinner.  We went to the Capital Grille and had a wonderful time.  They gave complimentary champagne, special chef's tastes and a candle in our dessert!  Then the waiter took our picture (without me even asking).  He came back a few minutes later with this photo in a nice folder as a memento of the evening. Needless to say, he got a nice tip!

I have lots of projects to get ready for various design teams next week so tomorrow I hope to spend some quality time in my studio.  We are expecting a storm tomorrow night but we are well stocked after the "Costco run."  I don't have to drive anywhere until next weekend, so the storm won't bother me!  I hope you are having a great weekend.