Digital Holiday Distractions

Happy Monday - I hope you had a great weekend.  There are only 20 days left before Christmas - oh my!  There are a million things to be done but I'll just try to do them one by one.  My first priority is to get some things in the mail so they have plenty of time to arrive.  I also have to make a Costco run to get batteries for the window candles and lots of other holiday extras.  Our house looks naked with no lights in the windows - I think it is required to have them if you live in New England!

Sometimes, when I have too much to do, I get sidetracked and spend time doing a less essential activity - I think it is a stubborn streak coming out.  Sunday I had a list of things to do that was a mile long but I really wanted to try out some new digital content.  So the list is still quite long - the lure of the laptop was too great after a week with no computer while we were traveling!

 I have a weakness for digital papers and embellishments - particularly the holiday themed items.  I hadn't noticed the digital card kits from Creative Memories until a week or so ago and I just bought a few of them to try.  The White Christmas Digital Card Kit  had some great artwork but the colors were not right for what I had in mind.  If I was buying physical paper, I would have just skipped this set but with digital, you can change many items to look very different from the original art.

I started with the holly flourish at the bottom of this screen shot.  I wanted more traditional colors, so I isolated each set of elements by color and changed them to red, green and gold.  Then I flipped and grouped and mirrored the groups to make a larger frame.

I copied the frame to a new page and adjusted the size to make it an eleven inch square.

I added the "happy holidays" from the Winter Delight Digital Embellishments (an older set I have had for a while) and sized it to make the curls intersect with the flourishes in the holly clusters.

I added a shadow to all of the elements - it is difficult to see the shadow on the dark background but you can tell that there is a more dimensional effect.

Here is the same image with a beige background - without a shadow above...

...and with the shadow added.  These are just screen shots of the pages so they might not show clearly how sharp the digital images are.

The plain background can be filled with a digital paper or you can add a surface from the options that are built in to the program - here I used the lace texture to create a different look.

I also purchased the Holiday Digital Card Kit.  These kits have some papers and embellishments and also templates for some of the fine stationery cards that you can have printed by the CM Digital Center.   You can also print these at home if you have a suitable printer. 

I used some of the papers and elements to create a 12 x 12 page that I could have printed to use in my display frame for the holidays.  The colors are a bit "country" and subdued so I decided to try to brighten the page a bit.

I adjusted the levels in the Brightness and Light section of the Color panel to make a slightly brighter and more cheerful version of the page.  There are some great embellishments in this set with the glittered ornaments, felt tree and sparkly snowflake.

 

One of my favorite features of the CM Storybook Creator 4.0 program is that it allows you to use all sorts of digital content - you are not limited to just the CM artwork (though I do end up buying quite a few of the sets that are offered).  Here I used a damask overlay that I colorwashed with green.  I also like to create my own papers and elements with the program.

Here is one more version with the same damask (rotated and colorwashed to a brown tone) and the images glittered with the block surface effect.  If you have questions about the software please post  a comment and I'll try to answer them in the next day or two.  I am also still catching up on all of the email from while I was away, I should be able to finish those messages tomorrow as well.

I want to thank everyone who has used my link to join Blitsy, the new bargain site for all sorts of crafting products.  If you haven't checked it out yet here is the link

http://blitsy.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/989/

If you use my link to sign up, I can earn credits.  After you sign up, you should get your own referral code (you'll find it on the "invites" page) and then you can let your friends and family know about the site so you can earn credits too.

I am expecting my first Blitsy order to arrive today.  Be sure to check the site every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to see what goodies are added.  There has been a lot of great stuff so far (Tim Holtz, Ranger, Spellbinders, Zutter, etc.).  I was able to get some Christmas gifts and a few things that will end up in my blogoversary celebration packages next year.

Here is one more photo from our trip.  This is a courtyard in one of the palaces at the Alhambra.  I  am planning to make a file to cut a page background like the interlinking chains - isn't that pretty?  I should be able to do it for both the Cricut and the Silhouette - I just need to find the time to fit it in with all of the holiday preparations.

I hope you have a great day!

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