Am I getting any better?

My goal has been to improve my digital scrap booking. I've been participating in challenges, reading articles and looking at how other people do their pages.

For comparison here are a couple of the very first scrap book pages I did after I got photoshop elements.

This one is pretty blah, drop shadows make it look like paper is floating above the page. But heck I was proud of it when I first did it.

I laugh when I look at this one. I extracted all the people from 6 different pictures to put into this. I was so proud of myself. Now I look at it and laugh my butt off at how bad it really is.

The next two are layouts that I did last night. Both for challenges on Cafe mom in the digital scrappers group

So what do you think? Am I getting any better? I really would love to hear what everyone thinks. (I hope someone is reading)

Before I go I'll share a freebie with you. It's not mine. I came across this one on cafe mom. This is her first kit ever. If you're looking for something for those "Guy" layouts, this one would be great. You can find it at http://mommytimeplus.blogspot.com/ Go check it out and if you download be sure to leave her some love.

My latest

I thought I would share my latest scrapbook page with you. I've been working on it for several days and just couldn't get it to look right. I finally finished it tonight and was pretty happy with the way it turned out.



The kit I used for the LO was a freebie on www.shabbyprincess.com and it was created by Carrie Stephens Designs.
I always have a problem when it comes to the journaling part, so I went in search of something suitable to put on this one. I absolutely loved this one that I found on www.quotegarden.com
Just in case you can't read it on the LO it reads:
When I can look life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange -- my youth.

No wonder my house is a mess

I have spent practically my entire weekend off playing on the computer. I was playing around with making doodles and came up with this little bird. Obviously I'm no artist, but I thought he was kind of cute, so he's staying....lol


I was working on making some background textures from pictures. For this edit, I took a picture of a basket first. Then I turned that into a texture, added a solid color over that and set the blending mode to overlay. I added the picture of Wade, erased the edges with a soft edge brush and changed the blending mode on the picture. I think the picture was set to linear burn but I can't be positive because I was going back and forth between a couple different ones trying to decide which one I liked.



I also did a couple challenges for the digital scrapbook group I'm in at Cafe Mom. The first one was a scraplift challenge and the second one was a speed scrap.

I also (event though I said I was going to give up) started working on another new kit. So far I've only come up with some papers and 2 elements for it. We'll see if I take it any further or not.

Sharing

I have a few things to share with you today.

First, over on cafe mom, in the "photo editing beginners" group that I'm in, they had a scrapbook challenge using my kit. I just had to show off their LO's. So here they are, in no particular order.

This on was submitted by perfectmom
This one by Miawa

And this one by Keyfra

This LO is one that I did for another cafe mom group "Digital Scrappers" It was for the pencil lines sketch challenge. The template for this LO was by Michelle Filo - Pencil Lines. You can find this and other templates at http://www.pencillines.com/ I also used Ginger scraps kit "It's Ladies night" The link for her blog is http://gingerscraps.blogspot.com/

The other thing I've been working on is making some seamless textures. I came across a tutorial (and I can't remember where at the moment) for using all those junk pictures to make textures. It's really easy to do, and now all those blurry garbage pictures that I've been saving for some reason have increased value.

I'm also still working on the new blog banner and background. I've had so many different opinions on how to improve it that I've begun to wonder if I should just scrap the whole idea. Anyway, the file is still sitting there waiting for me to have a burst of creative energy and finish it. For now, I'll just stick with what I've got.