ATTENTION ONE AND ALL!!! The ScrapMatters Team Blog is about to kick into gear. Start planning a visit every day to catch our freebies, tutorials, challenges, games, photography tips, and much, much more. The whole team at SM is working hard to make this blog a fun place to visit each day!

Happy New Year’s Eve everyone! Britt here! I get to kick off the team blog with “What Matters Monday”. Monday is the day where yours truly will be bringing you all kinds of tips and info about the details of scrapping. We’ll talk about what matters to you and me in our scrapping, how paying attention to the little details makes our LOs better. I’ll be giving fun ideas for adding little things to our designs to make them even more spectacular. Special touches, meaningful quotes, journaling, quick tips, etc. It’s a GREAT way to start out your week!!

Today I thought we’d talk about our digi-scrap resolutions as its New Year’s Eve and all. Have you set a scrapping resolution yet? Last year my resolution was to type and scrap a journal entry at least once a week and then at the end of the year have it made into a book. Many of you already know about my digi-journal, but for those of you who don’t, you can go read about what exactly it is here. And guess what, I actually did it!! I’m just finishing it up this week, and will have my book ordered in the next couple weeks or so! I’m so proud. I think it might be the first New Year’s resolution I’ve ever kept! And its such a treasure! My entire year of 2007 is recorded and I will be able to remember what we did! I’m so excited about it! Everyone needs to digi-journal! Seriously, consider digi-journaling as your resolution this year. It’s so rewarding!!

Whatever you want to accomplish this year, in your digi-scrap life, make it a real commitment. For as fun as scrapping is, its also very important! It’s “what matters”! It’s a record of our lives through our photos and thoughts and journaling. You know that whatever goal you set to do this year that you won’t look back on it and be sorry you did it! You’ll be THRILLED!

Join in on the discussion of digi-scrap resolutions here in the forum. I can’t wait to hear what resolutions you’re setting so I can get inspired and set some new goals for 2008! I’ll leave ya with a LO I scrapped just last night from our 2006 New Year’s Eve celebration, just to get you in the New Year’s Eve mood!! This was my first New Year’s Eve with Josh as a married couple! Aww. . .

Well, have a happy and safe New Year’s Eve!! And come back tomorrow for “The Tuesday Challenge” hosted by Happy Scrap Girl!! It’s a good one, you don’t wanna miss out!!

xoxo,
Britt

Hey scrappers! Brittney here, happily hosting a new challenge! So, Christmas was wonderful, magical, & tons of fun! But if you’re like me, your memory card is BURSTING with a million new photos of all your happy memories. Well, plug in that camera, download your photos and let’s dive in!

This week will be a FONT CHALLENGE! I use the font “You Are Loved” (designed by Kimberly Geswein) A LOT! I love it. It’s grungy, its bold, and it’s just a GREAT font (seriously, if you look in my gallery you’ll see it ALL OVER!).

So, the challenge is to go to this link, download and install “You Are Loved” and use it in a LO.

And just for a little added challenge here are a few more things you have to have in your LO:

*Two photos or more
*At least 1 patterned paper
*At least 2 buttons

And of course, don’t forget to use the “You Are Loved” font somewhere!

You do NOT have to use ScrapMatters products, but we’d sure love it if you did!!

Here are some entries from our Creative Team to get you inspired!!

ERICA

MARCI

. . . AND MINE

You have until midnight PST on January 1st to get your challenge entry in! This challenge has TWO different prizes! 1) I will choose my favorite LO of the bunch, and that lucky scrapper will win a $5 Gift Certificate to the ScrapMatters shop! 2) We will do a random drawing for another $5 GC winner!

So get your entries in before the deadline!! Post them to our gallery at ScrapMatters, and be sure to come to post a link to your LO in the forum HERE.

Have fun!

xoxo,

Britt

And the winner of Kristie’s first template challenge is Heavenly.  She receives a $5 gift code to ScrapMatters.  Thanks so much to all of you who played along!  Shutch wins the “Waiting for Summer” alpha as an honorable mention gift!  Congrats again to both of you.  And look for our next challenge on Dec 26th and I promise it will be a fun one!

Hey everyone–Shari here.

Have you seen the new Old Navy commercial, you know the one advertising metallic jeans? I get a good chuckle when I watch it, that is after I cringe a little. I don’t know who decides what’s hot and what’s not in the fashion world but metallic jeans? I mean who wears those things? Okay, I know I’m not exactly a young thing anymore. In fact if you ask my four year old, I am old. That being said, I’m pretty confident my sixteen year old daughter wouldn’t even wear metallic jeans but then I could be wrong. She tends to disagree with me about most things these days. Don’t get me wrong, I love metal. I love shiny metal and brushed metal. I love old copper tea pots and the little brass plant mister that my husband uses to spray the kids hair when he cuts it. I love my shiny gold wedding ring, although I secretly wish it was white gold or even platinum now but hey, like I said, I’m old and yellow gold was in when I got married. I guess that’s a sign that not only am I old, but so is my marriage! Okay, sorry, I got off track there. The point I’m trying to get to is that I love metal, not in the fabric of my clothing, but on my scrapbook pages. The beauty of digital scrapbooking is you can put all the metal you want on your page and it won’t add any more bulk to your albums. How awesome is that? And just to show you how much I love metal and what a hot trend this is going to be, even in the scrapbooking world, I’ve included a little metal goodie for you.

So hey, whether you like to digi scrap in your jammies or those metallic jeans you don’t dare wear out in public, grab up these silver snowflake photo corners and get busy adding a little shine to your winter pages. Get your metal here.

Howdy Mate, ScrapMatters is happy to introduce Stacy (shutch), our
wonderful ScrapMatters’ member from down under. Stacy joined the
world of digital scrapbooking right about the same time ScrapMatters
opened so she has been visiting our little site right from the start. Stacy
enthusiastically contributes to both the gallery and the forums. We are
so glad to have her in our community. Now, let’s get to know a little bit
about Stacy…

Getting to know Stacy!

What is your main job/career? Stay at home mom to three beautiful children
Are you married? Yes, for 9 ½ years to my best friend from high school!
Do you have any pets? We had a dog, but unfortunately couldn’t take her to
Australia with us, so my nephew has now adopted her – she is in good hands!!!
As we are renting, and no pets are allowed, I have plans to get another
dog when we get back to the states!!
What state/country do you live in? Sydney, Australia
What states/countries have you visited? China, Japan, and Australia.
What are your three favorite foods? Since moving to Australia I have come
to really like Indian food –very mild of course – it is everywhere
here. I also love Italianand American (meat and potatoes kind of
stuff – what I grew up on)
What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Cookies and Cream
Do you prefer salty or sweet snacks? sweet
What is your favorite beverage? I know I am a little bit boring, but I
like to drink water.
What is your least favorite food? Tomatoes and seafood
PC or Mac? PC
How long have you been digi-scrapping? Since September 2007
What program do you use to digi-scrap with? PSE 5
What is your favorite LO in the SM’s gallery? I love all of them, everyone
is so creative!
What are your hobbies besides digi-scrapping? Gardening, playing the piano,
reading, and singing
What else do you do when you are digi-scrapping—music, tv, movies? Watch TV
or listen to music. Sometimes I scrap to the lovely sound of my
children’s voices in the background –sometimes not so lovely
What scrapbook technique do you want to learn? Anything, I have so much to learn.
What is the most difficult part of scrapbooking for you? When I first started digi
scrapping I had no idea where to start. It was all a little overwhelming.
I had been paper scrappingfor almost 10 years so I knew how to make a
LO – but couldn’t figure out the processon my computer. With so much
help I have figured out so many wonderful things. Thanksto the
ScrapMatters team for being part of my journey!!
What would you like to learn to do (or do better) not related to scrapbooking ? I have
to admit thatI am constantly worried that I am not the best mother.
I can always work on that.
What are your favorite books/authors? I love Orson Scott Card, and a lesser
known author,Shannon Hale. I can also read pride and prejudice over
and over again. I love the Anneof Green Gables series, and have read it
easily half a dozen times.
What are your favorite movies? I am a sucker for romantic comedies
What is your favorite quote? LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE!
What is one of your goals for 2008? I would love to learn how to design my own
scrap stuff. I think it looks like fun and I would like to dabble. I just
have to figure out where to start.

We went through Stacy’s albums to pick our favorite LO. It was a
difficult choice. To see this page and more of Stacy’s beautiful
creations check out her gallery here.

ScrapMatters’ is going to have a featured scrapper at least monthly. The featured scrapper will receive a $10 gift code to the shop. We’re on the lookout for scrappers who post regularly to both the gallery and forums. COULD OUR NEXT FEATURED SCRAPPER BE YOU?

Hi everyone–Andrea here.

The team has some fun freebies on their blogs:

Heather has these terrific Cardboard Frames & a Christmas Tree.

Shari has this cute two-page template–it will hold a whopping seven pictures! Perfect for all those Christmas pics.

Hope you enjoy these goodies from our talented design team.

PS Don’t forget to play along with Kristie’s template challenge too! Go grab your free template now! You have until Dec 20th to get your entries into the ScrapMatters’ gallery. I’m in a giving kind of mood this Christmas–there’s sure to be more than one winner of the $5 gift codes to the store.

Don’t be a pirate! Thanks for downloading our freebies and purchasing our products–but please don’t share them. Send people to ScrapMatters to download/purchase their own digi products. Digital piracy has become a big issue recently. There are blogs where people are giving away links to entire kits on 4shared–that is stealing. We try to be very generous with our freebies and gift codes here at ScrapMatters. One of our very talented designers has had so much stuff pirated that she is considering giving up on designing all together. That hurts all of us!!!

For you that don’t know what pirating is, it is copying onto disk, thumb drive etc or  uploading to an online data storage facility digital products with the intent of  selling them or sharing them with others.

How do people scrap their precious family memories with stolen merchandise (because digital or not–kits are merchandise), it is just unfathomable to me.

When you download a kit, you are downloading the right to use that kit for your personal scrapbooking, not to do whatever you want to with it. Now some people have this misguided notion that scrapbook designers make a lot of money–there may be a few who do, but most of us would just be happy to break even on our expenses and make enough for date night or to pay the doctor bill!

Shoplifting is a crime! And so is uploading and/or downloading digital files with the intent of sharing them with anyone–your mom, your kid, your best friend!

So for all of you honest scrappers out there–please show your support of the designers and the digital scrapbook industry as a whole. Click on the “Stop Digital Piracy” graphic above and go check out the Stop Digital Piracy Blog. Snag one of their blinkies and post it on your blog. Comment on this post with a link to your blog and I will give you a $2.50 gift code to ScrapMatters.

If you come across a blog that is sharing illegal links please notify the designers so they can bring legal action against the pirates. If you come across any links from any of the designers at ScrapMatters please email me andilynn at scrapmatters dot com and let me know–please include the blog url. You will receive a generous bounty!

Thanks for choosing the right and downloading legally.

Hi everyone–Andrea here!

I’m so excited that Kristie one of our CT members is hosting her first template challenge right here at ScrapMatters.

You can download the FREE template from the ScrapMatters’ store here.
Kristie used Britt’s kit It’s Christmas Time in the City for her ad–DANG CUTE! If you would prefer you can download from 4shared (link disabled.) Look at this fun LO one of our new designers Monica (Sunshine Digi Scraps) did with the template:

Monica used Ellie Lash’s Roughed Up Paper Pack and Dirty Feet Design’s Red Felt Alpha for her LO. I think it looks great! Britt used it for a marching band competition:

And finally, the moment you’ve been waiting for—here’s the LO Kristie did with the template:

Well have fun with Kristie’s template, remember to use more than one picture and don’t forget to post your LOs to the ScrapMatters’ Gallery by Dec 20th 10 pm PST, so we can all ooh and ahhh over your great work! Oh and you also get a chance to win a $5 gift code. If I have a really hard time deciding I might just have to give away more than one prize! I can do that–it’s my store! Thanks for looking, hope you play along!

Just wanted introduce our talented new designers and to let you know about the sale we’re having in their honor!  Hope you’ll stop by and introduce yourself and give them a big welcome.

Today is the last day to grab your Grab Bags for only $3 each! Later tonight the goodies inside these will go into the store for full price! One lucky person who purchases all four grab bags will have a chance to receive a $10 gift code to the store also!

We have several great new designers coming to ScrapMatters later this week! We are so excited to have these talented artists join our team! Stay tuned for the big announcement!

Psssst–I have a secret! For those of you who read DST’s monthly newsletter The DST Insider we have a little ad in there with a coupon code for 30% off. So if what you want in our store isn’t on sale and you have some Christmas shopping to do for yourself or others, check it out! Britt designed the ad and I must say she did a splendid job!