Hi Everyone.

Denise here to bring you another Word Up! Challenge. I really liked the word art pack that Stacy offered up last time, so I thought I would do the same.

This time, since it is New Year’s Eve, it is of course about New Year’s. Are you going to a party? Are you making a resolution? Let’s see what you can come up with.

Here is the word art pack:

Download here.

So, here’s your challenge. Scrap whatever you want, use one of the word arts in your layout, and get a point. You must post your layout in the gallery, and also, post your layout link and image in the forum here.

Use a new product from the ScrapMatter’s store, get another point.

The challenge will run until the end of January…and then I will pick my favorite to get one additional point.

Here’s my layout, resolute.

And here’s a little more inspiration from the CT.

[LO by Christine, aka alamama]

[LO by Mary, aka littlehiccup]

Can’t wait to see your creations.

Happy scrapping.

Denise

Hi everyone! Maria here to bring you the Tuesday Template Challenge! I know it’s still Tuesday somewhere, so I’m not VERY late! LOL

Take the template and scrap about your New Year resolutions. Think about what’s important in your life. Concentrate on your feelings. Scrap about you and your thoughts.

Here’s your link

Add some things, take something away – any changes are fine, just make it your own!  The only requirement is to use your own picture on this page. 

And here’s some inspiration from our fabulous CT!

By Christine

using Andylinn’s *Winter White*

By Mary

using *Way to Be* by Andilynn Designs, *EZ Notes* by Erica Zane, *Tiny Wrinkled Dots Alpha* by Jeni Hopewell, stitches from *Woodland Fantasy* by Erica Zane

By me

using Britt’s *White Christmas*

Since it’s the last week of December, entries will be accepted until the end of January! Please upload your LO to the Tuesday Template Challenge gallery, as well as linking it here in this thread to get your point. You can also earn an additional point by using any product released in the past 7 days in the SM shop. Just make sure you mention that when uploading your page. At the end of the challenge, I’ll be choosing one random winner for an extra point as well! You don’t have to use ScrapMatters products to participate in this challenge, but we love it when you do! Remember, no double dipping. Each LO must be created for one challenge only. Can’t wait to see your pages!

 Happy Scrap Girl here with with todays post.  I’m sure that most of you, like myself are busy recovering from the holidays and getting ready for New Years celebrations.  So I thought I’d do something fun that we haven’t done for a while.. a Scavenger Hunt!

The answers to all of the questions can be found in the gallery, the shop, the blog and the forum. Yup…  I’m going to make you work for it!

There are 10 items  you must find for the hunt and you have until Saturday, January 3rd to send your answers to me. I will randomly select one person with all of the right answers to win a gift certificate to the shop and announce the winner on Sunday, January 4th!

Ok here are the questions:

1.) How many designers do we have in our shop?

2.) List TWO members (by user name) who have had layouts selected for the “Layout of the Week” by the Scraps Matter Gang.

3.) Name both of the free participation gifts available in this weeks’ Speed Scraps (No.’s 56 & 57).

 4.) Name 2 designers that have kits that include a monkey.

 5.) Sya’s Blueprints released a new kit on Dec 25th – what are 2 of the main colors in the kit?

 6.) ScrapMatters has a weekly hybrid challenge – what is it called?

 7.) Since it’s a very cold winter day where I am right now, tell me 2 kits in the shop that have the word “Winter” in their names.

8.) Who hosts our monthly photography challenge?

9.)  Which designer has cold toes?

10.) What’s the one thing you love most about ScrapMatters? (Hey - I had to give you one super easy one, right?)

You can pm your answers to me in the forum (user name: Happy Scrap Girl) or email them to me at happyscrapgirl AT live DOT com. 

Have fun on your search and have a safe and happy New Year!

~HSG

2.What is your main job/career?
I’m a stay at home, homeschooling mom and love it! I’ve been home now for almost 10 years. Wow!

3.Are you married/children/pets?
I’ve been married to my best friend for 12 years now. We have 5 beautiful children. Pets or pests? Oh, gotcha! Yes, we have two dogs – 1 of which I truly adore, Hot Lips, and 1 which would be the later, Titan.

4.Where is home for you?
We live in the big ‘ole state of Texas out in the country. I think I was misplaced and should have been born in New England, but can’t seem to find my way back. Really, I’ve never been to New England, but it’s my dream to go there someday.

5.What are your 3 favorite foods?
Anything Greek
Fajitas from Uncle Julio’s
Ice Cream! (yes, even in the Winter!)

6.What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
Peanut Butter ‘n Chocolate from Baskin Robbins

7.Snacks…Salty or Sweet?
Both – together of course! Chocolate covered peanuts, French fries and ice cream. Why are we talking about food? It’s almost the New Year! Time for a resolution! Haha!

8.Beverage of choice?
Caramel Macchiato – homemade or straight from Starbucks. I’ve learned to make them perfectly at home, so it’s harder to justify the $4.33 anymore. I’ve even done a LO of it!

10.PC or Mac? What program do you use?
PC – Mac? I wish! I’m using PSE7.0, but haven’t quite taken to it yet, from PSE6 – the actions are different.

11.How long have you been digi-scrapping?
Almost 6 months. I started in July.

12.What was your 1st LO about?
My first layout was about our trip to Branson, Missouri.

13.Do you have any other hobbies besides digi-scrapping (are there other hobbies)?
Now that I’m a Nikonian, I’ve gotten back into photography. Some say those are related, but I think they are much different forms of art!

14.What is the most challenging part of scrapbooking for you?
Trying to narrow down the number of photos I want to use.

15.What would you like to learn to do (or do better) not related to scrapbooking?
Going back to photography (remember, they aren’t related!) I would love to learn to compose my photos well and get out of automatic mode.

16.What are your favorite movies/TV shows?
Well, don’t laugh, but we don’t have TV here, so I usually watch things via the family computer from online or DVDs. My favorites are Little House on the Prairie, Survivor, and The Office.

17.Describe your “scrapping” environment. Music? TV in the background? Drinks? Snacks? Where?
Sometimes I’ll turn on one of my favorites (see above) and just have it going in the background and sit at my desk. But, if I haven’t seen it before, I’ll be on the couch with my laptop (now that I have a tiny EHD!). Hubby works nights, so most of the time I stay up way too late scrapping!

18.If you only had 2 elements to use on a LO, what would they be?
Probably buttons and a flower (even on my boy LOs. I have 4 boys and 1 girl, gotta squeeze those flowers in wherever I can get them!

19.Would you like to share a little known fact about you…?
I’ve given birth to my last 3 children at home (2 in the water). Yes, on purpose!

20.Can you tell us a little about your scrappin’ style?
I love templates! I use them on almost every LO. Is that a handicap? I also use the color within my photos to pull my LOs together in most cases. Usually I’ve already picked a title before I started the LO, so I have an idea of where I want to go with it.

21.Favorite LOs that you have done?
That was hard. I think my scrapping has really progressed since I’ve been hanging out at SM! Must be all the awesome LOs in the gallery that have inspired me so!

Happy Saturday, All!!  Tgmousechick Kim here with today’s Saturday Special!

I find the week between Christmas and New Year’s very interesting.  It’s the week where the media does its summaries of the year: Fascinating people, big news stories, celebrities who passed away.  It’s amazing how much can happen during a year, and I’m reminded of things that just seemed like they happened yesterday, and “wow, that happened just this year?”

So, this Saturday’s challenge is short and sweet- work on a page that summarizes your year.  It can be a collection of news events that touched your life, or a summary of things you did with your family this year (or a combination).  Perhaps it can be a page of some of your favorite pages you finished this year!

Here is the page that I put together:

http://www.scrapmatters.com/gallery3/showphoto.php/photo/18469- Credits found here!

This can be a fun project while you are organizing your photos for the past year- a task I plan to do this week.  I organize my photos by year, and then by month, and any large events like a birthday or a trip some where get a folder of their own.  And then I’m going to burn the whole deal to a couple of DVDs for storage.  A previous blog post here, talks about backing up your photos.  It’s something that should be done often, but can add a nice sense of completion at the end of the year.

A reminder on the monthly challenges (since this challenge counts for the points system):

Create your Year in Review page and post it in the Saturday Special challenges gallery on or before December 31st.  And post it in the SM challenge forum here.  When you do, you will receive one point for completing the challenge.  You don’t have to use SM products, but we love it when you do!  As a bonus if you use a NEW SM product that has been released within one week, you will receive an additional point!  And there is no double-dipping.  Each LO must be unique to this challenge (i.e. can’t use it again for another challenge).

***One Special Note: Since this is the end of the month, you have the option to post the layout by December 31st and have it count for December points, OR, you can wait until January to post it, and you can have the point count for January points.  But no double-dipping there, either! ***

I hope you all had a lovely holiday celebration, no matter what holiday you celebrate!  Let me be one of the first to wish you a happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas, my ScrapMatters friends! What an honor to visit with you on this special day. Grab your warmest blanket, a cup o’ joe and let’s chat!

Today’s Designer Showcase features a fairly familiar item – the quick page. Many of our designers have a wonderful bevy of them in the shop, so we are in good company. The best thing about quick pages is that you just drop your photos in, and tada, you have a beautifully designed page. I am nudging you to think outside the box a little and use the traditional 12×12 quick page in new ways, especially when you are dabbling in hybrid scrapping.

For today’s examples I created a few gifts for my daughter’s friend, Ashley. Hopefully her mom doesn’t see these before the birthday party! Those two have been friends for over three years, more than half their lives.

I took a quick page from Sunshine Digi Scrap’s Business Casual Quick Pages set:

Before I dropped a photo in, I placed the part of the quick page I liked on a 3.5 x 5 file, then positioned my photo. I added Ashley’s name by using the alpha set that accompanies this quick page set. I then printed it, cut it, and placed it in one of these acrylic frames:

I got this as a result – a really easy and neat little gift:

The second gift involved using a quick page from the Refresh 12×12 Quick Page Album, a collaboration between Andilynn Designs, SHARIng Creations, and Happy Scrap Girl:

Once I dropped my photos in, I resized the document down to 8×8, printed and cut it out. Then I sprayed the surface with a sealer spray so that the ink wouldn’t run when I put down a layer of Mod Podge over it. Once dry, I adhered the page to white foamboard and added some foam stickers and jewels for dimension.

Here is the second gift:

So, my dear friends, I hope I’ve encouraged you to try something with a twist. I’d love to see some of your creations!

Merry Christmas! I’m so excited to bring you a Christmas Eve edition of Roadmap to Scrap! In honor of the hectic holiday season, I tried to keep the RTS pretty tame.  Remember, you must complete all eight stops in order to recieve your point. So here are your eight stops:

1. Choose a picture/pictures that you’ve been procrastinating about. You know the ones…you pass them over time and time again, thinking: ‘I’ll get to those later’. Choose one or many, it doesn’t matter.
2. Frame your picture/pictures.
3. Choose papers that coordinate with the colors in your picture. Use as many as you like.
4. Build a cluster around your picture.
5. Add your ’signature element’. You know, that one element you can’t get enough of…string, clips, ribbon, stitching, staples, choose one and add it to your LO.
6. Tuck an element or two behind your picture or mat.
7. Use an alpha for your title and embellish it in some way.
8. Journal, tell the story of the picture.

Here’s what I came up with using Hustle and Bustle by Britt-ish Designs:

Stacy used The Bright Side by Britt-ish Designs for her bright, fun LO:

And Kim used Angel Baby Girl by Haynay Designs and Razzle Dazzle Alpha by Britt-ish Designs to create this sweet page:

Monique created this soft, subtle page using Diane-spiration templates by Sya’s Blueprints, Friend of Mine Kit by Digi Keepsakes by Monica, In Stitches Basics by Britt-ish Designs, Hang a Month Date tag by JenLin Designs, Alpha from Peace and Quiet by Andilynn and Britt-ish Designs

And finally, here’s a great one from Mary:

I can’t wait to see what you come up with! So here’s the nitty-gritty:

You can of course do more than these 8 things…and the rules are open to interpretation. Be creative, for example, if you use something that meeting more than one requirement, lucky you!

You will have ALL month to scrap your layout, and when you complete it, you MUST post it to the “RoadMap to Scrap” Challenge Gallery AND in the forum here to get credit.

Your completed layout will earn you one point in the Matter of Scrap Challenge System.

In addition, you can earn another point by using a newly released product (you must scrap and upload your layout within the first 7 days of the products release – and remember, you MUST indicate that you used a new release).

Remember, no double dipping…your layout must be unique to this challenge.

Merry Christmas!

Can you believe we are in the midst of the holiday season? The time is flying by! I know we are all SO busy right now, so this weeks template challenge will be quite simple.

I’ve created a little template for you from a layout I did several months ago. There is no specific theme to scrap about, just scrap–if you can squeeze in some time during all of the chaos!!

Download HERE.

This challenge will only stay open until the end of the month, so get scrappin’!! One point for completing the challenge, one point more if you use a newly released product from the Scrap Matters store, and my favorite layout will receive an additional point. Don’t forget to post in the forum here, so you can get your points!!

Here’s some inspiration for you from the Scrap Matters Creative Team…

by monsu Britt-ish Designs Hustle and Bustle Kit and Date Stamped

by kimbytx WM squared Black, White and Love

by littlehiccup Andilynn’s Holly Jolly, Christmas Cheer Alpha by Haynay and Date Tags from Tater

by alamama Alma’s Scrap Habit’s *Pretty Birdy* And Andilynn’s *Blessed* alpha

Can’t wait to see what you’ve done!

Andrea

Good morning! Monique (monsu) here with a short post on this Monday before Christmas!

I know we’re probably all fairly busy, getting ready for Christmas in only a few days. Taking photos is probably the last thing on your mind right now. But ……., I think you should take some anyway! Every year we all take those pics of the children unwrapping presents, family members dressed up to the nines, posing in front of our beautifully decorated tree or sitting down for a fabulous dinner! Of course those photos are important, but I think it would be so much fun to have some different memories of this wonderful time of year! Be brave, and bring your camera to the grocery store! Document your overflowing shopping trolley, the long lines at the check out counter or the silly hat the sales assistant is wearing! Photograph that lovely pie in the oven (or the one that got slightly burned), your husband wearing your pink apron or the mountains of dishes in the sink after the food has all been consumed! Not only will these photos show your real life in addition to the fairy tale one, but it offers ample opportunity for the all important journaling!

Here are a few behind-the-scenes photos I took last Christmas:

I’m looking forward to all the original Christmas layouts your photos will inspire! For now, enjoy the preparations, be sure to bring your point and shoot camera with you everywhere you go, and a Very Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones!

Hello it’s Heather (snowdrop) from SMG here to bring you another great spotlight. This week we have the pleasure of getting to know one of our SM members.

1.Your screen name? Your real name?
My real name is Meredith. My screen name is merank, which is a
combination of my first and last names.

2.What is your main job/career?
I work full-time as a consulting civil engineer and on most days, I
actually enjoy what I do for a living. It can be boring at times but
it can also be very challenging and sometimes, even rewarding. The
only down side is that I can only scrap at night and on weekends!

3.Are you married/children/pets?
I have been married since February 2006. We have two cats but no kids yet.

4.Where is home for you?
Central New Jersey

5.What are your 3 favorite foods?
Anything chocolate, meatloaf (my mom’s recipe), potatoes (cooked any
way you can think of)

6.What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
Umm, chocolate!!!

7.Snacks…Salty or Sweet?
Depends on my mood but I usually tend to go for something sweet.

8.Beverage of choice?
In the morning I drink orange juice (I don’t drink coffee), and during
the day I usually just drink water.

9.What’s your least favorite food?
Brussels sprouts and lima beans

10.PC or Mac? What program do you use?
Mac and I use PS CS.

11.How long have you been digi-scrapping? How did you get started?
I started digi-scrapping in February of this year. I was always
intrigued with paper scrapping but never got into it because I thought
I didn’t have the time. I came across digi-scrapping completely by
accident while I was searching for info about creating photobooks
online. Of course, I was immediately hooked!

12.What was your 1st LO about?
My first layout was about my cats but it was really terrible. I have
since re-scrapped the photos that were in the layout and I actually
deleted the original a few months ago when I came across it on my
computer.

13.Do you have any other hobbies besides digi-scrapping (are there
other hobbies)?
I do have a few other hobbies – I like to read and I have been
letterboxing for a few years now.

14.What is the most challenging part of scrapbooking for you?
Deciding when a layout is finished. I keep looking at it over and over
again, adjusting shadows, moving or rotating elements slightly, trying
to decide if something’s missing, or if something can be improved,
etc. Sometimes, I drive myself nuts. I hardly ever finish a layout in
one sitting. I like to walk away for a while (or even overnight) and
then go back and look it over once again before posting/printing.

The only time I don’t do this is at speed scraps. I still have a hard
time finishing, but I give up because of the time limit. I always tell
myself that I’ll go back and change this or fix that after the speed
scrap, but I never do. Once it’s posted and I read some comments, I
realize that I’m being too critical. Some of my favorite layouts have
been from speed scraps.

15.What would you like to learn to do (or do better) not related to
scrapbooking?
Play the piano. I used to play a little bit when I was small (my aunt
had a piano and she taught me) but then I stopped and now I don’t
think I could play if my life depended on it.

16.What are your favorite movies/TV shows?
I like lots of different kinds of movies but I don’t really have a
favorite. As for TV, I am completely addicted to Heroes, Lost, and
CSI.

17.Describe your “scrapping” environment. Music? TV in the
background? Drinks? Snacks? Where?
I have a laptop so I scrap all over the place – at my desk in our home
office, on the couch in the living room while I watch TV, in bed while
my husband sleeps, or at the dining room table with a cat on my lap.
Sometimes I listen to music when I’m in the office and I usually have
something to drink but I don’t usually have any snacks while
scrapping.

18.If you only had 2 elements to use on a LO, what would they be?
This is hard…I think I would choose a frame and a ribbon.

19.Would you like to share a little known fact about you…?
I never realized how boring I was before! I cannot think of a single
interesting thing to share about myself!

20.Can you tell us a little about your scrappin’ style?
I don’t know that I really have a style – I guess I would say my
layouts are simple but fun. I like to use templates and I like to
browse galleries for ideas. Sometimes, I scraplift but sometimes, I
just like to take one little idea from many different layouts and
morph them into something my own.

21.Favorite LOs that you have done?

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Aren’t these LOs amazing! Check out Meredith’s full gallery here. Thanks for letting us get to know you a little better and thanks for being apart of Scrap Matters.