With a 5th Thursday in April we’re going to take a week off from giving you a challenge and focus on some of the hybrid goodies available in the shop.  Don’t worry … there will be PLENTY of challenges and activities for you this weekend

We’ve seen quite a few designers join the ScrapMatters family in the past few months – it’s so fun to watch this amazing site grow!!  One who I have taken serious note of is Megan Turnidge.  Not only are her designs fantastic, but she is an amazing artist herself!  Take a look at her gallery here and throughout the digital community and you’ll see what I mean

She has 2 products in her store right now that are *PERFECT* to get your hybrid juices flowing!  Her Badge Album Templates and Hybrid Gift Bag Templates will help make your hybrid projects come together quickly and easily.  I love being able to use templates for scrapbook pages but finding templates that can help me complete an entire project is like hitting the motherlode!

Aren’t they great?  I’m excited to make my first badge book using her templates – you’ll see it in the gallery soon   Need a little more inspiration?  Make sure to check out our Hybrid Gallery!  There are lots of projects making their way into our gallery and they are fabulous!  The creativity is oustanding.  With Mother’s Day and Teacher Appreciation Week around the corner for so many of us, now is the perfect time to browse through and be inspired.  In fact, I just finished posting my finished Mother’s Day gift – I’m so happy to know it will arrive in plenty of time!!  Click on the image for more detailed photos and credits … which include one of Megan’s kits

Enjoy your last day of April … all of the {inter}National Scrapbooking festivities will be here before you know it!

ScrapMatters has so many terrific things planned for [inter]National Scrapbook Day (NSD) that I don’t know where to start. First off we are having a sale—40% off all personal use digital scrapbook products, except grab bags and clearance, on Friday, May 1st and Saturday, May 2nd. The sale continues at 30% off throughout Thursday, May 7th. Commercial use products will also be on sale for various discounts.

Did you notice the phrase, “except grab bags” in the above paragraph? Many of our designers have put together fabulous grab bags for you! We also have a new mega-collab kit called Hawaiian Happy Hour FREE with a $15 purchase in the shop. It is just fabulous—see for yourself:

Hawaiian Happy Hour Mega Kit

We are having a blog train featuring quick pages made by our CT/DT using Hawaiian Happy Hour as well. It will start on Saturday, May 2nd at 7am Pacific time on my blog: http://andilynn.wordpress.com. You might find some other little goodies as you hop on and off the blog train as well. ;D

We are having lots of speed scraps, challenges and games throughout the week as well. We had so much fun last year during NSD that I can hardly wait for the good times ahead starting this weekend.

We are announcing the winners of the Design Star Contest on Friday, May 1st. We are so excited with the talented new batch of apprentices that we have. It was such a great contest with so many good applications that it was really hard to choose who to take onto our team.

May 1st is also the start of the Queen of Scrap Competition (QOS).

Throughout the contest there will be chances for everyone to win free template sets, free kits and more. Natural Wonders, the mega kit pictured below, is one of the amazing participation prizes.

Denise Beatty, our reigning Queen, and Happy Scrap Girl are in charge of this year’s QOS competition and I know that they have lots more fun things planned. Look for additional details to be revealed soon!

The best part of NSD and QOS is getting to know and spend time with you! Hopefully you will take time to drop by, make some new friends and enjoy the fun.

ScrapMatters  CT member Kim (kimbytx) here to host my first scraplift challenge on the blog. For the April 29 Grand Theft Layout we will be paying homage to  Christy aka TheWerners. She is a scrapping machine and has a full gallery ready to lift. And Britt just helped you along by putting out a brand new set of templates called Inspired by Christy. What great timing!

Here is my layout using Britt-ish Designs Imperial Girl kit and add on, and Grace Paper pack and ice cream cone by Erica Zane from Fizzy Fridays (coming soon to ScrapMatters )

and I lifted Christy’s Snack Time

And here is one by winkasheart using Tracie Stroud’s Sweet Pea

and the one she lifted called In with the Red 

and here is one by kv2av using Pastel Garden and Old Fashioned by Dirty Feet Designs
and this is the one she lifted titled Spring Has Sprung 

Have Fun! I look forward to seeing what you come up with! You have lots of fabulous pages to choose from! 

Hey everyone Andrea here. It’s come to my attention that some people are not able to access the site now that we’ve changed servers. Most likely that is due to a cookie setting on your computer–it’s not recognizing SM’s new IP address. So please try clearing your cookies and your history and restarting your computer. Also try using a different browser–like Firefox, Safari, Opera or even IE. If that still doesn’t work, please comment here or send me an email: andilynn at scrapmatters dot com. I will have Travis help me figure out what is wrong. Thanks for your patience, we have so many fun things planned for NSD I really want you to have access to the site!

Hi everyone.  Stefanie here to bring you another Tuesday Template Challenge.  I made this template from a layout I did recently using our Design Star Kits.  I loved the way it turned out so I decided to make it into a template.

and here is the link to download:

http://www.mediafire.com/?2wjyywm5zdb

and here are a couple layouts from our fab CT:

From Kim using Digital Keepsakes by Monica Girls on Wheels except  splatters by Britt-ish Designs from Sunshine in my Soul and Date Stamped  2by Britt-ish Designs

and from tgmousechick

And remember the Matter of Scrap rules:

You have until the end of May to complete a layout. Please upload your LO to the Tuesday Template Challenge gallery and link it the forum to get your point. You can also earn an additional point if you use a ScrapMatters products released in the past 7 days. Just make sure you mention that when you post your page. One lucky winner will receive one more point at the end of the month for creating my favorite layout

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 what you create.

Stefanie

We’ve finished moving servers now and I am so excited that the gallery is open again. Come take a peek at all of the new layouts. Thanks so much for your patience during this lengthy process. I am just amazed at how much faster the pages are loading. Thanks so much to Travis at webSeitler for doing such an excellent job organizing the move.

Hello all… it’s Cyndi here to let you know what matters to me this Monday morning.  It’s our sweet little community here. 

This coming National Scrapbook Day marks the one year anniversary of the day I came to be part of this special place.  One year ago, I decided to get involved.  I attempted a couple challenges, won some free products, and started to get to know people.  I can’t believe how things have evolved over the past year.  For both ScrapMatters and me personally.  I have come to know some great people here, I’ve grown as a scrapbooker and have come to love this place even more.

If you’ve spent any time at all here at ScrapMatters, you know we have something special.  The sense of community and friendship is something not found very often in a digi-community.  Just post a layout in our gallery, and you’ll soon find out how supportive and uplifting the gals here can be.    If you have a question or concern, post a thread in the forum and someone is sure to jump to help.

For me personally, I love the praise I get when I post a layout I’ve poured my heart into.  I’m so thankful for the support I received when I competed in the Design Star Competition.  I’ve even received an email or two when I’ve been a little MIA… just checking to make sure I was okay.  I love that! 

I’m so thankful I found ScrapMatters a year ago.  If you’re new to us and you don’t feel the same yet, get a little involved and I’m sure it won’t take long.  This community is made up of a special bunch of gals.  Come and be a part.

I love the 3-D look of elements intertwined with other elements, alphas and photos on my digital scrapbook pages.  It just adds a lot of dimension to a page AND it is so easy to do!!

I’m using PSE7 in this tutorial, but I’m sure this simple technique will also work in the other programs out there.

For this layout, I want to overlap some ribbon over my photo/text.  I position the ribbon where I want it BEHIND my photo.

After I have the ribbon in the right spot, I duplicate it in the layers palette and then move this new copy to ABOVE my photo.  Make sure to link your 2 ribbons together so they don’t accidentally get shifted from each other.

With your “ribbon copy” layer selected, begin to erase it.  Erase the ribbon over the entire photo part, so when you’re finished it looks like the ribbon is underneath the photo and then weaves up over the “J”.  I used the “block” eraser next to the edges so I can have a nice clean line when I go to add shadows.

How easy was that! Your challenge is to intertwine and overlap like crazy on your layout.

Here’s my LO using Paint Me a Picture by Denise Beatty Originals…

And I have a  few examples for you from the ScrapMatters CT…

Linz has used All Things New by Tracie Stroud.  I love how the red string goes through the alpha and wraps around the frame!

Because this challenge begins at the end of April, it will run until the end of May.  You receive 1 point for completing the challenge, another point if you use a newly released ScrapMatters product and one lucky and talented gal will receive an additional point for knocking my socks off with their intertwining abilities!!

Have fun!

Hi there, it’s Sharon (aka skyezak) here with today’s photography tip.

I thought I’d give you a quick look at how some of my not-so-good photos have changed over the years (yes, these are seriously not the best photos when some of them were taken by me in my childhood with the crummiest camera out)!  But you can see that this assortment I’ve picked out are all off-colour – some have a pink tint, a yellow and even a green tint to them.  It seems that during the 70′s, the photo processing techniques were not very photo-friendly and thus the photos have slowly changed colour over the years.  If you have your photos stored in light or in harmful photo albums such as those ones that are sticky where you lift the clear protector up to pop your photo down, then you may also be contributing to the deterioration of your precious memories.  I was first introduced to paper scrapbooking about 6 years ago through an at-home workshop and although I didn’t think much of sticking your photos onto white pages with a minimal amount of embellishments, I did take onboard the knowledge I learnt about preserving your photos.  I didn’t realise that the acid found in many of those sticky albums can deteriorate your photos so that in many years to come, they will be gone — forever!  If you have any photos stored in non acid-free/non photo-safe albums, it is best to get them out as soon as you can.  Make sure you store your loose photos in a dark and damp-free spot too. For these photos where the colour is ruining the image, I’d scan them sooner rather than later to stop the photo deteriorating beyond salvaging.  At least you can scan the image and edit in your photo-editing program rather than wait until the image disappears beyond recognition.  Non-scrappers probably wouldn’t think twice about this, but after seeing how many of my old photos have ended up, it’s best to take this message onboard if you want to have these memories around for your children and their families to remember you by.

The background paper on the image above is from the May ScrapMatters newsletter kit, so it’s a little sneak peak for you!

Hi, everyone!  I’m excited to kick off our Perfectly Packaged challenge today.  This challenge will be featured on the 4th Thursday, every other month and is going to be all about gift presentation.  How a gift is packaged can turn a great gift into a perfect gift in my opinion.  Since it’s nearing the end of the school year for many of us, I decided to focus on Teacher’s gifts today.  Here are a few ideas I’ve come up with.

Gift Cards

 Who doesn’t love gift cards?  However, I feel the little envelopes from the stores usually leave a lot to be desired in presentation.  So, I created these gift card holders using Tracie Stroud’s Mod Boy kit.

Pampering Kit

This is a quart-size paint can (I got this one at Home Depot) decorated using Honeydew by WM[Squared] Designs.  I plan on filling it with manicure/pedicure items or an assortment of miniature bubble baths and lotions. 

Customized CDs & Notebooks

This is actually a gift I created for a friend a couple of weeks ago, but I think it would make a great teacher gift, too.  I made a CD with some of my favorite songs and created a CD holder to put it in.  I also included a matching notebook.  I had so much fun putting this gift together and coordinating everything.  I used the Honeydew kit on this as well . . .can you tell I love that kit?

There you go . . . a few ideas to get your juices flowing.  If you want more ideas, make sure you check out the Hybrid section of the gallery . . . I have seen some amazing things over there!  Now, your challenge is to go “perfectly package” a gift for a teacher in your life!  If you don’t currently have a teacher to give a gift to, Mother’s Day is coming up, so feel free to package up a gift to a mom in your life instead!

Here are the guidelines for the challenges at Scrap Matters:

- entries must be posted in the appropriate challenge gallery, and in the corresponding thread in the forum
- entries must be posted before the end of the month to be counted toward that month’s point total
- you’ll get 1 point for completing the project and posting it.  Plus, I’ll select one entry at random for a bonus challenge point.