Dreaming by Patti Senter. Supplies: Paper from Cottage Arts Naturals 6 Paper Pak, Paper, Butterfly, Meant to Be Frames, Frame from  Simply Enchanted Page Pak, Overlay Snow Corner from First Snowfall Brushes & Overlays, Poinsettia Tule from Winter Wonderland Pak (Cottage Arts), Font: Liorah.

Journaling: From the innocence of youth, there do we receive the hope of our future.

Design note: This page incorporated a large amount of blending and masking.  The photo was duplicated, the top copy desaturated, masked and the flower erased back to color.  The photo was cropped and then masked and finally blended into the papers.

Nana’s Garden by Patti Senter. Supplies:  Pink Ladies Kit by Lori Giles (Digital Scrapn), Fonts: Chaucer, Calvin, Century.

Journaling: The little one in the chair is Marilyn Moody taken at 19 months, the week before Easter.  Sister Dianne is standing behind her in the center photo.  The photo on the left is Marilyn laying on top of her sister taken Easter Sunday 1938 in Grandma Coulter’s backyard.  Dianne was six, Marilyn two.

Design note: Since the photos were old and damaged they didn’t look too pristine after scanning, so I desaturated them and enlarged the one, blending it into the background.  From the other I extracted  and enlarged the girls; restoration work was done after scanning.

Hello everyone, and thank you ScrapStreet for having me be your Digital Discovery for February.  I’m 59 years young and am retired living with my other half in Washington City, Utah.  Around the digi world you will often see me as NW Lady since I was born and lived for 50 years in Washington State.  Most of my family and friends are still there including my 3 grown children, 4 beautiful grandchildren, a Mom who will turn 98 this summer (and is the most amazing woman).  I also have two siblings and numerous other relatives and friends, all of whom you will see in all their glory on my pages.  When Paul and I met I moved to California to be with him and we decided last year it was time to retire.  I assumed by retiring I’d have so much spare time but I’m fast filling it up with my digital additions, what a great way to spend your time.  When we travel, long distance or short, my camera is always by my side so you’ll also see a number of pages dedicated to places we’ve been.

I bought my first CD of digital elements and papers, a DVD of instruction and PSP 6 in October 2004 and haven’t looked back since.  It’s been a total learning curve for me, from someone who hardly knew how to hold a digital camera let alone open a graphics program.  As your addiction grows so grows your need for more, LOL.  Now I use PS CS3 and love it!  I upgraded my camera to a Zoom 10 megapixel, all I want or need at this point in time.  A couple of months ago I took the plunge and began offering Designer Services at Digitals, quickpages, brag books, etc., using their kits.  I recently set up a Project 365 blog (my third blog, LOL) which is a photo a day for 2009; I’ve let myself off the hook saying I will only scrap some of these photos not all!

I love all of this, taking a blank canvas, some papers and elements and tossing them together with photos, old or new, it’s just so much fun to see what develops.  I have never paper scrapped but love that I can take photos that otherwise wouldn’t have been much good and crop, enlarge or alter them to fit my needs with my computer.  That’s where the real fun begins when you take just a small portion of a photo and turn it into a whole different one, the possibilities are endless.

I am an avid user of journaling, I love it, I love to tell a story of why or who is on my page.  I try to tell myself to write as if I’m talking to them.  I like to think those generations to come, that I may never know, will pick up my pages or my books and relate to me and the people that meant so much to me.  I’m very fortunate to have hundreds upon hundreds of Heritage photos dating back to the late 1880s forward.  They are treasures that I want to pass on with my memory of who and when they were taken, much better for those looking to have some sort of connection to the photo/page.

Just recently I’ve gotten introduced to hybrid scrapping, combining a mixture of digital and paper.  I think I really like this.  I made Books of You for my three youngest grandchildren for Christmas, one was shaped like a purse, and two were accordion books.  I embellished the printed pages (after they were adhered to the chipboard books) with stickers, glitter, bling, etc.  What fun!