happy thanksgiving & new releases

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you that are celebrating today! This is one of my favorite holidays, not just because of the food, but because I always know I have so much to be thankful for. My husband, who I love more than anything, my 3 kids that mean the world to me, our home we've built together, our families that support us in all we do, our jobs that allow us to follow our dreams, our health, & our friends, that even though we don't see nearly enough, are still there after all these years. I'm also thankful for a talent that I can share with others, as well as friends that I know that share that talent & excitement along with me. Recently, I was lucky enough to collaborate with 3 other amazing ladies that I admire to create Here Comes Santa Claus... if I must say so, it is one BIG incredible kit! {52 papers, 130 elements & 1 alpha}

you'll find the collab in Shannon's shop at DHD & you can snag it today for a great deal.

I also did up these December dates you can use to overlay on photos for your December Daily, or just use them with the banners I included. It's easy to change up the colors, too.

now for some inspiration for you! {if you notice, I've added a few new girls to the creatives} yay!

layout by {kelly mobley}

layout by {claudia harvey}

hybrid card by {claudia harvey}

layout by {aria andrus}

layout by {shannon dombkowski}

layout by {sarah hemmert}

layout by {sarah hemmert}

layout by {becca dickson}

layout by {shelley haganman}

layout by {robyn meierotto}

phew! awesome, right? anyway, have a really great day & enjoy your family.  We're not having our big family celebration until Saturday, where we'll host my family & Dan's family here at our house. Today, we're keeping it low key around here, baking a chicken, some pumpkin pies & sweet potatoes to enjoy with each other. 

I'm not one who's into the Black Friday thing... to brutal for me. I can't get into the craziness of it all! We are doing a great promotion over at DHD though, all weekend long & I hope you'll enjoy doing some quiet shopping there...

{robyn}

new collab with Crystal Livesay

hello Thursday & hello to a new collab with the sweet Crystal Livesay... So Thankful!

as you can see, I did the papers & elements & Crystal created these amazing templates to use them with! I'm crazy over the layouts my creatives sent me, so let me share...

by {shannon dombkowski}

by {claudia harvey}

by {robyn meierotto}

you can check out more great inspiration with our kits over at the DHD Blog today!

I hope you have a wonderful day today... remember these kits are 30% off today, so go grab 'em while you can at this great price. 

I have to put in a quick thank you to all my friends that overflowed my facebook page yesterday with birthday wishes... it was a truly wonderful day.  Each one of you made it special for me.  I enjoyed an early morning gift-unwrapping in bed with my most precious people around me {my husband & kids}, shopping & lunch with my mom, a mass in honor of my mother in law {we miss you Bev!} & a fun chat with some of my favorite people to end the night.  I'm a lucky.lucky girl.

{robyn}

Digital Scrapbooking Day Blog Hop

hello! welcome to my blog & the Design House Digital Digital Scrapbooking Day Blog Hop! {whew! say that 5 times fast!} anyway, if you came this way for the blog hop...& to eventually get this fabulous kit for free...

you are in luck! I have something that you're searching for... right.

here...

that's my part of your puzzle! Just in case you came here first, or came out of order, you can refer back to the blog post at DHD to see the correct order here.

this was my portion of the collab. I had a lot of fun with this color combo.

a few of my creatives sent me some great layouts & tips to share with you too! enjoy!

check out this oh-so-cute layout from my creative {becca dickson} & her little tip:

I added a button from Rebecca Wagler's portion of the collab to my layout. She included one maroon shaded button, but I knew I wanted to use a few buttons in different shades. So, I decided to recolor the buttons to use on my layout. Here's my trick to recoloring elements in Photoshop:

Place the element you wish to recolor on your layout. Then, click on your eyedropper tool, and pick up a color from your papers or other elements that you would like your element to be. With the element layer selected, add a solid color fill layer. It should be the same color as your eyedropper selection and should appear above the element layer. Right click on the color fill layer and select create clipping mask to clip the color to your element. Next, change the adjustment layer from normal to the color blend mode so your element's textures and lighting shows through. And that's it! Now if you copy the two layers, you can drag the element elsewhere on the page. To recolor the copied element, all you have to do is double click the color fill layer and use your eyedropper tool to pick a new color.

& this adorable layout by {claudia harvey} & her tip below:

I love adding outlines to fonts and/or word art; I think it allows them to stand out within a layout. It is very simple to do.

1. Click on the font/word art layer you wish to use.

2. Go to edit, then stroke.

3. Select the width desired (I like to use 10 px), use the dropper to select a coordinating color (I like to use white in most cases).

4. Make sure location is set to "outside".

5. Click ok.

thank you Becca & Claudia! Thank you for stopping by to join in the fun! good luck with your letter hunting!

{robyn}

last day of retirement sale

today marks the last day of our semi annual retirement sale at DHD. I have several kits that are marked 50% off & after today, they'll be gone from my shop for good, to make way for new things coming soon!

I know some people have expressed that the sale area is a little crazy, since SO many kits are retiring, especiall in light of the awesomeness of Gennifer Bursett & Audrey Neal leaving the store, so below, I'll put links of all the kits I'm retiring.  Hopefully that will help you out.  Thanks so much for everyone who's already shopped the sale this week!

http://www.designhousedigital.com/digit ... e-mini-kit
http://www.designhousedigital.com/digit ... ical-cards
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... cPath=18_8
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... g-alphabet
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... cPath=18_8
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... tal-papers
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... tal-papers
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... tal-papers
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... n-alphabet
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... cPath=18_8
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... l-elements
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... tal-papers
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... -papers-v2
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... l-elements
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... l-elements
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... tal-papers
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... cPath=18_8
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... tal-alphas
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... -alphabets
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... cPath=18_8
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... tal-papers
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... -alphabets
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... tal-papers
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... l-elements
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... lid-papers
http://www.designhousedigital.com/robyn ... e-mini-kit

stay tuned tomorrow for the Digital Scrapbook Day blog hop & all the goings on over at DHD through the weekend.

{robyn}

new releases 10.25

hey everyone! hope you've been well this week... we're slowly recovering around here after our youngest had a high fever starting out the weekend Friday. Evidently just a virus, but it hit her hard with 103 degree temps for most of Friday, lower grade 100 degree temps on Saturday & then she seemed to be fine on Sunday. The full days of school this week have been hitting her hard though & so dealing with a tired & cranky 5 year old girl has been trying this week. Luckily, it seems everyone else has escaped it. My husband has been crazy busy at work with his right hand man gone for back surgery, trying to get time between rains to work on a garage project we have going on here & of course, a drain problem at our rental house pops up this week too! I've been trying to juggle kids, house & trying to get my design mojo back & I feel like I was pretty successful this week, having some fun new releases.  I've been taking a few online Illustrator courses, trying to help me out with my illustration abilities & I started messing around with some fox ideas. {I've seen some things in stores & online with foxes & thought it might be fun to try + I love the movie Fantastic Mr Fox}.  So, I guess that's how Like a Fox came about.  I think it woud be fun to use some of the elements for a party, decorations for fall or in a kids room...

& I even put together a set of printable aRt for fun of Mr & Mrs Fox...

you can also find the full kit HERE, which included the papers + elements.

Now, for a little inspiration...

by {claudia harvey}

by {becca dickson}

by {jennifer hignite}

by {robyn meierotto}

remember these are 30% off today so grab em up!

that's all I have for you today... I have a long to-do list ahead of me. Housework, yes, but also some fun stuff coming up like Collaborations & Digital Scrapbook Day goodies.  talk to you soon!

{robyn}