Challenge Winners!

I absolutely love doing these challenges. I love seeing your work and seeing how you use my kits. It's so fun and rewarding. The hard part is then picking three favorites! All the entries were super, and everyone who entered is getting an exclusive freebie. Thank you all for participating!

Here are the winners. They will be getting the entire Denim and Diamonds Mega Kit!





With two honorable mentions getting element packs...




Thank you all again for participating!

Last chance to submit challenge entries!

I have no idea where last week went....okay, yeah I do. I feel asleep before 8:30 three nights in a row, so I didn't get any designing done and not a lot of scrapping either. The layouts I did were for the creative teams I'm on. I'm now on three. I'm having a blast and being very mindful about getting things done in a timely manner. I do not do well as a procrastinator. I like to get things done and out of the way.

Here's the layout I did for Alice Koh's CT. She's an amazing designer at Scrapbook-Elements. You can view her designs here.

Here are the two layouts I've done with her beautiful kit-Alice's Always in My Heart.
They're both layouts for my best friend. She's my connection to girly layouts, since around here are boy oriented!





I just love this kit. I got two very different results by focusing on two different color schemes featured in the kit. Alice's designs are so versatile.

REMINDER! REMINDER! REMINDER! We're in the last 24 hour window for challenge submissions. If you're planning on entering my Denim and Diamond Challenge, you must have your entries in no later than 3 pm Eastern time tomorrow the 10th! You can email them to me at Karla@starband.net.

Challenge continues get your grab bag freebie!

I love running these challenges. It's so much fun to see layouts done with my designs. Thank you to all who have already set layouts and for those still yet to come! There have been over 300 downloads of the grab bag already, so I'm hoping to get lots of entries. Just like in the Denim and Dirt Challenge, I will be giving all participants a challenge only freebie at the end of the challenge. So keep the submissions coming. You can still get the grab bag here.

I figured the easiest way to keep you updated on the submissions, and because I love to show them off, is to create a slide show using Slide. If you've never done one for your desktop, email, blog, or websitem, they're super easy. You can get all the details at Slide.com They even had a diamond skin to use! I thought that was so fitting!

So here are the entries for the challenge. I think these folks deserve a huge round of applause!

I would love to add a photo post gallery to my website, but the software is $129. So out of my budget right now. We just dropped nearly $1300 this weekend to have an old chimney removed from the house and to have the foundation from an old outbuilding carted away. The chimney had been taken down as far as the attic and bricked in. It then ran from the attic down through the second floor and ending in the middle of what will someday be our kitchen. My father, a retired carpenter, says it was putting a big strain on the house (over 160 years old!) and we should start any remodeling until it was removed. I started to do it myself a while back, but what a slow, hot, messy job. It was worth expense to have it done by someone else. I just wish John had had them put down more plastic and use the other door like I asked. They really didn't clean up, so now I have all that mess to deal with. Not good for my allergies. I'm just not sure I can get John to do it for me or how I want it done...lol.

The other foundation removal when so smoothly and so fast. They filled the hole and reseeded it too. It looks great. I feel so much better, knowing Gianni won't get into all the rusty nails and debris. It makes the yard look so much bigger too. Now we can finally start planning the rest of the remodeling.

Denim and Diamond Freebie Mini Kit and Challenge

Well, I'm very close to having Denim and Diamonds finally done. It has taken much longer this time with work and my other scrapping commitments. I think it's shaping up nicely. I just need to do a couple more things before I can put it up on my design page. Here are some previews of what's to come!














On to the freebie! I am running another grab bag challenge. The challenge is to work with the Denim and Diamond Grab Bag. You can read the details below. The grab bag has exclusive items that coordinate with the Denim and Diamond Kit but are not found in the kit itself. You can get the Grab Bag here.

New Tina Williams Release

I love being part of Tina Williams CT. She has the most amazing kits. I can't help but take the time to plug her latest release. It's called Grandma's Sewing Room. Here are pictures of this gorgeous new kit!










This kit is specially priced right now at $4.00. This is a steal for this amazing about of supplies. You can purchase the kit in Tina's Store.

Anniversary Album Complete and a thank you

Thanks to everyone who downloaded my sampler and left comments. I truly appreciate your thoughts and thanks. I also appreciate everyone who took the time to remind me that Gianni's hair will grow back and that it doesn't look that bad. Thanks for the reassurance. I wouldn't feel so bad if my hubbie would stop laughing at it. He's going to give the kid a complex and he's already given me one!

As some of you know, I've been working hard on an anniversary album for my best friend's parents. They will be celebrating their 40th anniversary on the 17th of June. It has been a fun project, but it's been the focus of 90% of my scrapping for the last month. I'm ready to tackle something else! Here's a slide show of the finished album. I just have to send it off to the printers now.

Now I can get back to other layouts and designing. I hope to have something to share with you very soon!

You can view the credits for all these layouts at my Gotta Pixel Gallery.

Denim and Diamond Sampler

I hope everyone is enjoying their Memorial Day weekend. Ours has been pretty busy so far, so we're trying to take it a little easier today. Friday we went garage sale shopping. Gianni got a great little train set for $2.00. He has spent hours playing with it. Yesterday we went to a flea market and spent a $1.00 whoo hoo! Then we got a few groceries, an external hard drive for my scrapping supplies (yay!!!), and some other odds and ends.

Today I decided to cut Gianni's hair b/c it was getting scruffy. I wasn't paying attention and started buzzing before I realized I didn't have the attachment on it. I started up the back...buzz...buzz...buzz. He looked like Marshall on How I Met Your Mother only in the back instead of the front. So I had to shave around the rest of the back and sides. I left the top longer. John keeps laughing. As if I didn't feel bad enough already! At least it's May and not the end of June. I would have hated to ruin his birthday pics. I keep telling myself it doesn't look that bad. Here's a look...



From this angle I don't think it looks that bad. At least I keep telling myself that. At least the kid loves hats. He looks so pathetic in the pic though. The little bugger topped it off by saying, "Bye, bye hair."

I've spent some time designing this weekend. I want to get Denim and Diamonds completed. I worked on papers and ribbons yesterday. I've put together a little sampler today to show you what I've been up too. I hope you like it.

Here's a preview.



Click here to download. Please leave a comment if you download them. I'd love to hear what you think of the sampler.