First a question, then another freebie.

Where or where has deco-pages gone? Does anyone else out there use deco-pages.com? I post in the gallery there and I can't connect to their site. I am starting to get paranoid and I hope their server will be back online soon. Any news anyone??

Now for the freebie! I don't know where all this creativity is coming from, but I have a theory! My husband recently asked me to stop playing all Facebook games. I played Farmville for a long time, then I quit last summer. Then I started playing Fashion World and one like civilization. But I quit back in September or October. Since then I've had a lot of extra time for stuff around the house, my traditional scrapbooking, my digital scrapbooking and of course creating freebies. I found the grayscale templates for these flowers on the microsoft clip gallery quite awhile ago and I have had them on my desktop staring at me for ages. So last night I decided to do something with them. There are 11 flowers and 4 stems in the set. I added the shadow for the preview but not to the png files. I also left the grayscale originals in the folder for you if you needed to make a flower or two in a specific color. Just add a layer over the flower of your choice and adjust it, most of these are set to Multiply or Screen, but on some I used Dodge or Color in my photo editor. I don't use Photoshop so I'm not 100% sure of the lingo to explain it to the rest of the world. Here is the result!

You can download the flowers here.
Remember, leaving me some love is free!

Little Stamp Ornaments Freebie tonight.

I'm just on a freebie roll! I was working away on my traditional book today when INSPIRATION hit me. I am working on last year's Christmas layout. I decided to make a free form Christmas tree out of a green yarn stitched onto the page. Then I wanted some sort of ornaments. I was looking around at my collection of odds and ends and I came upon some old Christmas postage stamps. Now what to frame them out with?? I found some little tiny paper stars that I'd picked up on eBay for a 4th of July page. I used some ModPodge (best stuff ever!) to decoupage the stamps onto some white cardstock and then the white and red stars onto them as frames. The only drawback was that I had a hard time framing out the best parts of the stamps with the star's shape, like on the stamps with Mary and baby Jesus, it's hard to get both into the center of the star. They dried very quickly, so I cut them out and to dress them up I wrapped a little bit of decorative wire around them. I also used the wire to "hang" them from the tree on the paper. I wish the layout was complete, I can't share it with you until it is!

In celebration of this wonderful idea, I've created basically the same thing for you, except that I warped the stars a little when I wanted to get a little more of the picture into the frame, and I made them with glitter. Oh, and just because I love you all so much, I made 4 Love stamp ornaments. These are made with scans of actual stamps, some are American and some are foreign.

To download the ornaments, please click here.

How to display postcards in a scrapbook album & Cluster Frame Freebie!

I have been working away on my scrapbooks trying to get caught up. Christmas is coming and I try very hard to have the books ready to take home to show to my family back in Nebraska. I had a lot of fun with the vacation album from our family trip to the Black Hills this summer. I bought an 8x8 album and printed wallet sized photos for the pages. Then my main souvenirs were postcards. I agonized about how to put the postcards into the album without using page after page in the book. One day at the dollar store I found acid free clear document envelopes. They were perfect! I was able to put the postcards into the envelopes, sometimes without any trimming, sometimes with just a tiny bit, then I was able to "stack" them.

In each envelope I put 1 postcard, or if I had a lot of them, as I did at Mount Rushmore, I put 2 in (be sure the back one will be upright when you flip it up), then I cut a piece of coordinating cardstock to go above the postcard(s) in the envelope. I used the cardstock because I didn't want to put the brads through the envelopes without something to strengthen the "hinge" joint. I didn't use it as a titling option, but this would definitely be a good place for it! Then to make sure the postcards were placed straight onto the album pages, I measured and punched holes on the cardstock background paper - and if it wasn't very strong, I backed it with a stronger cardstock just in case - that way they postcards wouldn't be hanging on the page protectors. Here is what my finished pages looked like:

I had a lot of fun with it, I hid journalling and souvenirs under the postcards and on my favorite layout about the scenic drives in the hills, I put a picture of my girls sleeping in the back seat of the truck, their mouths wide open in exhaustion. It's a fun surprise and too funny to let them forget. I did learn 1 lesson though. When on vacation, journal every day on your postcards so you don't have to do that part when you put your books together! I didn't do it this time, but believe me, I will next time!
So anyway, that took care of my memories. So what to do for the girls? Well, when I was printing my little wallet sized photos, my printer ran out of blue ink and a bunch of pictures printed pink-tinted. I left them in the pile of clutter on my desk and forgot about them until the end of the project when I was cleaning up and planning to move on to the next big thing. Then it occurred to me that I could use them and have fun with them! So I found some pretty paper, black with pink and blue butterflies on it and I scrapbooked the pictures that featured my younger daughter. The journalling reads, "The best vacation memories are rose colored." I'm proud of it, a mistake that turned out really sweet!
For my other daughter I had to do more. I wanted to do a digital layout for her because she took so many pictures herself on the vacation - she earned her digital photography patch for Girl Scouts on the trip! But rather than make page upon page of vacation pages for her, I thought I'd put together some cluster frames and put the best pictures of her and taken by her on the trip. Here's one of them:

If you'd like to use some of these frames for yourself, you can snag them below. There are 7 in the set. I made them to fit a 12x12 page.

To Download Frames, click here.

Sparkly-Pink Alpha Freebie

Well I was working on my daughter's birthday page for her 4th birthday and I needed a sparkly-pink 4. I decided that I'd have to make my own, and once I decided to do that, I figured should make the whole number set. But then it occurred to me that I should also make the alpha and of course I had to add some punctuation. So anyway, here you go.

As I said, the set contains the numbers 0-9, the alphabet A-Z and the font I used (Santa's Sleigh Full Deluxe) had the exclamation point, question mark and period that fit with the style I was creating. Please enjoy! Click here to download.