I think I might do one of these digital layouts a day! Seems like a good pace to get through the folders of images I have on the dock to complete. This page is for Italia…now my new home I used a free World Traveler digital kit by Sande Krieger - you can find many more free kits on that page for download, too!

Posted on May 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm | scrapbooking | No comments

Hello everyone! I just wanted to show off some of the new stamps I have added to my shop, single images! Take a peek at all my digital stamps on shophandmade.

Posted on May 24, 2010 at 1:36 pm | Digital Stamp For Sale | No comments

Another digital layout page I did of me and my husband. I used a mixed of materials and kits, but mostly Karah Fredrick’s We All Have A Story.

Off to do more…but one thing I realized while printing these borderless at home – the borderless option sort of cuts off a bit of the sides. Very odd!

Posted on May 24, 2010 at 1:29 pm | scrapbooking | No comments

Trying to get working on my digital scrapbooking layout templates and getting large photo pages done first. These will be sort of opener pages to the many themes I’ll be working on. Here’s the first large photo page – I work in A4 paper size which is normal paper here in Italy – inspired by a challenge on Two Peas using large photos as well.

We love Disney for sure…and I’ve used many different elements from a large variety of digital kits, sorry I can’t remember all of them. But usually I get from Two Peas, there are many free digital kits there as well for download!

Posted on May 19, 2010 at 11:55 am | scrapbooking | 2 comments

Yesterday, I watched Julie Balzer on the Live with Prima channel and saw her cut out a cursive word by hand. On first look it was crazy…who would take the time! I could never use scissors like that…eek! But I so wanted to be able to do it! I decided to give it a go and to my utmost surprise it wasn’t that hard at all.

I have to say, this was another one of those life learning moments…to realize that we often hold ourselves back for fear of xyz…when really we should just dive into it. Woohoo!

Posted on May 18, 2010 at 7:58 pm | scrapbooking | 4 comments

Woohoo! I am so happy to have finally completed my first tissue paper mini album…sweet! It seemed to take forever, given this new format and the tags inside the flattened tubes. Although I’ve learned a few things for next time around, I’m super satisfied with the results.

First of all…mini albums are just uber cool. I’m not worried about archival issues and I want it to be touchable and explorable for kids and adults alike. The size makes it a less challenging project as well. I used papers from an Ikea stationery set and just printed out photos at home.

This mini album is just select fun times when we were in the USA. Disneyland was a big component of our fun times. Partly because I worked for Disney and we went there for free all the time

The little tags come out from the inside of the flattened tubes. It was a bit tricky because I had flattened them out so well and glued paper over that it was hard to stick tags in! I actually used my bone folder to “stretch” out the openings a bit.

The book “pages” are just tied into the binding. Pretty simple way to bind the book which I like more because I’m not a fan of loose rings. Besides the fact that I like bookbinding anyway, I like to have the solid structure where pages stay together nicely.

The size of the mini is perfect as well. Not only for adults, but I think it would be attractive for kids to flip through…I cannot gush enough about my discovery of tissue paper roll minis. Where have I been, right?!

The binding just has scrap cloth tied around. It’s nice decoration, but also strengthens the binding and keeps each of the pages separated a bit too. Overall, it was a fun process with a pretty result. Time to share with peeps… Hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of my mini. I will definitely be making more with the tissue paper rolls I’ve been saving! Check out my post about crazy for mini’s competition as well…

Posted on May 14, 2010 at 8:00 pm | Showcase | No comments

It’s a fairly recent discovery for me regarding using tissue paper rolls for mini albums and I’m still in progress regarding my first project. However, I had to mention a blog I found all about mini books. Coincidentally they have just posted a competition and giveway all about using the rolls for mini albums. How cool is that?! Check out the Crazy About Mini Albums blog for more info!

via http://scrapbook-crazy.blogspot.com/

Talk about serendipity…this has definitely given me a push to finish my mini and also start on the other two I have already prepped the rolls for. Sometimes I have all the ideas going on in my mind…gathering supplies and planning…but have yet to execute!

Posted on May 13, 2010 at 3:32 pm | Shops and Blogs | 1 comment

Here’s a peek at my tissue paper roll minibook in progress. Even though it’s a little thing, it takes up a fair amount of time to make! So in the process I also designed a telegram-looking journaling tag and thought I would share it for download. Check out my post on tortagialla.com to download the telegram journaling tag. Enjoy!

Posted on May 5, 2010 at 6:02 pm | scrapbooking | No comments

Hello everyone! So things have been quiet on the digital stamp front even though I’m working on the computer every day. I decided to release a free digital stamp for all you blog followers…just because…it’s been so long since a freebie! Here’s a cute birdie digital stamp…freckled cute, right?

Free free to click and download the full-sized PNG. Use in your lovely Springtime crafts and have fun! Let me know if you post your projects, I would really love to see if these freebie postings are of use to anyone as well BTW if you like these little birdies…there will be more coming as I sketch a birdie a day as well as create digital stamps sets with them. I’m also working on a collaboration using a few of them, so stay tuned for more!

Posted on May 4, 2010 at 9:42 pm | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links | 4 comments

I’m sure that I’m the last to find out about this great idea…reusing tissue paper rolls for mini albums! I saw LiveLoveScrap’s video on Youtube and then a few more videos of the same idea and was totally inspired to make my own. I have collected a huge stash of tissue paper rolls, knowing one day there’ll be a good reason why…EUREKA! So first I decide to wrap a sheet of paper around the tubes and I happen to have paper already in the size that fit two tubes together. I thought it would make nice spreads of pages…

So I made a bunch, but the only thing I don’t like are the edges where you can still see the raw color of the tubes. I think I have to find some ribbon to trim it off…now I am trying to think how I would bind these, given that I have them doubled up rather than single paged. Hmm…

Since I haven’t decided what to do yet, I decided to paint a bunch more for more albums, because that seems like an easy way to cover up the raw color. I can move forward with adding paper once they are dry…

I will share the results soon…let me know if you’ve done this before! Would love to see examples for more inspiration. Actually, I just realized I can work on the tag parts now, so I’m off…

Posted on May 4, 2010 at 11:37 am | scrapbooking | 11 comments