Tag Archives: Studio J

Celebrating the Not so Happy Moments

Did that title catch your attention?  Yeah I know its a weird one but I will explain.

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So today is the 2 year anniversary of one of my worst days.  When my son was 5 days old he quit nursing so I took him to the Dr.  They told us he was positive for RSV and needed to be hospitalized immediately.  Apparently Newborns can bottom out fairly quickly with this evil virus and so we ran home to pack a bag not sure how long the stay would be.  They poked him, they prodded him and made him very uncomfortable.  He was still so sweet and little and happy.  He was barely sick.  I had no idea what the next few days held for us.  He went downhill some but it became so frustrating because everything they were doing I could have done at home.

On day 5 of our stay the Dr said if his stats held through the night that they would let us go home.  What ominous words those were.  He bottomed out around 4 that morning and after several attempts to help him recover one of the biggest men I had ever met (a respiratory therapist with huge hands) grabbed my tiny son up and said if we don’t go now there may be no going back and carried him across to the NICU.  (the picture on the second page that is taken through the bars of the hospital bed was in the midst of this moment.  I thought it may be the last picture I took of him.  It was also the photo that I sent to my husband telling him to come quick.  He arrived to the hospital in tears) About this time the chaplain for the hospital and my minister showed up (them both being there was pure coincidence) making the situation totally surreal.  They shoved tubes down his throat, IVs in his arm and I watched from the back of the room as the Dr.s worked their magic.  Ev just stared at me and I prayed I fell on my knees in the hospital room and prayed.  My husband, best friend, mom and I  waited for him to become stable and within minutes they knew he would be ok.  He remained in the NICU for 3 days and after 10 days we finally got to go home.

2 years later he is a happy, healthy, rambunctious 2 year old.  IMG_8030When I was able to recover and hold it together I started to scrapbook again.  My husband thought it was so odd that my first layout was Evs “Hospital Adventure”.  It was therapeutic.  I had fought for my child, I had fallen on my knees and prayed for him and God showed up.  I was proud of us and I knew that I wanted to capture that moment in time so that when he was 18 he would understand what we had gone through.  I love being able to share this story, It may just be through paper and pen but he will know it was an important moment.  I think we need to capture our lives to share with our children and it may not always be happy but they need to know there are hard times.  They need to know how hard we fought.  They need to know we were sad or afraid but we got through.  My scrapbooks tell my family’s story!  I challenge you to tell your story through your memory/scrapbooks.  A lot of times the hard times help create a stronger you.  Make sure to capture those moments also.  Tell your whole story.

Digital Delights with Studio J

I love to scrapbook and papercraft.  It is my stress relief but it stresses me out when I get behind in my scrapbooking.  Enter Studio J my perfect bridge between the digital and traditional world.

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February and March are sure to be months of digital delights because you can purchase anyStudio J® layout for only $5—that’s a savings of $1.95 per layout! This is a great opportunity to try Studio J for the first time. Create adorable baby layouts with the Wishes and Fishes kit (shown), or use the new Express Collections with collections of 10 ready-made layouts plus a front and back cover that are easy to use and professionally designed. Preserve your memories at a low price for a truly digital delight!

I am going to sweeten the deal a little more for the month of February for every 5 layouts you purchase through Studio J I will enter your name into a drawing for a My Legacy album with page protectors.  Not only will you get your memories scrapbooked but I am going to give you a beautiful album to put them in.  I am including a few layouts that I recently completed for a heritage album for my family.

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Studio J tips and Tricks.

So in going with my last post I wont to give you some of the tips and tricks CTMH recently released for Studio J.

Even though Studio J® is fast and easy to use, it is helpful to know some great tricks that can make customizing your layouts even more exciting. Here are some Studio J tricks straight from our professional Close To My Heart artists:
1. Customize your background and texture paper. You can change the color and intensity of the background and texture paper included in whichever kit you choose. Simply select the piece of background and texture paper, change the color in the color selection tool, and increase or decrease the intensity of the color in that same popup box.

2. Crop My Stickease® quotes, titles, and tags. The cropping feature on the My Stickease images allows you to select a section of a quote, title, or tag to use as a border or other embellishment.

3. Create a customized My Stickease image. If you have a specific image in mind to use as an embellishment on your page, you can create a customized My Stickease to fit your theme perfectly. Simply add a text box, photo hanger, ribbon, ribbon slides, and Stickease to create the little suitcase! So easy! Be sure to crop or send elements behind other elements when necessary, and add several elements together for a unique look

4. Select more than one element at a time. If you want to move several elements of your layout at once, simply click and drag your mouse around the elements you would like to select. Let’s take buttons, for example. After the buttons have been selected, you can click the icons in the popup box to choose to align the buttons vertically or horizontally if you desire.

5. Make faux washi tape with vellum text boxes. To create the look of a piece of clear washi tape, make a small rectangular text box, filled with vellum background (this is the default color for text boxes). You can make the tape strips as large or small as you want, or even layer them for more emphasis.

6. Stretch one photo across multiple photo wells. If you have fewer photos than photo wells, instead of deleting the excess wells, try scaling the picture to a larger size and then copying the picture to other photo wells and matching the photos up until they align with an almost seamless image. This trick works best with photo wells that are adjacent to each other.

7. Create ruffled ribbon. Select “Ribbons” in the drop-down menu under the Embellishments toolset. Choose ribbon tab and rotate the tab so that it is vertical on the page. Then layer several tabs on top of one another, sending every other one to the back to create a ruffled look.

8. Create a jagged border with text boxes. You can create a jagged border simply by rotating multiple text boxes about 45 degrees and making them the same color as the background. Put these boxes on top of a long, rectangular box of another color, and you’ve got a jagged border!

9.  Change the background of your layout. Sometimes you may like the photo and journal arrangement in a layout, and yet want to change the background colors. Because photos sit on top of everything else, this is easy to do. Simply pull a journaling box over the space you want for a different background and fill it with a color from the color selection tool or a patterned paper from the Papers toolset. Then, send it backwards until the photo wells are on top of your new background.

Bonus Trick! Use keyboard keys to make embellishments. Did you know that some of the best tools for creating custom embellishments are the basic keys on your keyboard? It’s as simple as typing into a journaling box with no background color. Use periods to make a polka dot pattern, angle brackets to create a trendy Chevron look, overlapping pound signs to make burlap, question marks to make rope, and so much more!

Studio J is my SECRET! SHHH!

So I have had several people recently ask me how I stay caught up or how do I have time to scrapbook everything that I take pictures of.  Well like any true “SUPERHERO” I to have a secret!  Studio J, no its not my alter ego it is just CTMH’s digital scrapbooking that fits right in with my traditional pages.

 

I made my Aunt a family album last year for Christmas and it was so easy I just had everyone email me the pictures and I threw it all together. Studio J now offers Express collections and all you have to do is pick a theme and drag and drop your pictures. Displaying your memories has never been easier!

For the month of October CTMH has a special going on. You will receive a free custom-printed layout when you buy 9 custom-printed Studio J layouts. To receive the discount, just add 10 or more layouts to your cart. You’ll see a discount reflected in your order total. And you can totally take advantage of this promotion by ordering in multiples of 10. Buy 9, get 1 free. Buy 18, get 2 free. Buy 27, get 3 free. Up to 4 free layouts! If you haven’t tried Studio J yet, now is the time to start!

So Now that you know my secret hero power why don’t you give it a try!

Digital Scrapbooking

Here are the rest of my convention layouts.  Have I mentioned how excited I am about going to Dallas this year!  Well I am super excited I just know there are some amazing things planned!

Digital Scrapbooking

For convention this year they asked us to complete 5 studio J layouts.  They gave us some amazing instructions and techniques.  I followed them (for the most part) and this is what I came up with.  I hope you like them.

stay tuned for the other 3 layouts…