Scrap Girl

It has been a few weeks since I’ve offered any digital freebies so I thought I’d design an embellishment for you to use on some of your pages.  It would also be cute printed off on cards.  I’m dabbling in designing some of my own digital elements and am looking forward to this fall and winter when I can put some more time into developing my own skills on Adobe Photoshop and can pass some ideas and hopefully digital items for you to use on your own beautiful pages.  Enjoy!

Download this digital freebie HERE

Yes, I was supposed to do more scrapbooking this weekend.  I did do a little bit, but many other distractions got in the way.  For instance, we had 2 cups of raspberries in the refrigerator and I had just picked 2 more cups from our bushes, so I had to think of something to do with them.  I remembered that there was a recipe in one of my Taste of Home books that I had been wanting to try and here was my chance.  We had everyone in my family rate the pie when they tasted it and the lowest it got was nine out of 10.  I was also impressed that my picture nearly matches the one in my cookbook.  That almost never happens for me.  Here’s the recipe:

Raspberry Patch Cream Pie

1 pre-made graham cracker crust (here’s where I cheat)

Filling:

1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese

1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar

2 teaspoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping:

3/4 cup sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 1/3 cups cold water

1/4 cup raspberry gelatin powder

3 cups fresh raspberries

For the filling, combine the cream cheese, confectioner’s sugar, milk and vanilla in a mixing bowl.  Carefully spread over crust.

For the topping, in a small saucepan, combine, sugar, cornstarch, and cold water until smooth.  Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 min.  Remove from heat and stir in raspberry gelatin until dissolved.  Cool and refrigerate until thickened.

Arrange berries over filling.  Spoon gelatin mixture over berries and refrigerate until set.  Serve with whipped cream on top.  Enjoy!  If I can make it so can you!

(Recipe from Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2008)

My goal is to finish the journaling in my scrapbook retreat album.  I have done the pages for the last retreat with my gal pals in February, but just haven’t gotten around to finishing them.  Maybe while the kids are watching Disney channel, I’ll actually have some scrapbooking productivity time.  Come back to see some funny pictures and some cute pages in a couple of days.  This is an 8×8 album and fast becoming one of my favorite size albums to make. 

This is a page I did a few years back that I really like.  I do a lot of fishing scrapbook pages because my parents have a lake home in Wisconsin.  On this fishing trip we went to my Great Uncle Bob’s house and went fishing on his pontoon with my dad and my daughter.  My Great Uncle loves to fish and goes fishing almost every day no matter what the season.  It is also quite funny to go fishing with him and my dad because they together act quite similar to the characters in the movie “Grumpy Old Men.”  I laser cut the letters at a local scrapbook store and I love how they make the page.  This page is a tribute to the passion some people have for fishing and my Great Uncle. 

Hello scrappers!  I’m back from vacation and will be posting more in a few days.  I’m just beat.  The first couple of days were beautiful and we did a lot of hiking and biking.  The last couple of days were cold, even by Minnesota standards for summer–50’s and 60’s.  The breeze off of Lake Superior made it even more chilly and one day it rained almost all day and night which made camping a little less fun, although I’m glad we have a camper.  One good thing about the rain that was beautiful was that it made for more water going over Gooseberry Falls, which was quite awesome.  So the saying is true, I guess you have to weather the storm to get to see what is truly beautiful in life.  In this case, it was quite literal in meaning.  I didn’t take quite as many pictures, but got a few good ones, and thought I would try a little journaling while on the trip to add to my scrapbook later.

Here it is!  The “Wild Thing” freebie quickpage is here for download.  I made this page using Karyn Robinson’s digital kit called “At the Zoo.”  Use this for whatever picture you choose, do your journaling and dating, and you are done.  I’ll be away this week on vacation, so happy scrapping to you!

Download this free quickpage HERE

I received a new digital kit to make some pages and a freebie out of and wow, it is cute!  The kit is called “At the Zoo” by Karyn Robinson, my online scrapbooking friend who creates kits for Digital Arts Cafe.  Now if you are creative enough, and I think you are, you can use this kit for other topics and pages besides just trips to the zoo.  For example, I created a “Wild Thing” page that could be used for just about anything you are wild about:  your honey, your pets, and/or your kids.  In my case, I’m using it for my “sugar and more than you ever wanted spice” daughter.  She has a sly look on her face in this picture so I decided to throw it into this layout.  The freebie quickpage will be on the blog tomorrow, so be sure to grab it for yourself. 

Here is another set of Fourth of July pages I did a few years ago.  We must have done a lot of four-wheeling that weekend because most of my pictures are of that.  It is our tradition to go up to Northern Wisconsin for the Fourth of July holiday so I have pictures of the Wisconsin woods every year around the same time.  My kids, in fact, used to think it was called “Up North” because that’s how we referred to it, until we realized they thought it was an actual town or something.  Another funny thing is that my oldest thought Wisconsin was pronounced Misconsin.  I think the “w” was just harder to say at first when she was little.  These pages have a northern feel with the black and red checked paper.  I like the “Days of Summer” title.  It looks like a sign hanging on the page.  That is adhesive silver mesh underneath the letters.

I went through one of my scrapbooks and found some of those Independence Day pictures I was promising to dig up.  These pictures are from 2003 taken in Wisconsin at my parent’s lake place.  My youngest daughter also caught her first fish that weekend so that was also included on the page.  The paper was a little busy to me so I covered it with some matted pictures and other accents.  The stars were cut out with the Creative Memories Shapes Cutting System.  “Tara’s First Fish” was stamped with Close to My Heart Acrylic Stamps.  It’s not one of my favorite pages, but it documented the memory of that Fourth of July holiday and I can see how stinkin’ cute my kids were then.

Hello scrappers.  Just leaving you a note to take some pictures over the Fourth of July holiday.  Fireworks, barbeques, family gatherings, whatever you do, take some photos.  I have a graduation open house to attend and we are going to my parent’s lake home so I’ll be busy.  I do have some pictures and pages done for this holiday so I’ll be sure to dig those out next week to share with you.  Have a great holiday weekend!