8 years together

On Monday we celebrated our wedding anniversary, 8 years. It has just flown by. We keep having ups and downs, but I don’t think he realises how much happier I am since he entered my life. He truly is the knight in shining armour, even with flaws and imperfections, that only makes him human, and makes me love him even more. Because he needs me, as much as I need him :)

We went out to a fancy restaurant which turned out not so fancy. It was the first time we went out at night without the kids here in Australia. The kids stayed happily with grandma (my mother in law who is here visiting for four weeks). We talked a lot, but then, the kids never really kept us from talking, we always talk a lot LOL. It was a good experience and I wish we could do it more often, but the grandmas don’t come visit often enough ;)

Anyway, I’ll share a little something I created to celebrate my eternal valentine:

Credits:
Everything by Fancy Pants:
In Love (#758), Whimsical (#763), Devoted (#760), and First Date(#762) papers.
Crush Titles and Tags (#757) diecuts.
Book it (#923) and Mix-n-Match(#922) Biggest Board Chipboard.
Write Now (#744) Rub-ons.

Thanks for stopping by. Don’t forget to check out the freebies on the previous posts :)

Digital Magic + freebie

When I got my spot as a designer at the Little Dreamer Designs, the main focus was hybrid scrapbooking. It worked like this: I do the trial and error; you skip the errors and uncertainty and go straight to the goody finished project, ok? :) I like creating things that are not available out there. I don’t feel like a "designer", I can’t design beautiful paper and elements (not for lack of trying), but I can still help people create their scrapbooks, even if it is just by sharing my experience.

Having said that, I am a digital scrapper too, so you might have noticed I started to put some page templates on the store for simple digital pages, I am calling the series "Playing with Paper". Because I am a digital scrapper, I spend a lot of time around the computer, so I had the idea of starting to share stuff a digital scrapper would like to have in her computer. I am going to call this series "Digital Magic" (I like saying we can work "magic" LOL).

The first set in this new series are 12 Desktop Wallpapers Templates, one for each month of 2009.

Here are two samples I created, my husband has been asking for these for over a year:

As you can see, you can mix and match and use the templates as you wish :) So you can understand what I am talking about, I decided to share another freebie. Here is a template for the remaining months of the year:

DOWNLOAD FREEBIE HERE.

I created this desktop wallpaper with the template:

And for hubby's computer I created this one:

I hope you like it and, if you use the template, let me see what you create :)

Lastly, let me know what you would like to see in this product series. Next in line are blog header templates!

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ETA. Léa, the CALENDAR FREEBIES are coming :)

and the DAM winner is...

(drum roll)
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"Kevin and Amy"

Congratulations!!! Please send me an e-mail: michelle (at) familiafilo (dot) com for your copy of the September Issue of the Digital Artist Magazine :)

Thanks everyone for the very sweet comments!

Have a great weekend!

Digital Artist Magazine Special Issue

The birthday edition of the Digital Artist Magazine is finally out. Let me tell you, I know I am biased because I just joined as a contributor, but it truly is AMAZING!!! The magazine has a new look and it is jam packed with inspiration, tutorials, reviews and amazing freebies :)

Inside, I have a hybrid calendar tutorial, a digi to hybrid page, a digital page and a fun exclusive freebie calendar:

I am soooo excited to be there I am going to give away a copy of the magazine for a random commenter on this post.



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I forgot to mention on my last post I treated myself to a couple of things this weekend. I bought a sewing machine (yes, for scrapping, LOL) and a new printer. You might have noticed I do NEED a printer and the one I had was giving me a hard time. It was so bad I was starting to lose my mojo because I had to worry how to print everything. The problem was that it would have a blank "band" on my high quality prints. If I printed in draft it would be all right, but as soon as I selected high quality I would get my images with bits missing. Now, with the quality of paper I use, can you imagine how annoying and frustrating that was???

Anyway, I upgraded the software and did everything I could to fix it, to no avail. Nowadays, printers are so cheap it wasn’t even worth taking it anywhere to be fixed. So we just went out and bought a new one. It is not a specialty printer, it is a multfunction, I bought an Epson RX690, it has a nice scanner and 6 ink slots (which hopefully will help me save on ink). I just printed a project here and I love the quality. The other good thing about it is that it has a 200 years guarantee on the prints. So I am glad to know I will not be here when my projects start to fade :)

P.S. Notice I have no excuse for having bought a sewing machine LOL

I have lots more to share, but once again it is way too late and I should go to bed. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you are having a great week!

one photo stack FREEBIE - love

I love the look of photos stacked or photos cut up in pieces. It is sooo much easier to do it digitally than when you are doing a paper layout. All you have to do is:
1. On a new document, create a rectangle shape
2. Import a photo and “clip” it to the rectangle (CTRL+ALT+G)
3. now, select both rectangle and photo and duplicate them a couple of times.
4. select all the photos and link them together
5. now you can move the rectangles around, resize them, add shadow, change blending modes, etc for different effects.

Now, this is MY way of doing things (and I have been told I do things in complicated ways). If this is a bit hard to grasp, maybe the template can help (or make it worse LOL).

There are a couple of important things about this template:

• It is full of layers and might be really hard to get your head around it, so you need to be comfortable with layers in Photoshop to be able to use it.
• I decided to include a sample photo (so you know where to place your photo) and I have kept all the layer styles. So it is a huge download (over 50mb)
• I had to downsize the 12x12 page to 8X8 to keep the download under 100mb (yes, it was over 100mb at one point).
• I have included brief instructions in the download.
• I have only tested this template in Photoshop CS3.

Sounds nasty? Well, hey, I wanted to share, and I hope some people have fun using it :)

DOWLOAD HERE!

Playing with paper - set 3

Here is the new set:

it is on sale until Sunday 21 Sep (with the rest of the store)

and here are the two pages I created with the templates:


(I loooove Autumn)

The plan was to design only stuff for the hybrid scrappers. I guess I changed my mind :) Because seeing an AMAZING page created with a template you made is just super rewarding! I mean, have a look at this page by Crissy:

Stunning isn't it? made my day!!!

I am trying to do another round up of my pages, but there are so many it is taking me a while to figure out how to post LOL I have seen some amazing stuff (and sorry for not leaving love yet, just lack of time really!) But I will get to it soon!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

After 5

I am so happy for Jen, Catherine, Amanda and Camila :) They are some of my favorite people in the digiworld and I wish them all the best venturing into designing. Remember girls, keep it fun!

Honour at Scrapkut

The girls of the Brazilian blog ScrapKut are doing a paper to digi challenge, and guess who is the inspiration???? Yeah, I was quite happy when Léa told me. They also asked for al little something for those who play, so I am giving away a 10 dollar coupon for the winner :) Here is the inspiration:

If you would like to play just post a link to the lift of the page above on their post here. You only have until Monday (22/09). Have a look at what the other girls on their team already did:

(clique on the images for credits)

Little Dreamer's Sale :)

DSM toot - 10 months quickpage freebie

My latest page published, the last before I got full on into hybrid and my digital mojo died LOL. It was on the T3 session of the August/September issue of Digital Scrapbooking Magazine. All about getting all your photos to go together even though they were taken at different times, with different settings.

The sweetest Lili allowed me to offer this page as a freebie. There are two versions, one plain, and one with the brownish tint. If you use the tint don’t forget to boost the contrast of your photos so they don't become dull :)

DOWNLOAD HERE.

Have a great week!

cards + new products

I have been trying to create more cards... I have trouble creating cards :) Some of my best "scrapping" friends are card makers and I just love everything they do, but I feel I have trouble getting the mojo right for card making. It might have something to do with giving it away, I don’t know.

So I decided to push myself :) and I have a challenge to make hybrid cards going on at the Little Dreamer Designs blog right now. Hybrid sure is the best way for me to create cards, I find it much easier to plan :) Have a look at these:

I just cut up all the pieces of paper, added a fabric alpha + ribbons, and voila:



And since I am talking about cards, let me share a couple more I created:



(credits on flickr)

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A little update on Lucas, remember I was going to cut his milk? Well, the doctor was right and it worked. He was filling full from all the milk and now that he is not getting the bottle he is eating much better. The difference is incredible, like day and night. Actually, now he usually finishes dinner, and starts tapping on the fridge so I open it for him and he gets more food, usually yogurt, which is awesome because I need to make sure he eats lots of yogurt and cheese so he can get the calcium he needs. He is doing great :)

And before I go, I just wanted to share two products I have on the store that I have not posted here:

(watch for this one on the September issue of the Digital Artist Magazine)

Thanks for stopping by :)

a break + I love your blog

So, I took a break from scrapping. Yes, two weeks without touching anything, no new pages, no new albums, no challenges, and lots of missed deadlines for magazine submissions (the only thing that bothered me during the this break). You would have never noticed it because I have a lot of projects I have finished but that I could not show at the time I created them. The fact is, I have not touched scrapping since the Stamping'Up party (and I don’t even consider that scrapping).

I took the break because hubby was jealous of/ or annoyed by my scrapbooking (yes, I guess it happens to every scrapper), and that simple fact killed my mojo. But this weekend my mojo kinda came back. I had a deadline with DAM and my mother in law is arriving next weekend, so I felt I needed to push myself and get it done before she is here. It was great to get back into it. I wasn’t feeling myself anymore :)


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I have been tagged by two people with the “I love your blog” tag. I simply LOVE the work of them both. Brenda is an amazing paper scrapper and Kate really is the digi scrapping queen (as her blog address so eloquently points out). This has been extra special because when you look at the seven people these ladies picked, I just blushed to be considered amongst such talent. Made my day girls!!! Thank you so much!




Here are the rules:
1. If you’ve been tagged, you can put the logo on your blog.
2. Link the person from whom you received the award.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links to those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs you’ve nominated.

Now, nominating is always hard for me because I am late with everything and everyone seems to be already picked :) I really like all the blogs I visit and actually there is a whole bunch of blogs that I just didn’t get around to adding to my blog list but that I also love. But anyway, here they are:
Jess
Nancy
Gabi
Carina
Lili
Kellie
Danielle

and to finish the post, a little kiss:

hope the Australians had a great father's day (it was yesterday here) and have a great weekend everyone!!!

Castle Album

So here is my castle album:

Credits:

Hybrid Scrapbooking Magic 08 by Michelle Filo.
Fairy Tales by Jackie Eckles and Sausan Designs.

Castle Album by Kaisercraft.
Ribbons by KandCompany and Making Memories.
Mixed buttons - unknown.
Mod Podge.

And especially for grandma, a video of Mateus getting the album for the first time:

Hope you have a great weekend :)

castle album in progress

castle album in progress, originally uploaded by michellefilo on flickr.

just a sneak peek :)

feeling better + new templates

I am feeling much better, and I could almost say no one is sick around here but hubby is complaining of a stuffed nose hehehe :) The weather has improved a little and spring is in sight, I am really looking forward to it. Mac continues to be a ray of sunshine and apart for a little mischief here and there, she has been adorable!

I have been in a serious scrapping funk this last week, feeling too tired to unglue myself from the couch and come “do my thing”. I have loads to catch up though, so there will be lots to blog about for the month even if I don’t create anything new LOL (but I will!!)

I have a couple of new templates on the store:

I am pretty proud of those, they are simple, perfect for hybrid, but still my style of trying to imitate real paper. I have used them to create this little keepsake for my friend:

Ok, super busy day at work tomorrow so I guess I have to go to bed ;) Hope you have a great week!