I finally finished another free kit for y'all! I'm averaging one kit a season, which I think is pretty good for a beginner designer with a toddler. It's all summer, beach, and surfing, but you can use it for anything. And for once, I designed something that y'all can use for your boys too. My husband is a surfer and misses the ocean terribly. The California Dreamin' kit is dedicated to him. (He was very picky about my surfboards. I finally stopped asking him if they looked okay.)
A simple layout I did with it.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think!
Ok, I said that I wouldn't be back until July, and really should be packing, looking for new places to live in Kansas City, cleaning, etc. but I couldn't leave my readers on the best scrapbooking weekend of the year! So after this post, I really am moving across the country. I will be back in July. If you subscribe to my posts by entering your email address in the box on the right hand sidebar, you will know exactly when I return and get updated blog posts as emails. That said, on to the fun...
There is so much going on during iNSD among the different stores that I've divided the information up
into categories. I'm not listing everything because that would be crazy, only things that I think are a good download or buy. Also, since I am not part of any of these stores, or sponsored in any way, this will be one of the only places you will find a synthesized list of everything.
sales.
- Scrap Orchard: They are having a $1 Farmer's Market sale. That is a great deal. New items are added each day and old ones are taken away. I will be buying some things here.
- the Lilypad: 30% off plus a free with minimum purchase kit
- ZigZag Scraps: 50% off almost everything and 40% off new products plus a free with minimum purchase kit
- SugarHill co: 40-50% off individual designer shops
- Oscraps: 20-50% off plus free with purchase kit
- Brittish Designs: 40% off
- Mscraps: 30-50% off
- Scrapmatters: 40% off and free with purchase
- Digital Design Essentials: 40% off
- Sweet Shoppe Designs starts their sales on Saturdays. They look like they have some cute kits coming up and probably a good sale (click HERE for previews). Check them out tomorrow.
blog trains/facebook trains.
Click on the images below to find the blog train where you will get FREE KITS!!!! I know it's a pain to go through each one, but some of my favorite kits are from blog trains. Hint: Don't download every part, only the parts you like.
| |  this isn't the blog hop kit, but it will coordinate with this. (this is scrapmatters free with purchase kit) | | freebies.
Click on the images to find the freebie.
games.
I never really have the time or interest to play the games that stores offer, but some of you may. They always give out freebies for participating in the games.
 The Lilypad has games and chats with prizes. Their games are easier and I will probably do some. See details HERE.
 Scrap Orchard has several games set up at different times. Click HERE to see what freebies will be offered when you play the games (it looks like a mega kit by the end).
 Scrapmatters has speed scraps too. Click HERE.
please read.
Scrap Orchard just announced that they will be selling photo books. Wahoo...except when I clicked on the link, I immediately thought that they were printing them through Viovio, a company that I have used to print all of my books. It is the exact same formatting and everything. Look at viovio.com to compare. However, Scrap Orchard states that their partnership is through Photobooks.pro, which suspiciously looks a lot like Viovio except for one thing. The 12x12 perfect bound softcover book on Scrap Orchard is $15.99+$1.95 a page whereas the 12x12 perfect bound softcover book on viovio.com is $7.99+$0.99 a page. THAT IS A BIG DIFFERENCE FOR THE SAME PRODUCT. Don't be tricked. I love Viovio and highly recommend it. It is the cheapest option out there with high quality printing. Go through their website, not Scrap Orchard.
So, I was working on an Easter kit. Then it turned into two different mini-kits. Oh well, you get both for free. There aren't many elements because I lost steam and ideas and ability. The good news is that I finally got Photoshop CS and Illustrator! That means that once I learn how to use these intimidating programs, you will get even better free stuff. The bad news is that this will probably be my last post for a while. I am moving across the country and taking several long vacations over the next two months, and I won't have a computer. So, I am taking a short break, but I will be back with tons of creative ideas in July. I'm very sad to leave y'all for so long because I just started the site. Please stick with me and I promise I will be back! I will still post freebies to my pinterest board "Scrapbooking Freebies," so make sure that you follow that board for the latest freebies during my absence from the blog. (scroll down for my free Easter mini-kits)
Here are some inspiring Easter/springtime layouts to help you scrap your Easter pictures. Click on the picture to link to the original page.
free easter mini-kit (number 1)
Page I did with the kit that is also available for download as a quickpage or template
free hoppy easter mini-kit (number 2)
The green gingham and blue polka dot paper from the Easter kit also match this kit
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Please, please, please use stitching and string from other kits for this alpha, I don't know how to make those myself yet.
| See you in two months!
(I will have access to email so I can answer questions if you have any)
Not much in the way of freebies today. But I read in the Scrap Orchard newsletter that iNSD, or National Scrapbooking Day, is coming up soon! i.e. LOTS of freebies and sales! I googled it and it is the first Saturday in May. Yes! I thought I would miss it because we are moving, but I'll still have a couple of days to download all of the goodies. Right now the Lilypad, one of my favorite stores, is having a storewide 30% off sale. Not great considering their kits are very expensive, but they rarely have sales better than that, so I would go for it if you have something on your wishlist there. Since there weren't any good freebies out today, I made my own for you. I wanted to have the Easter kit done by now, but that didn't happen, so today you get a quickpage and a template using the kit.
the page I did with it
the template
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the quickpage
| Download link for the Quickpage and Template: click here**Remember to send me your layouts to post to the gallery**
Sorry for the absence. I was spending time with family that came into town for Easter. As a warning, posts may be scarce in the next two months because life will be a little crazy with vacations, graduation, and moving across the country yet again (fourth move this year). I'll be back later with some Monday Muse inspiration!
 Sweet Shoppe Designs added new designers to their team. Each designer has posted a free mini kit or template for you to have. There are 24 FREEBIES ON THE PAGE!!!! Go here to see them all.
 Just Jamie free kit and solid papers. Go here.
 Miss Tiina free journal cards. Go here.
 Free templates at Shabby Princess-Don't forget that they give out around 3 a month! Go here.
 SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTERS! Scrapbook shops and designers have newsletters that usually give out free things. Like Cat Scrap gave away this free kit in their newsletter. Go here to sign up for the newsletter. I think you may be too late for this month's freebie, but you will get next month's!
 Scrap Orchard also gives out free kits once a month, broken up over each week. This is this month's kit. Go here to sign up for the newsletter.
Here are freebies I found. It's hard to list all of them throughout the week, so be sure to follow my new board on pinterest called Scrapbook Freebies (click on that for the link). I'll put all of my findings there and then highlight my favorites here on Friday.  First (and best ;) ) of all, don't forget to download my latest free kit from Wednesday. Find it under the My Freebies tab.
 Brittany helped me find these two amazing kits (only one is pictured)! I've used the yellow and gray one for tons of things. Find it here.
 Scrap Orchard is celebrating a birthday so they are having a 35% off sale. Check them out because some of my favorite designers have products there. Usually I think they are overpriced, but with the sale, you can get things for a good deal! One of their best deals is their mystery mega. They don't show you the whole kit, but they do show you the colors (pictured left) and pages people have made with it. This kit looks Disney themed, and I know we all love Disney. Check it out because it is only $4!!!!
 Cute peeps stamps! Download here.
 I love these even though I have no idea what I will do with them yet.
That's it for now. Have to run, but follow my pinterest board for all the latest freebies!
Today is not Friday, but it is a very special day. My mom's birthday! She the person to whom I credit my love for all things color and design. She definitely has an eye for both. And a closet full of red shoes. What can I say? Color is our weakness. This kit is inspired by and dedicated to my wonderful mom.  I also got inspiration from the photo below found on pinterest. Isn't it beautiful? I'm sorry but I can't seem to find the original artist. Anyone know? color me spring kit
And here's the kit. I went overboard on the papers, but with this color palette, I couldn't stop! The alpha was released a few weeks ago, so if you already downloaded it, don't download it again.
These are pages that I scrapped with the kit. Notice the inspiration from Monday? Please leave a comment and let me know what you think of the new kit!
As you may know, Facebook will force everyone to change to the new timeline format this Wednesday, March 28. I'm not a fan (where is everything?), but since we have no choice, we can at least make the best of the changes. One of the new things is a huge place behind your profile picture to place a cover photo, kind of like the one at the top of this blog. Facebook sets it up as just a picture, but if you are like me and you don't have any nice-looking skinny horizontal photos, then you can always turn to Photoshop for help. Here's what I created.
I'm sure that with this new change, many digital scrapbook designers will be coming out with templates and quick pages to sell for people who can't or won't create their own. If you read Tuesday's post, then you already know how I feel about templates. Google "facebook timeline cover photo" to see what other creative people have already done. I'm sure many other good examples will surface soon. To get you through until you make your own or come up with the next clever idea, I have some templates for you to download. They are not fancy and not creative (I'm in a creativity rut). The point is to get you started and you can add whatever you want to them to make them cute.
Download the templates here. Be sure to check in next week when I put up my new spring kit!!!!!!!As far as other freebies go, Oscraps is celebrating a birthday starting this weekend. That means that they will be doing a blog hop (i.e. free stuff) starting Sunday and probably have good sales.
Nothing much cute out this Friday. No freebies, and I wasn't even inspired by the new products that came out today. Sad day. Well, earlier this week I did see the herringbone papers in fun colors on Wishing Well Creation's facebook page. Just like her shop to download it. Also, this isn't quite a freebie, but one of my all time favorite kits by one of my favorite designers is on sale this week for 40% off. I think I paid more for it. Find it here. Have a FANTASTIC weekend!
I got the Nordstrom catalog in the mail this week. Talk about inspiration! I love that color is in season! (I am a color gal. Case in point: I only own one black shirt and no white shirts at all.) Plus you don't have to spend a million to get the spring look--Target has caught onto the trend and has tons of really cute colorful clothes, shoes, jewelry, dishes, etc. When I saw the above title in the Nordstrom catalog I loved it. I thought I would copy it by making a scrapbooking alpha and post it for y'all to download. It will eventually become part of a spring kit that I'm working on right now! There are full alpha sets for each of the 8 colors. I hate it when designers do multicolored alphas, but don't include all colors for each letter so I usually get two letters in the title that are the same color and next to each other. No problems with that here. Also remember to subscribe to email updates so you don't miss a freebie! Check back in on Monday for layout inspiration!
_Download the alpha sets here. _Download the font used to create the alphas here. Thank you Fontfabric for free CU fonts !  I also just discovered that Scrap Orchard puts new free templates up each week on their blog. This is this week's free template. Perfect for when you are stuck in a scrapbooking rut.
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