Making Strides

If you didn't notice your browser redirecting you, you can now get here by typing ajbcrochet.net! It may not be as exciting for you, but this is a huge deal for me. :)

I won't be posting again until next week because this Saturday is my son's first birthday and Sunday is his party! Here's a photo from his 1 year session yesterday:

I made all of the decorations and the invitations for his dinosaur themed party by myself with a digital scrapbooking kit, photoshop, and a printer. I'll have to update with pictures sometime next week. I'm totally in love with them. :)

And I will leave you with this scrapbook page:

1 year ago from this coming Saturday, I met the little boy that would become my life! He gets so much more amazing everyday and I only hope that I can convey how immensely I love him throughout his life. :)

Trying Something New

So, I've been digital scrapbooking, and I've been looking and playing with different ways to make my own digital elements. These definitely aren't the greatest since I'm very new at this, but I thought I would share these with everyone else, and if anyone's interested, I can share the videos I used and show how I made the staple and button since I did those myself.

You can download them here. Includes a button, staple, gem, flower, and 2 ribbons. The flower is the only element with a drop shadow included. I would love to see how you use these on your pages if you choose to share. :)

Forever And A Day...

...is how long it's been since I've updated. I keep thinking every day, "I need to do something on the blog today" and then I don't get to it, and now it's been almost 4 months. Holy cow.

You may have noticed the new blog theme, inspired by SPRING! :)
I made the background and header myself using The Cutest Blog on the Block's background tutorial and digital scrapbooking elements from Pixel Scrapper's Birds and the Bees blog train (This link takes you to the forum where all of the designers linked their creations, so in order for it to take you to the correct page, you must first register or log in to Pixel Scrapper's main website).

So, I've been working on some pretty cute things lately and thought I would share some of my favorites. :)

These are a couple of stitch markers I made for my cousin. I've recently been playing with clay a little bit.

Flower headband.
This is still for sale in my shop on Etsy.
Pattern for the flower is here.
Pattern for the headband is here.

Striped hat photography prop (before weaving all ends).
Pattern is mine and will be released sometime in the next couple of months.
The color choices were the photographer's but I fell in LOVE with this while making it!

Frog hat.
This is also my pattern that will be released hopefully sometime soon.
I thought this thing was just SO darn cute!

Rainbow Ripple Baby Blanket.
Pattern from Attic 24's Neat Ripple Pattern starting with 73 chains.
This is my latest finished project. I couldn't STOP working on this blanket. I started it at about 5 pm, worked on it a few hours that night, and finished the edging at about 4 pm the next day. It worked up SO fast! I think I only spent like 5 or 6 hours on it (not including weaving in all the crazy ends!).

I've also been working on getting my photography business started back up again and I got a Canon Rebel t2i to play with. Here's some of my favorite pictures I've taken in the last few weeks:

And finally, last thing (I promise!), a new scrapbook page that I'd like to show off. :)

I've only done a 9 month update before this, so I'm hoping to catch up on all the others. Aiden turns ONE in only TWELVE days so I need to get going on his baby book! 

NOW...let's hope that I remember to get my butt back on here within the next few days! I'm hoping to get a couple of my patterns tested this week and I have lots of Easter photos to edit, so I'll probably make it on here for SOME sort of update. :)

I'm a Hoarder...of Pictures!

I really don't need to be doing this Project 365. I already take way too many pictures as it is! I've been trying to organize my picture folders by year and month, and it's taking FOREVER. Wanna know why? Because...stashed on my computer...is over 13,000 pictures! Mostly from 2006 on, but some are images that were scanned on my computer to make my graduation and my grandpa's 60th birthday slideshows. Half of them are pictures that I took, uploaded on my computer, but never went through them, so I probably only really WANT about 25% of them. Then I'm hoping, when I'm done, I can scrapbook and frame the special ones and put the rest of them in a blurb book by year. It's much cheaper and time saving than trying to print all of the images in 4x6s and put them in photo albums. And a space saver too.

I'm a novice in digital scrapbooking, but I figured since I loved doing paper scrapbooking and I'm learning to play around in photoshop, I might as well try it. I got advice from a friend on finding page and element freebies, but these are what I've done so far:

And here's my pictures for the last few days:

Day 4:
January 5, 2013
Our boots lined up by the sliding glass door.

Day 5:

January 6, 2013

Got a picture on my phone and for some reason, my SD is acting up

and it didn't save. :/

Day 6:
January 7, 2013
Yup...it's that kind of night...

Good night! :)