Happy Anniversary to the MDS Blog Hop!

If you've arrived here from another My Digital Studio Blog Hop blog I'm sure you know by now that it's the 1-year anniversary of the blog hop! When I was asked to join, I figured it would be a great reason to update my blog more - I never thought that it would evolve into what it has. These girls have become such good friends of mine, I've learned a TON about MDS from the other ladies in the hop, and some of us got to meet each other at Stampin' Up!'s annual convention a few weeks ago. What a fun and amazingly talented group of girls to be involved with!

Lots to celebrate today!
First, the hop challenge. Our challenge was a to make a card, any card. Since it was a special occasion I wanted to make it bright and fun so I used this template card (which are now SUPER-EASY to find, just click the "Templates" option when starting a new project and you can look through them ALL at the same time, not just by the size you are creating it in! I used a template because I just didn't have a lot of time to do make today's card. Why not?
I've been UPGRADING, baby! Upgrading MDS, that is! (and doing lots of playing around, too!) ;)

MDS2 HAS ARRIVED!
It's everything you've been looking for in a digital design program and more! I used just a few of the new features on my card for the hop today - let me tell you what I did!

You can recolor your embellishments!
Audrey and Natalie showed you how to do it with real jewels this week, but MDS2 will now let you recolor jewels (and any other embellishment)! See my rhinestones in the flowers? See how they're yellow? In the embellishment menu there is a new button called "RECOLOR" - just click it and pick which color to use!


You can color your stamps!
Just add your stamp, then on the Stamps menu, click on the new button next to Match Color that says "COLORING TOOL". How cool is that? See my "Thanks"? I used the recolor tool to add different colors to the thanks instead of just leaving it all white like they had in the template. And seriously - who doesn't like to color? :)

WHAT? THERE'S MORE?
That can't be it, right? There's a CELEBRATION going on, right? YES! YES! YES!
Some of us have decided to give out little "presents" or like my friends in England call them, "pressies". And here's mine to you - this fun little 5"x7" printable. I'm going to print mine and keep it at my craft room desk. Just click this link to get the PDF file of the image. You can print it at home or print it at your local photo printer, I only ask that you please only use it for personal use. :)

To make it I used the Seriously Awesome digital stamp set, and the new Chevron Punch kit (which also has some AMAZING chevron stamps and a template too!)

WAIT! THERE'S ONE MORE THING!
The MDS blog hoppers are challenging YOU today to create your own card and upload it to the My Digital Studio site. Just tag your sample with the keywords "MDS Blog Hop" so we'll know how to find it!

Hope you enjoyed celebrating with me today and thanks for stopping by! Now head on over to the other ladies using the links below and see what goodies they have in store for you today!

1. Jeanna Bohanon

2. Rochelle Gould

3. Mandy Grant

4. Julie Leblanc

5. Amber Meadows

6. Terri Mongeon

7. Aly Schilling

8. Cindy Schuster

9. Erica Shaw

10. Heather Summers

11. Holly VanDyne (you are here!)

FREE Digital Download - Word Tags

I love fonts! And I love designing fun digital goodies - I just haven't done it in a while. So to end this fun day I've created a little FREE digital goodie for you! These four word tags are .png files which means you can use them in just about any graphics program you use. And yes, you can use them easily in My Digital Studio - here's how!

1. Download the file by clicking this link. Save it where you can find it easily - like on your Desktop.
2. Find it and open the .zip file - it should give you an option to extract the files. Do that. :)
3. Open My Digital Studio and create a new or open a current project to use them with.
4. On the left side of MDS you will see a "Browse" button at the top of the column. Click that and find the extracted folder of the Word Tags on your desktop. Click OK and you'll have the tags on the left side of your screen. Drag them into your project just like you would a photo.

The words are done in Early Expresso, so they will match your other My Digital Studio elements. Enjoy these and if you use them I'd love for you to link back to your project in a comment - I'd love to see what you do with them!

Thanks so much for playing along today - it was such a fun event! I'm going to keep the contests and sales open until midnight tonight and will announce the winners here on the blog tomorrow. :)

October 24 - A Dramatic Rant

I don't think I've ever been much of a drama queen. At least, I try not to be. But this weekend, life gave me no choice. On Friday I took my beloved 8-year old Nikon DSLR to school with me to get some shots of the kids for the yearbook. I didn't realize that the external flash wasn't locked and my camera slid off of it and bounced on the hard hallway floor a few times. {insert tears and drama-filled sobbing call to my hubby here}

It's now broken, WAY broken. So is my heart. Since I've gotten it, it's practically been my third child. So as a final farewell, I did a quick My Digital Studio page of my favorite picture it took on the last photo shoot I took it on. And until I get a new camera you'll probably be seeing more digital items on my blog.

Last time I purchased some MDS downloads, I purchased a duplicate Hello, Doily digital brush stamp that I used on this layout. Would you like it? Just post a comment on this post and I'll randomly pick a winner from everyone who posts a comment on Thursday morning and email it to the winner! It really is an awesome brush to use on your digital goodies!

Digital supplies used in this layout:

1/2" Scallop Dots Ribbon - Digital	Vintage Overlay Stamp Brush Set	Simple Stitches and Corners	Write Stuff II Digital Kit	Lighthearted Stamp Brush Set
All Holidays Stamp Brush Set	Hello, Doily Stamp Brush	Greatest Moments Stamp Brush Set	Top Note Shape - Digital Download

InLinkz.com

April 20 - Altered Childrens Book

Back in 2006 when I was a finalist for the CK Scrapbooker of the Year contest - as part of the hoops we had to jump through for the big prize we had to create a class proposal for a Creating Keepsakes University online class. First they said my class proposal was going to be used (yay!) but then they did away with the online classes (ugh!). So I was left with the class which I've just hung onto for almost two years now. So - time to share it!

I won't post the text here because I made it into a PDF document with much more info that will fit on here so if you'd like to download it, just click the link below. It's in a .zip file to make it smaller, so just download that then extract the PDF to view it or print it out.

ThermOWeb makes these GREAT laminating sheets that I put over my photos/journaling so that as often as my girls look at the book then can't smudge it (and crayons wipe off!). They love this book and want me to read it to them at bedtime all the time, so the laminating sheets really do help with the wear and tear. And for the journaling you can use yesterdays digital downloads, just download and print them on colored cardstock that will match the book you are altering!

Click here to download class PDF!

April 19 - Journaling Download

Time for another digital download! :)
These are journaling spots and there are a few different ways you can use them. When you download the .zip file and extract the contents you will have two different types of files. The first file is a .abr file. This is one brush set file with each journaling image as its own brush. Just copy the .abr file into your Photoshop brushes folder.

The other files included in the .zip file are .png files. These open up as regular image files without a background. Which means you can use them a few ways - you can just open the one you want then print on any patterned paper and cardstock that you put into your printer OR you can just include them in any digital layout you may be working on.

If you have any questions on how to use them just post a comment and I'll be happy to help you out!

Click here to download!

April 2 - Free Journaling Download!

I can't believe I've done this blog for over a month and haven't done anything digital on it - I really have to be in the mood to do it and just hadn't gotten there yet. But during the last few days the digital bug has bit. So I thought I would make something to share here. As you know from the last few posts I'm really into the fun little journaling squares lately so I decided to make some fun ones as a free download.

Just click here to download the PDF file of the image to the right. It is an 8 1/2" x 11" file, so it will print on any cardstock or patterned paper you stick in your printer to print on. Then just cut out the words you want to use!

Instructions:

1- Download the .zip file (it is about 2mb and may take a few minutes to download)

2- Unzip the file and extract the PDF file.

3- Open the PDF file and print!

Hope you like them and enjoy using them! :) If you need help using them just post a comment and I'll help you out!

Oh and one more thing - the font I used is one of my favorites called Tainted. Just in case you would want to make matching titles or whatever!