Merry Christmas Eve! Are you ready for Santa? All of us at GingerScraps want to wish you and your family a Very, Merry Christmas!!
Everything in the Shop by: CHRISTMAS & Shop by: HANUKKAH categories will be 50% off this week!
Remember, $10 spent in the store gets you this wonderful kit for free!
Our designers have some great holiday kits for you this week!
You have one more week to get those challenges done. Any 10 completed challenges gets you this great kit as a reward!
Challenge Spotlight: Miss Fish Memory Mix Up Challenge
Here’s the fourth installment of Challenge Spotlight. This month we’re going to dive into Miss Fish’s Memory Mix It Challenge. Every month, Juli (aka Miss Fish) presents us with a different Challenge focusing on preserving our memories. For December, she said, “This month’s challenge is a Recipe Challenge. No, not the kind where I give you different “ingredients” to put on your page. The kind where you scrap your favorite recipe. It can be one for the holidays, a family hand me down recipe or a new favorite. Your choice!” I thought it was the perfect topic for this month and also for this Blog post! I’m going to share a baker’s dozen (plus one – see what I did there? 🙂 ) of YOUR recipe layouts. Some of them sound pretty tasty! [Each layout is hyperlinked to its location in the Gallery in case you’d like a closer look or to leave some love.] Let’s have a look at how this Challenge shakes out!
First up, gmae shares her taco seasoning with us. It’s pretty similar to the one I make, and her “recipe card” is packed with taco-related embellishments.
I LOVE this one from jam-on-toast! The colour palette is so wintery, and that photo makes my mouth water. The tag tucked behind the recipe is telling the truth. And can we talk about the way she created her title – it looks like meringue!!
What caught my attention with curio‘s recipe is the rustic look it has. It’s a brilliant choice for a cobbler recipe, right? But that photo… yummmmmmmmmm!
How amazing is it that linweb has this recipe in her mother’s handwriting? (With one small addition. 😉 ) She has a lovely memory of the first time she made the pie and has embellished her layout with some pecans.
I think most of us have made sugar cookies as children or with children at least once. chigirl has photos to prove it for her family. The kit she chose for this layout is particularly appropriate, and let’s talk for a second about using a striped paper border to pick up on the striped sweater!
Everybody has their own favourite hot chocolate recipe (and some of us make it from a tin) but how many of us has a beautiful winter layout with ours printed on it? I’ll have to try hichchei‘s method one of these days.
CathyS has cleverly provided us with a bakery-worthy recipe for chocolate chip cookies. I love how she’s surrounded her photo with all those baking-related elements.
This one is a historical recipe dating back to 1914! The original pecan pie wasn’t the syrupy custard packed with nuts that we know today, and it had meringue. The way fontaine presents the recipe has a heritage look to it.
<record scratch> Time to move away from the sugar for a second. Daydreamer‘s recipe is a savoury one, set in eye-catching yellow.
Okay, back to sweet! Flighty-188 makes her own animal cookies using a 60+ year-old recipe from her mother-in-law. I love how she found a baking-themed kit to match the cookie colours.
Pups-r-Paps has a savoury recipe for some luscious lemon chicken; it sounds similar to a scampi recipe I’ve made and loved. She kept her layout simple so the photos could be the focus.
Family traditions are what connect us to both the past and the future. Reading alexandergirl68‘s journaling brings that message home pretty clearly! On special occasions when I was a child my mom used to make lime Jell-o salad with apples and celery in it. None of us liked it and it eventually faded into memory to be replaced by peanut brittle, of all things! I found a fool-proof microwave recipe and became the maker-of-peanut-brittle-for-all. I could make it in my sleep.
What could be more “holidays” than snickerdoodles? This is basketladyaudrey‘s version. I notice she doesn’t put nutmeg in them, so I might have to try them! [But I’d halve the recipe, since I should NOT eat 8 dozen cookies before they go stale…]
And lastly, Pixel Palette brings us a recipe for lemon cookies that sound am-AZING!
The Studio Recipe Card II template
I didn’t have lunch and now I’m STARVING!! What family favourite recipe do you know off by heart? Which of these will find their way into your collection?
PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3EVLYXL
Goodness. Can you believe it’s ONE WEEK UNTIL CHRISTMAS. Seriously, where has the time gone? I am happy to say that I have finally started shopping for gifts. Only a couple of things so far, but I’ve started. That counts for something, right?
Remember, any $10 spent in the GingerScraps store gets you this great kit for free. This is a great kit for those gingerbread house pictures!
Now let’s check out some of the new goodies in the store this week. As expected, there is a lot of Christmas kits here.
Have you grabbed the December Monthly Mix? {santa’s coming to town} (are you ready?)
We’re halfway through the month. How are those challenges going? This kit is just so cute.
DIY Worn Wood
Last week I asked for some tutorial suggestions and you came through for me. There are some interesting topics coming up, ladies! This week, I went for a quick trick, since I’m super-busy with other things right now. (I bet I’m not the only one, either!!)
Before we get going, I want to thank Lee for the idea of creating custom worn wood papers. I played around and was shocked at how easy it can be. A few tips though… 1. Choose your woodgrain paper carefully. It should have some visible texture and its underlying colour family should work well with the paper you want to rough up. 2. Choose your second paper carefully too. It’ll look best when it’s got a highly-contrasting pattern or when it’s a solid. Some of my examples will show you why. 3. Practice using Undo! (CTRL/CMD>Z) If you pay attention to where the marching ants are you shouldn’t need it a lot, but there will be times when you just have to back up. Let’s get started!
This wood paper came from the GingerBread Ladies‘ collab Pizza Party. I recoloured it because the original is really yellow and it looked AWFUL with the buffalo check paper on it. But it has some good texture and the planks are well-defined. The buffalo check paper is from GingerBread Ladies‘ Crafty Christmas.
So go ahead and drop the patterned paper on top of the wood paper. The following steps may not ALL be required, so take a good look at the result after each Cut stage to see if you’re satisfied with the outcome and stop when you are!
You want the patterned paper on top of the stack, but you don’t want to see it for this part. So turn Visibility off. Make sure the active layer is the wood paper layer. Then click on the Magic Wand Tool. Select the mode that looks like a sparkler. The default for this tool is New Selection, but if you’ve used the tool recently, it may be on the last setting you used, so make sure you’ve got New Selection on. Set the Tolerance slider to 75 and only tick the Anti-Aliasing box.
On the wood paper, click your Magic Wand on an area where there’s visible texture. The marching ants will appear.
Click on the Refine Edge button and when this menu appears, choose these settings: Edge Detection to Smart Radius, Shift Edge to 25% and Output to Selection.
Now turn the patterned paper layer back on and make it the active layer.
To rough up the red paper, Edit>Cut or CTRL/CMD>X will remove the red paper where the marching ants are.
I found that there was still too much red paper visible, so I went back to the first step, turned the red paper off and activated the wood paper layer again. With the Magic Wand Tool, I chose Subtract and set the Tolerance to 50. Then I clicked the Wand on one of the gaps between the planks.
This time, in the Refine Edge menu, I unticked the Smart Radius then adjusted the Contrast slider and the Shift Edge slider to 25%. Output to Selection.
Then I repeated the Edit>Cut (CTRL/CMD>X) step.
I still wasn’t happy. In this situation there’s no substitute for trial and error, so I went back to the Magic Wand Tool, Subtract, Tolerance 100. This time I see a lot of marching ants, so it might be the ticket.
But I still decided to Refine Edge with these settings: Contrast 5%, Shift Edge -20% and Output to Selection.
And then I Cut the selection away from the patterned paper again.
It isn’t all I’d been hoping for, although it is very rustic-looking.
Because I’m always trying to “get it right” I thought I’d see what happened if I played with the Eraser Tool to enhance the worn look. I tried a LOT of brushes before I found one that worked the way I wanted it to. I used a (PSE default) Dry Media Brush, the one inside the box (sorry for the cell phone photo but it was the only way I could capture the menu).
Then I randomly followed the contours of the exposed wooden areas to tidy it up a bit. I do think it looks a bit more worn.
But did I really need to do that Eraser step? I tried a few more papers to see if just the Magic Wand steps would be good enough. Interestingly, I got different results each time. For this example and the next I’ve used papers from GingerBread Ladies‘ A Holiday in the Baking.
This sample gave me a headache. It just wouldn’t cooperate! I had to CTRL/CMD>Z so many times!!
In one of my OOPS moments, I forgot to switch between patterned paper and wood when I used the Magic Wand, and had this happy accident when I used the Wand on the patterned paper instead.
I changed up the wooden paper for this one from GingerBread Ladies‘ Sweater Weather. It has some roughed-up paint on it and oodles of texture.
It looks really insipid, but I think with a brighter paper it could be amazing!
Let’s see what happens when I use a plaid paper from Sweater Weather.
Or… If I Invert the selection? Magic Wand>[click on the rough part]>Select>Inverse (CTRL/CMD>SHIFT>I)>[activate patterned paper]>Edit>Cut (CTRL/CMD>X) and I’m in love!!
Who knew it could be so easy to get such interesting results?
Next Tuesday is the third Tuesday of December so I’ll be dissecting one of the monthly Challenges. It’ll be a little light reading just a few days before Christmas. Stay tuned!
[PS… remember, the coloured bold text contains embedded links that will take you right to the shop!]
PDF Version: https://bit.ly/33vL9rE
Happy Friday my fellow scrappers! Can I just say, it’s been a very long week. My husband was out of town for most of the week and I didn’t realize how much he does for me when he’s here. Mostly cook – and I missed that. I’m glad to have him back home.
Remember, any $10 spent gets you this great kit for free! Doesn’t this look like it will be so much fun to use.
Let’s see what new items our designers have this week.
Hope your challenges are going well. Any 10 completed challenges gets this fun kit as a reward!
Wimpychompers!
Well, here we are at the end of another year. December is probably the busiest month of the whole year for most of us, given there are so many festive occasions on the calendar. I hope you have a few minutes to get to know Christina, who’s nom-de-plume is Wimpychompers. [I wish I would have thought to ask her how she came to choose it! Missed opportunity.] Let’s just dive in!
J: This is probably the one question people are really curious about. What led to you deciding to become designer?
C: I had started getting interested in digital signatures and started designing those and writing tutorials. I finally made the switch to digital scrapbooking for my own personal use (it was easier to clean up with little ones). I loved it and finally became a designer.
J: I think that’s the main reason most of us have been drawn to digital scrapping – the lack of mess! Can you tell us a little about where you do your creating?
C: My couch in the family room with a tv and a laptop desk. It’s super comfy!
J: Right?! I work in an IKEA wing chair in my living room with the TV on too. I always feel like this question is like asking you which of your kids is your favourite… which of your current kits in the GingerScraps store is your favourite?
C: Just You and Me I think, it’s just sweet and all about love.
J: CUTE!!! Kids on mo-peds, how creative!! This might be a little harder to answer. If time travel was possible, would you go back in time, or into the future?
C: Back for sure, my kids are all teens and I would love to go back and hold them as little babies once again.
J: Omigosh, yes! That would be so wonderful. Mine are all well into adulthood, but I remember when they weren’t. If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?
C: Swedish Meatballs, our family recipe is a favorite.
J: Hmm. I might have predicted that… being part Swedish myself. But then I don’t know anything about that branch of my family – my great-grandmother is a bit of an enigma, and if time travel was a thing, I’d go back and ask her to tell me all about them! Is there a super power you wish you had?
C: Flight, it would be cheaper to travel.
J: And so much easier! No airports, passports, security pat-downs, middle seats, delays, customs. Yes, please! Although I did meet someone famous on a flight, a country music songwriter who brought his guitar on as his carry-on. Can you play a musical instrument?
C: Yes, I can play the flute!
J: I love the sound of a flute and have an old school friend who plays. Did you want to be a musician when you were small, or something else?
C: I saw myself as a ballerina, a teacher or a children’s book author.
J: Oh, that makes sense! All the little people in your designs… you could have illustrated children’s books too. Now, aside from necessities, what is the one thing you couldn’t get through the day without?
C: My mascara, without it my eyelashes are blond and I look very tired!
J: I wish mascara was all I needed to conceal how tired I look. Last question: If you came with a warning label, what would it say?
C: Warning, tired of people’s crap! (lol)
J: Have you been stalking my Twitter feed? We could be friends!! Christina, thanks for chatting with me; I know how crazy life is for everybody right now. I hope the rest of December is kind to you.
Happy Friday!! I hope your week has been wonderful. Our weather is gorgeous right now. Mr. Winter has decided to stay away for a little so we can have some nice warm weather. We could use some rain though.
Remember, any $10 spent in the store gets you this great kit. Love those gingerbread people.
Now let’s see what goodies our designers are offering this week.
Have you gotten started on your challenges for December? Which one do you do first? Any 10 completed challenges gets you this amazing {jingle bell rock} kit.
Happy Black Friday!!! Just like those great sales in your favorite stores (physical and online) we are having a great sale at GingerScraps as well!
Many of the designers have put together Black Friday/Cyber Monday DEALS!
Remember, any $10 spent in the store gets you this cute kit for free!
Our designers have really gone all in with new kits, grab bags, and much more.
You still have time to get those challenges done. Any 10 completed challenges get you this great kit!
Welcome to another Friday. This week has just flown by. It’s hard to believe next weekend is Thanksgiving in the US. Do you have big plans for the holiday meal?
Remember, any $10 spent in the store gets you this cute kit for free!
Our designers are really starting to kick into winter and holiday mode and it’s showing in our previews for this week.
Don’t forget to work on those challenges. Any 10 completed challenges gets you this kit as a reward.
Hey there everyone! I hope you have had a great week!!
Remember, any $10 spent in the store gets you this {Be-YOU-tiful} kit for free.
We have a great mix of topics from the designers this week!
Have you picked up the November Monthly Mix? Look at that adorable pumpkin in the preview!
How are your challenges going? Only 10 completed gets you this great kit for free. Did you know there are over 25 different challenges to choose from?