1…2…3…4…Monthly Baby Pictures!

My little guy is 4 months old! I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed and how much he’s grown. Remember back when I posted about taking his One Month pictures? Well I’ve kept up with the monthly photos and I just finished creating two pages for his scrapbook that show just how he’s changed over the last four months.

 

I am loving digital scrapbooking. Once again, I was able to complete both these pages using elements and papers found entirely for free. These pages started with a template from Shabby Princess that I just rotated for the second page and were completed with more papers and elements from Everyday Mom Ideas (love her kits!) and Design House Digital (please note that while the kit I used is no longer free, they still have tons of free stuff to offer). You can even get a free 30 day trial of Photoshop from Adobe to get you started!

I have only 8 pages left to complete Nathan’s 40 page album. My Photobook voucher expires on June 25 so you can bet I’ll be busy scrapping until then! Please let me know in the comments if you’re interested in seeing more of my work so I know whether to put additional pages in future posts!

 

Digital Scrapbooking for Baby

A while back, when I still pregnant, a purchased a Groupon deal for a photobook from Photobook Canada. It was a great value and I knew that we’d be taking tons of pictures once Nathan was born. The Groupon expires next month so I went to the website, downloaded the program and was disappointed to discover that none of the background papers or embellishments were my style at all! Not wanting the money I spent to go to waste I did a little thinking and realized that I could create complete digital scrapbook layouts and just add them to the photobook as full page photos – problem solved! It’s taking a lot more time than I had anticipated but I’m really excited for how the book will turn out.

Here’s one of the pages I’ve created so far.

The best part about about digital scrapbooking is that there are a ton of freebies to be had if you’re willing to spend the time looking for them. For example, I made the page above with the free Deer and Darling Kit from Everyday Mom Ideas. It comes with all the papers and embellishments you need to create a ton of unique layouts. Julia has create a bunch of other free kits as well, all with great quality pieces!

Google and Pinterest searches will yield of a lot of other great free supplies. And, if you can’t find what you need for free, the stuff you have to pay for really isn’t that expensive and you can use the pieces over and over.

For any scrappers reading, do you scrap digitally or the traditional paper way? Any freebie websites you’d like to share?

 

DIY Month by Month Baby Pictures

My baby is growing faster than I could have believed. Every day he changes and learns and amazes me. The time is going so quickly and I don’t want to forget how Nathan looked and acted at any given stage so I decided to take monthly pictures that I could put together in an album at the end of his first year. I know lots of people go to professional photographers for these kinds of pictures but, if you’re like me, that option is a bit too expensive. The good news is that there are a couple of easy ways to make these pictures memorable yourself. Here’s my 1 month collage for Nathan.

First, I love the idea of including a number in the photo for how many months old your baby is. Parties by Hardie created monthly stickers/iron-ons that you can download for free or you can download cute monthly signs from Mom & Wife to hang in the background of your photos. We don’t have a colour printer so I went even simpler and just cut my number one out of scrapbook paper.

 

Second, it’s a great idea to choose a stuffed animal or other object and photograph your baby next to it each month. It’ll provide a sense of perspective so you can truly see how baby has grown. Alternately, you can photograph them on the same piece of furniture each month. Or you can do both like the adorable series over at Bunny and Dolly.

Last, I think it’s a nice idea to do a bit of journaling along with your photos marking some of your baby’s milestones, likes and dislikes. As you can see above, I did mine electronically but you can also print your photos and add some writing to them like in a scrapbooking layout

At the end of a year you’ll have a collection of photos and memories of your child to cherish for years to come!

 

My Memories Suite Giveaway!

UPDATE - I'm told people are having trouble leaving comments. If you can't comment using your account then just leave me an Anonymous comment - just be sure to leave contact information in the body of your comment!

I've written before about digital scrapbooking and how great I think it is so you can imagine how excited I was to be contacted by the people at My Memories Suite about trying out their software and holding a giveaway for my readers!

Downloading this digital scrapbooking software is a snap and once you've got it installed it's incredibly easy to use. I made this layout in about 10 minutes using one of the free page layouts (yep, I said free!) available on the My Memories Suite website. All the elements were there and all I needed to do was add my photo and text. Click on the picture for the full size so you can see all of the pretty embellishments.

I also put together this calendar pretty quickly. It's so easy to coordinate background papers with the various embellishments. There are a bunch that come preloaded with the software and there are a ton more available for download.

But you can use the My Memories Suite for even more! I purchased the Spooky Halloween Pack and made some cute Halloween greeting cards.

Want to Win?

So now that you've seen what this software can do are you excited to win? Entering is easy - just visit the My Memories website and choose your favourite digital paper pack or layout. Then come back here and leave me a comment telling me your choice. Be sure to include your email in your comment as well. This entry is mandatory.

For extra entries (please leave a seperate comment for each):
1. Be a Follower of Sugar and Shimmer
2. "Like" Sugar and Shimmer on Facebook

I'll be choosing a random winner next Friday at 7:00 PM EST so be sure to leave your comments before then!

Can't Wait? Use the Discount Code!

So excited that you don't want to wait until next Friday to see if you've won? No problem! I'm also sharing a special discount code that's good for $10 off the purchase of the My Memories Suite. You can get the software for only $29.97. And there's more - use the code and you'll also get $10 to spend in the online store so you can stock up on templates and embellishments. That means this code has a $20 value! To purchase the software with the special discount code just click here and then enter the following code during checkout: STMMMS48651

I'm sure you'll love the My Memories Suite as much as I do so enter the giveaway or use the code today!



P.S. Linking to:

Something for Nothing - November Desktop

It's time for another fabulous freebie desktop from the Shabby Princess blog! I cannot say enough about how much I love the Shabby Princess and all their wonderful freebies. I've used many of their free digital scrapbooking kits for various projects and they always impress. If you have an interest in scrapbooking and haven't yet visited their site, I encourage you to check it out.

In the meantime, here's my desktop for November. You can click on the picture to see a larger version. I used one of my favourite pictures of my husband and I, taken two Novembers ago. A lot has changed since this picture was taken, we weren't even engaged yet at the time. Anyway, if you like what you see, click on over to get your very own that you can customize with one of your favourite pictures. I'm already looking forward to what they'll come up with for December!

P.S. Don't forget to enter my giveaway!

Something For Nothing - October Desktop

I'm back from my brief hiatus. I had a great couple of days in Toronto but now it's time to get back to the business of blogging :)


You might remember my previous post about Shabby Princess and their awesome blog. As I mentioned then, one of my favourite things about the blog is the free monthly desktop. Each month they give away a themed layout that includes a calendar. All you have to do is add your own photos and you've got yourself an awesome and personalized desktop wallpaper.


I just completed mine for October. I love the layout but I didn't really have any Halloween themed photos. Instead I used a somewhat creepy picture of my cat. What do you think?

Try it yourself and see just how easy it is. Just visit the Shabby Shoppe Blog for the download!

Something for Nothing - Digital Scrapbooking

I love scrapbooking and the endless varieties of layouts and designs that you can create. What I don't love is how much stuff you need to buy to make it happen. I know, I know, there are people who can make really great pages with very few supplies but I would argue that those people are much more artistically gifted than I am! And thus I have boxes and drawers full of scrapbooking supplies, so much stuff that I don't even really remember half of what I've got stashed away. And when it's so much work just getting everything out, I rarely find myself motivated to get creative.

That's where digital scrapbooking comes in. Nothing to buy (except the odd layout or element online) and everything neatly stored on your computer. It can sometimes take a bit to master but, once you've got a handle on it, it's so easy to create your own scrapbooking works of art. Tonight I want to share two of my favourite digital scrapping resources.

The first is paint.net. In order to scrapbook on your computer you need a program that can edit photos and that lets you pull elements together. I will admit that the Adobe suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) are my favourite programs for this. The problem is that they are really expensive. Enter paint.net! It's a photo editing program that you can download for free from www.getpaint.net. It doesn't have all the functionality of Photoshop but it has everything you need to create awesome layouts. If you've used photo editing programs before then paint.net is a cinch to use. If you're a complete beginner then there are help files and a forum where you can pose questions to other users.

The second resource I want to share tonight is ShabbyPrincess.com They've got a great selection of free kits to download. They come with paper, letters and matching elements and they make putting together pages a snap. The downloads are pretty big so they can take a while depending on your connection speed but they are well worth it. Last Christmas I used the Holiday Recipe Collection to create a cookbook for our work recipe exchange and I got a lot of compliments. I've also used the Promise kit to make really pretty baby shower cards. All of these kits are great for cards and I plan to use the Holiday Magic kit to make my Christmas cards this year!

The other thing I love about ShabbyPrincess is their blog called the Shabby Shoppe Blog. If their main site doesn't provide you enough inspiration just hit the blog for more free downloads, reader layouts of the week and unique project ideas. They also post a free wallpaper each month that you can customize with your own photo. Check out September's wallpaper that I've customized with my favourite wedding picture. And I did it in paint.net :)

So to recap: paint.net + ShabbyPrincess equals no muss, no fuss, no cost digital scrapbooking that anyone can do. Happy scrapping!