Dawn Chorus (Mini Kit)

The Studio is having their annual design contest, so as I've been tinkering around with learning to design I'd thought I'd enter as it's always good for experience, the problem being that the first week of the design contest clashed with a very busy week for me at home.

My son turned eight, so I spent most of yesterday building the lego set he'd got, then I've got my new puppy who keeps me on my feet and I've got my mum staying for a week, so my entry was a bit of a rush job, and although I'm not expecting to get through the first round it was good to have a deadline to work to, without one it can take me weeks to put anything together. I only just finished it in time, but had to stay up until 1am to finish it.

So here's my entry, the theme was daybreak, and I decided to name mine Dawn Chorus.

You can download it here

Nuthouse-Scraps 'Design for me' contest (week 3)

I couldn't believe it when I checked to see who had gone through to round 3, and discovered I was one of the five. I had to read it and re-read it several times just to be sure (and even then I thought I'd get an email at any minute saying a mistake had been made).

I was still struggling with understanding vectors and getting a sharp image but the designers at Nuthouse-Scraps are great. A tutorial was written explaining it all, and I know I'm not the only contestent who benefited from it, (and yes, I think I'm finally getting there).

The most important thing I learned in week 3 was 'Public Domain Images'
I didn't know there was a wealth of resources out there that could be used by anyone and for any purpose. It certainly helped in the 'no cu' requirement part of the contest I can tell you.


So, for week 3, our kit was titled 'Summer Lovin', and here is my entry,


This one had 12 papers and nineteen elements

Download the papers here
Download the elements here

Nuthouse-Scraps 'Design for me' contest (Week 1&2)

The reason I've been a little quiet is because I entered the Nuthouse-Scraps design for me challenge, and made it through the first two weeks - I should point out everyone made it through the first two weeks :)

I entered it for the experience, because I know myself that I am in no way reason to be a 'real' designer, not just yet anyway, and I am so glad I did.

Cu wasn't allowed (at all) in the first couple of weeks, forcing me to make my own elements, and I can tell you. It was hard, but the sense of achievement at having made two kits from scratch is unreal. I feel so proud of myself.

Besides that, I learned all of the following;

Vectors for extracting instead of the eraser tool
That my elements have jagged edges (so I'm learning how to avoid this in future)
Bleeding edges (ditto above)
Some new software to play along with (Inkscape and .
What standards stores look for (and they are HIGH at Nuthouse-Scraps)
Making my own preview
Most of all, that I can design from scratch

I have never been in a contest where you get feedback, and I might have been mortified to discover the quality of my designing was terrible, but it was good to know and improve on it.

I learned more about designing in four weeks than I have in the last three months.

So, enough waffle.

As I'm on the CT, I was advised to sign up anonymously. The designers knew I was entering but not who I was, thus the reason for not blogging these kits before now.

The design name I used was 'Catchpole', and here are my kits from week one and two;

Week One: Live, Love, Laugh (PU/S4H/S4O)
(No CU products were used at all in this kit)


Download Here


Week 2: Beauty of the Sea (PU/S4H/S4O)
(No CU products were used at all in this kit)


Download here


I don't know if these kits will be of any use to anyone but I had a great time making them, and proved to myself that I can make a kit from scratch.

(Week 3 and 4's post to follow)

Studio Colour Challenge July

I've been a bit busy just of late, so I haven't been posting as much as I wanted to, but I did make a little mini kit for the Studio Colour Challenge;


You can download it here (4shared)

DigiScrapForum (DSF) Blog Train - July 2011

Hello to everyone visiting on the blog train.

If you're following it right through you should have arived here from Amandakay's blog. (If this is the first place you've visited and you'd like to follow the blog train from the beginning then you can start here).

Here is my contribution to the blog train;



Download via 4shared

Your next stop on the train is BeehavenDesign

Bug Kit (Mini kit)

For the CUtoPU challenge at Coolscrapdigitals we got to work with another of Addies CU products. It took me ages, but eventually I came up with this (which has 13 elements and not 12 - I really cannot add up today);

Anyway, I had good fun making it, and hope you all like it.
Download the papers here
Download the elements here

Studio Colour Challenge April

Somehow, and I'm not sure how, but I managed to find the time to make a little mini kit for the April colour challenge, but to be honest, I found the colours really hard to work with. I really need to practice with dark coloured paper, it took me ages to get one that seemed to work.

Anyway, here is what I came up with; six papers and nine elements.


Click here to begin your download.

Click here to visit Studio for some more mini kits with the same colour scheme.

Free mini kit for you

As some of you might know, I had a little go at doing some desgining for the Studio colour challenge (march) and made a quick page, well I had a couple of nice comments and quite a few people have downloaded it so I thought it should only be right to finish the kit I started.

One comment in particualr really spurred me on, so I'd like to say a big thank you to lilnayzeedayzee.

So here is the mini kit. It has six papers and eight elements (one of which is really a cut out paper).

I also made one for brag books, and resized all the papers and elements so they shouldn't be giant image size when you load them up.



Download links; ** 4shared have been having a few problems today, seems to be alright now 16.35 London time**

12x12 mini kit (Full size)

6x4 mini kit (Brag book)