Art Cupboard: Catherine Designs

Showing posts with label Catherine Designs. Show all posts

Posted by Diana Martin In: After 5 Designs, Catherine Designs, CT, digital, inspiration, layout, scrapbooking, walk through

Petit Jardin + A Digital Walk Through

A gorgeous new mini kit Petit Jardin by Catherine Designs from After 5 Designs was released yesterday and I wanted to share a digital page I created using the April Shot as well as using some of Catherine's part of the After 5 Collaboration kit Little Garden:

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Can you believe that this mini kit {below} is only $2.00!! Here's what is in Catherine's April Shot:

(most elements include one or two shadowed versions)
4 beautifully textured papers ( 12" papers, 300 dpi, .jpg )
1 bird
1 basket
1 herb pot (with one stacked version)
1 bucket
1 duck
3 butterfly (green, blue, orange)
1 wheel ( with a frame version)
1 snail
1 raffia bows
3 garden tools (green, white, orange) 2 'petit jardin' WA

several embellished clusters (including some elements from the store collab 'Little Garden')

PURCHASE | HERE

Each month the After 5 Designs store designers create a collaborative kit that coordinates with the designer's individual shots, here is Catherine's part of the collaboration:

The collaborative kit Little Garden has some of the best digital scrapbooking designer's in the industry including:

The April Guest Bren Boone, Bisontine, Catherine Designs, Cinnamon Designs, Createwings Designs, K Studio, Kimla Designs, Jazzmin Designs and Lily Designs.

The Little Garden kit is only $5.00 for 5 days, how awesome is that!! All those goodies for 5 bucks! Be sure to check out some of the other pages created using this gorgeous kit. You will find some in the gallery here & here, and on the kit page in the store.

I just love brown's and green's, makes me think of dirt and grass and the smell of freshly cut lawn....lol!

A sweet friend asked if that was my garden on my layout and no it's not. I simply created the scene using all of Catherine's goodies from her shot and her part of the collab.

QUICK NOTE: Catherine has posted a tutorial towards the end of her blog post on how to create a natural looking scene on your digital pages.

Once this was created I flattened the image and ran a photo action from My Four Hens Photography called Eggshell from the Freshly Vintage Action collection. I took this paper:

And used the Polygonal Lasso Tool in Photoshop to cut the center circle from the page and promoted it to it's own layer. I used this circle as a mask and clipped my layout to this circle.

I changed the layer to Multiply in the layer palette so that the inner shadow of the original paper would show through:

The scene is looking a little washed out so I duplicated the layer and changed this layer to Soft Light to brighten it up a little:

Now we are left with this:

I really want this page to POP so I changed the outside paper to this:

I simply clipped the paper over the outer side of the circle cut out, duplicated the layer and changed this layer to Multiply:

Now once I turn all the layers back on, added a few more embellishments and a cute title using Catherine's Alpha called Aqua-Lime Alpha {which coordinates with one of Catherine's gorgeous kit called Guy Things} Here is the end result:

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Hope you enjoyed the little walk through on how I created this page. As always, any questions, shoot me an email or leave me a comment....I love comments......lol!! Wishing everyone a very Happy Easter! xo

Posted by Diana Martin In: 2P's, After 5 Designs, Catherine Designs, CT, digital, hybrid, inspiration, Kenner Road, Miss O, scrapbooking, thoughts

One of Those Weeks!!

Having both of the girls home from school and preschool the last two weeks sick as well as giving me their germs really took it's toll on me this last week. I hardly got anything done that I had planned to do but I did manage to have a cooking day with the girls on Saturday. After cleaning the house in the morning we gathered our supplies ready to make chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing and shaved white chocolate on top.

Frame | Texture

Little Miss J proceeded to lick the icing off two of the cupcakes whilst I wasn't looking. She had washed all of the evidence of chocolate icing off her face when I ran to get the camera. She had me in stitches. Miss O wasn't too keen on the shaved white chocolate on top of the chocolate icing. She loves both types of chocolate but not mixed together at the same time.....crazy child!

Speaking of Miss O, when I picked her up from school on Thursday 18th of February, she looked terrible so I felt her head and I could tell right away she had a temperature. She told me that she had told the teacher at lunch time that she felt sick and the teacher replied "You will be fine". I could feel my face burning with anger!! Let's rewind almost 9 years ago......

For those of you who don't know me so well, Miss O is now 8yrs old, turning 9 this year. She was born prematurely at 24 weeks gestation so she was born just over 3 months early. Here is a photo of her 13 days after she was born and if you look closely the regular hospital scales say she is 0.555kg. She could fit in the palm of your hand and your fingers would fold over her like a blanket.

Due to Miss O's lungs not being fully developed, she was given large quantities of oxygen until she was able to breath on her own. She spent the first 3 1/2 months of her life in hospital before I could bring her home. I lived 3 1/2 hours away from the hospital so I stayed at the hospital for one week, went home for one week and so on. I was able to express milk for her for nearly 3 months before it ran out. I would freeze the milk in little sterile jars, pack it up in a special ice box and take it up to the hospital every second week. We called it the milk run...lol! The weeks I was at home expressing milk every 3 hours for her day and night (yes I set my alarm clock to wake me so I could plug my breast into an electric pump which totally made me feel like a cow) made me feel so strange. With no baby to feed or cuddle. They were the longest 3 1/2 months I have ever had. There were numerous operations, lung drains, blood transfusions, xrays, scans....the list go on.

One of the complications of being born so early is that Miss O has chronic lung disease or bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) as well as being an asthmatic. Ever since Miss O could understand, she was told that if she feels sick at all she must either tell her family members or her teachers. Every school she has been to know Miss O's complete history. Her first school was an early intervention school, then preschool with an aid worker, then onto mainstream school until she turned 8yrs of age. Then the education department stepped in to assess her ('bout bloody time I say!!) as she has a severe developmental delay and finally took her out of mainstream school and put her in a special ed class with other children who have difficulties too. But she had to change school's at the beginning of this year which was really hard on her. She is a very shy girl and needs constant reminders of the little every day things you or I would take for granted.

So the numerous people such as the principle, vice-principle, teachers and aid's who will be teaching Miss O throughout the year had been informed all about Miss O and her needs. We started the meetings a few months before school broke up last year. So that leads us back to Miss O letting the teacher know that she was sick and me picking her up from school and taking her home to find out that she had a temperature as well as wheezing from her asthma! For goodness sake, some people have no idea how fast asthma can knock you off your feet. And with Miss O, it happens really fast. For the first week and a half she stayed on the lounge and hardly moved as the congestion in her chest, the constant coughing as well as asthma take up so much of her energy and she is hardly able to move. So I marched right up there last week and demanded to have a meeting so I could explain to them once again that if Miss O tells any teacher she is sick, I am to be contacted immediately. There were a few other choice words that were said (nothing rude or no swearing, just a little bit of an irate mother coming out) so I hope they have got the message now! She went back today so I hope she has a good day today.

Phew......that turned into a little bit of a long story didn't it....lol! From cupcakes to babies so I might as well finish with some inspiration! Most of you know by now that I was asked to join the Kenner Road design team using their digital goodies over at 2P's, thank you so much to everyone who left me a congrats comment and email, you are all so very sweet!! Well I had my first blog post over on their blog about how to create a basic background using digital papers in Photoshop. I was so very excited and nervous I mean look at all the other amazing ladies on the design team, talk about major talent!! If your not a digi girl at all, go check it out when you get a chance, it's very basic but informative. There will be loads more info and digital inspiration over on the blog so make sure you check it out regularly. Here's a hybrid layout I created using the basic background tutorial over on the blog:

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The rest of the goodies are from KR paper kits Madeleine and Milk & Honey. The only other goodies I have had time to create is for Catherine Designs over at After 5 Designs. She just released this gorgeous mini kit called Feelin' Springy for only $2!! Now that's a bargain:

Here's an Easter card I created (yes it's a little bit early...lol) as well as a digital page using the above kit and the A5D March Collab:

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Look at that little crocheted heart.....

....loving these big time right now. I got a little carried away making them when I was watching over Miss O whilst she was sick. I even have some flowers too....but you will have to wait till I create something so I can stick them on it!

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Before I go I just wanted to let you know that the news I was supposed to tell you on the 1st of March is still coming......lol, I just haven't been given a release date as yet but as soon as I find out I will post about it. I can't wait to show you guys, I had soooooo much fun with it! Well that's it for me, off to get some dinner ready. Feeling lazy this afternoon, I really don't feel like cooking......wish the kids were old enough to make me something. Oh wait, Miss J makes a mean vegimite sandwich!!! Yes, I ♥ vegimite. I'm an aussie after all.....lol!!

EDIT:
After dinner tonight (yes I ended up cooking.....lol) we were outside on the porch having a cup of tea about to come come inside and watch MKR (my kitchen rules) and little Miss J was inside watching the beginning of the show when she runs outside and says "Mumma, there is absolutely no woom (room) for ewwa (error)" These quick little moments in life are to be remembered, documented and shared. How I love my dear little munchkins!!! Makes my heart melt, it does xox

Posted by Diana Martin In: After 5 Designs, Catherine Designs, CT, digital, inspiration, layout, scrapbooking

Let's get Digital!

It was wonderful to sit down at the computer with Photoshop open and create some digital pages. My first digital for the year as a matter of fact! As much as I love getting my hands (and art room) dirty, it was quite relaxing to listen to some music and play with an awesome digital kit! I am talking about this one:

The kit is called Re-Creation23 and it's a collaboration between Catherine Designs and Createwings Designs available HERE. It has so, so many beautiful embellishments included in this kit and the papers are stunning! Here are three pages I created yesterday using the kit.

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If that isn't enough eye-candy for you, you can always go to Catherine's blog HERE and to Dawn's blog HERE. They have both compiled a huge gallery with all the amazing pages their creative teams have designed. It's astonishing to see the diverse array of artistic styles that make up a creative or design team. Each artist brings their own to the table each time to showcase such amazingly designed kits such as Re-Creation23. It's always a pleasure to create when we have so many amazing designers out there pouring out their heart and soul into something that is just simply inspirational!

I'm off to paint and get messy!! Got that deadline fast approaching....lol! All will be revealed March 1st!

Posted by Diana Martin In: altered book, Catherine Designs, Christmas, hand made, hybrid, inspiration, scrapbooking, tutorial

Hybrid Altered Book - Super Quick Tutorial

Last month I was asked by my good friend Catherine if I could create something using a collaborative kit she was taking part in called Delight. Here is a preview of the kit:

FIND OUT MORE HERE

Of course I said yes, that I would be happy to create something for a great cause. I created these digital pages using this huge kit:

CREDITS

The last digital page inspired me to create an altered book using the layout as my guide.

SUPER QUICK TUTORIAL:

It was quite simple to create and didn't take that long at all to put together. I took the measurements from the open book I altered and created another layout using those dimensions in Photoshop.

After preparing the book, I printed out the new layout and cut out the photo using a sharp craft knife. I placed the layout inside the open book and used the layout as a template to mark on the page where I had to cut out my window. Using my craft knife, I cut through all of the pages.

I marked lightly on the layout where the fold of the book would go and used a bone folder to fold the layout in half. I then adhered the right side of the layout down only. This allows the pages to move freely when the book is opened and closed.

Decorate the book cover now so if you need to use any brads or eyelets, they will be hidden with the ribbon in the next step.

Attach some ribbon to the inside front cover page and the inside back cover page, adhere the first page down to hide the ribbon, brads and/or eyelets and do the same for the back cover.

Here are some shots of the finished product:

The Cover

The Inside

If you have any questions, please be sure to leave a comment, I would be delighted (no pun intended....lol) to answer them ;c)

As mentioned in a previous post, I am going to make one of these for my sister for Christmas but I will be using only traditional products this time.

I have started working on a new project for my niece for Christmas....here's a little sneak peek:

Have a creative weekend and get messy!!! xxoo

Posted by Diana Martin In: After 5 Designs, altered book, Bisontine, Catherine Designs, Christmas, CT, digital, inspiration, scrapbooking

Digital Dose of Christmas

I have been quite busy these last few weeks with Mum starting physio and two sick girl's as well as appointments for Miss O about what will happen next year at school. She has to complete a whole bunch of tests to assess her abilities now she is 8 years of age. For those of you who do not know, Miss O has a severe developmental delay. She is classed as being at a beginner kindergarten level even though she is about to go into grade 3 next year. Loads of work to do to prepare her for next year!

With Christmas fast approaching, I have decided to make a few gifts for my family this year. My sister always goes on about how talented I am (she doesn't know better poor girl!) so I am going to make her an altered book I think....more on that in another post.....
Speaking of Christmas, I scrapped with my first CT Christmas kit for 2009 the other day. Catherine Designs and Bisontine (I was able to be a guest for her for the month of October, thank you so much Sandrine!) have teamed up again and released a gorgeous kit called Esprit de Noel.