Bren's Blog

Technique Tuesday- Repeating Patterns and other stuff...

Well I had this fun post with all this wonderful information posted and typepad pulled a whammy on me and I lost the post I just got done working on.  Thank you so much typepad!  So here I am writing it yet again! 

OK. I made this cute tote last night and I plan on getting this onto etsy in a few!  It's a fun little carry all made out of heavy cotton with fun little removable fabric buttons on it. Not too big and not too small.

I've got some more fun tote ideas for the future.  A garden tote (spring is coming), a laptop tote, a snazzy little backpack tote, and a carry all with lotsa pockets for your goodies.

Do you guys see my new red wedges?  Way cute right?!!  My jeans are covering them up.  That's the curse of being vertically challenged.  Everything is too big for me (except for on my butt of course).  

While walking downtown I was so excited to see a KNITTING store!!  I was soo excited!  I'm going to head over there later this afternoon.  It will be so nice to have another option besides having to order everything on line.  Maybe they can special order me stuff!  That'll be nice.  When you have a serious yarn/fiber addiction like I do, you have to be able to feed your need! LOL

So I've decided to try to new things in knitting.  One being spinning my own yarn.  I bought a hand held spinning kit on etsy so wish me luck!  The other thing is felting.  I saw some felted bowls that were just gorgeous and I can see some in my bedroom and on the end table in my living room.  So I bought a book on that and we'll see how it goes!

 

Ok so I'm done rambling for now.  This weeks technique is making a repeating pattern and defining it in photoshop. Really useful technique for background papers if you're thinking about trying to make your own.  I also have a lil freebie for ya if you just keep scrolling down you'll see it!  I made it in honor of the new blog design for the up and coming holiday of which I used this exact technique to make the background for!

 

And here's the little freebie I told you about!  It's a layered quick page so you can take is apart and use it other ways as well!

Download Here- approx 50 mb

 

TTFN!

Techniqe Tuesday Tutorial- Reflective Image

 

Hi all!  Thank you sooooo much for coming by!  I have my first tutorial posted and I'm so excited!  It's on creating a reflective image.  I'm seeing this in layouts lately and this method can be used on just about any kind of alphabet you have in your digi stash.

Now I use Photoshop CS4.  So all my tutorials will be used with this program.  This particular tutorial should work in some older versions PS as well.  I'm not familiar with PSE at all so I'm not sure if this method will work in that program.  But if you do decide to try it in PSE, please let me know if it work out ok for you! 

 

If you are having a hard time seeing things (it's a bit on the blurry side if you ask me), there are some options down on the bottom of the view screen to help you out.  You can view a full screen version if you push on the little icon with the 4 little arrows facing out to the 4 corners.  Just hit (esc) to go back to a regular screen.  Hope that helps.

Also, if you have any questions, suggestions for tutorials, or for what I can do to improve my tutorials, please post them in the comments.

If you'd like to see this video on YouTube, Click Here!

 

EEEEK!! MScraps GRAND Opening and BLOGTRAIN BLOGTRAIN!!!!

I'm super stoked guys!  MScraps opens on the 30th and we're having one heckuva majorly huge blog train!  When I say HUGE I mean HUGE dude!!  I can even begin to tell ya all the goodies that are included.  The designers AND the ct over at MScraps have put together some beautiful products to play with!  And all for FREE!! 

Many of the QP's you'll find in the blog train were made using the freebies on the blogtrain and the MScraps Grand Opening Collab, New Beginnings!!  This is one Gorgeously HUGE kit guys!  And it's FREE with any $10.00 purchase!!

Ok so back to the blog train.  I should be stop number 4 on your blog train voyage.  If you've missed the previous stops, then your voyage starts at MScraps Forum.  You'll make your way back to me!  You'll want to be patient with us as we all come from many different places and the time zones are way different for everyone! 

And now on to my contribution to the fun!  I made a shabby little number for you all!  And omg I love the little vintage camera!  I might be making a full kit from this one soon!  Be on the look-out! 

Download A Shabby Moment:  Approx 60 mb

And your next stop on the blog train is BRENDA'S BLOG.  And make sure to stop by MScraps' forum and say hi to us!  We're a chatty bunch, you'll have a lot of fun!

Also check out the MScraps Blog for the latest goings on with our crew!

Thanks for stopping by and good luck on your hunt!

For all the crafty goddesses out there...

Ok ladies, I pulled another goodie off the shelf for you all!  This kit is near and dear to my heart as you all know I love me some crafts.  It's funkie and full of fun crafty goodness.  I hope you all enjoy it and please don't forget about the contest to win Sam The Snoman!!  Take a look below to see what that's all about!!

Sorry!!  No Longer Available  :)

Do you YuDu??

I happened upon a way cool gadget while channel surfing one day.  It's called a Yudu by Provocraft.  I thought this was just so cool!  It's basically an all in one silk screen/ screen printing machine.  It's not huge and costly like something you'd see in a professional screen printing business, those machines run on average about $1200.00 plus.  You can get this one for about $300.00. 

You can print on just about anything you can think of, even glass if you wanted to.  I was just so excited and decided to order myself one.  I got a few bonus things (extra screens, extra inks and such).  It also came with one ready-made design and a free t-shirt so you can practice.  It comes with all kinds of other goodies like a couple palette knives and a palette plate so you can mix colors, it comes with a color chart as well. 

Now what's cool about this machine is that you print (or draw with something like a sharpie marker) your design onto transparency paper.  Then you burn your image directly into this emulsion paper that's directly on the screen and then rinse the image and it's just magically there!!  

So I get all this good stuff and I'm like so scared that I'm gonna screw something up!  So I decided to be safe and try the ready-made screen and the free t-shirt just to see if I could do it without messing it up.  And you can see my results!!  Presto!  I rinse off the screen with plain warm water and a sponge.  The residual paint I just put right back in the bottle of ink with my small palette knife and I'm not wasting my money!

I let the shirt dry for about 20 minutes then heat-set it with an iron for a couple minutes and I'm done!   A screen printed t-shirt the same quality I'd get at the store.  And I'm such a horrible t-shirt junkie!  I even found a great site to order cute trendy baby-t's for wholesale prices!!  TrendyBlanks.

Now I can make whatever I want with as many colors as I want ON whatever I want.  I can't wait to make some throw pillows with like some pretty damask patterns on it for my chair!

You can do multi colored projects.  You just have to pull each color one at a time and mask out (with handy dandy mask or painter's tape) the area's that you don't want pulled on that round.  It's super easy!  Can't you just imagine the possibilities?  I urge you digi girls to do some research and check it out!  It's really cool!

 

Lookie at what I made...

Well I have every intention of making all kinds of fabulous goodies and getting them onto by poor abandoned esty store.  Knitted/ crochet stuff, some screen printed stuff I've put together (pillows and t-shirts mostly), some of my poly clay goodies... you know... stuff.  

So I make this cute little knitted hat with a pom pom on top.  I say to my trendy and oh so fashion conscious 12 year old daughter "Hey Breauna, try this hat on so I can take a picture of it."  So she throws it over her curly tendrils that she just "HAD to have" at the salon and of course looks absolutely adorable in it. 

And this is what ALWAYS happens and why I NEVER have anything on etsy.  She decides that she really has to have it and, well, Mom is such a colossal sappy sucker and can't tell her NO.  So there you go.  I have for your viewing pleasure yet another etsy project that's not actually on etsy per say.

I got a comment from a blog reader asking (and I really do appreciate you asking) if I would share some of my knitting project.  So I will from now on!!  Along with whatever else I happen to be working on (which is always something).

Shrugging shoulders...sigh...oh well.  LOL

Happy New Year!!! And it starts...

I'd basically given up on gdesigning.  I was tired, very sick, in and out of the hospital, and I said to myself it's time to stop.  I wasn't in contact with my creative team and I know they were all very upset with me (it's understandable).  On top of all that I was tired of all the politics that seems to go on in the digital scrapbook business.  I'm not one for gossip, nor do I especially care for being involved in drama.  I was so tired of it.  I would look at my photoshop program and I just didn't want to design any more.  I didn't want to talk to anyone about it either.  I guess I just needed the R&R ya know.  I did a lot of knitting and reading.  I reorganized my studio.  I got in really good shape and decided to become a certified personal trainer.  I bought a new house.  You know, I just lived life and enjoyed my two kids, my dog and family life.

I've been away from the business for several months and I've started to get that itch again.  I'm healthy again, I feel good and most importantly I want to design again.  And I get this sweet email from a new up and coming store looking for designers called MScraps (short for memory scraps).  And I was like "wow, talk about karma" so I said yes.  

So I'm off on a new adventure and I hope you come by and say hi to me every once in a while!  I'd sure love to hear from you.  I already have some of my old kits in the store but I have some new one's coming out on grand opening day which is Jan 30 if I'm not mistaken. 

But until then I hope you come by my lil ole blog every once in a while and you should certainly stop by the mscraps forum.  They're a really nice bunch of chickies.

Here's a lil something to ring in the New Year with!  This was my New Year's kit from last year and I think it's a fitting fresh start to offer it here on my blog!  Happy New Year everyone!  God Bless.

Not Available!  Sorry!!