Rubber Stamping & Card Making with Yapha

As part of today’s presentation on teaching Visual Literacy through Digital Scrapbooking, I made up a few scrapbook pages to show different ways teachers could incorporate digital scrapbooking into their courses. I made these pages using Stampin’ Up’s My Digital Studio. At the end of my presentation I will be demoing how to use the software, as well.

If your students need to do a family history report, a family tree, immigration report, homeland report, or report on a historical time period, a heritage style scrapbook would be a great way to present the information. This is an actual picture of my great great grandmother and her three daughters.

Any type of biography would make a great digital scrapbook. You can find a lot of historical photographs and documents online at the American Memory Collection. Below is a scrapbook page about the world famous aviatrix, Bessie Coleman. (It also was created for this week’s Stampin’ Addicts Scrapbook Sketch Challenge.)

The final page I wanted to show you could be used for a book report. How great would it be to have a every student in the class do a two-page spread as a book report, then make them all into one book that students could look through when they wanted to find something to read? I would love to put something like that in my library!

What other ideas do you have for digital scrapbooking in the classroom?

I am presenting tomorrow at the Southern Regional Conference of the California Association of Independent Schools. My topic this year? Teaching Visual Literacy Through Digital Scrapbooking and Storytelling. (I like to weave my obsession with stamping and scrapbooking into all aspects of my life.) Over the next few days, I will share most of that presentation with you. If you would like to read the source material that I used, you can find links to it all on the LibGuide I created. Here are my opening slides, created in My Digital Studio, of course.

One of the main reasons that teaching visual literacy is important is that children believe everything they see. By learning the basics of design, they will see how to manipulate images, as well how to communicate effectively through them. This will open their eyes up to the messages other people are sending via imagery.

Rabbit, rabbit! It’s March first and there are new downloads available for My Digital Studio (and your digital studio, too). First to answer a few questions about these downloads.

Yes, they do in fact count towards Sale-a-Bration benefits.  (How awesome is that?)
No, there is no shipping charged on them.
Yes,  they are available for immediate download.
No, you cannot put them on a workshop order. They must be ordered online via my website (click on Shop Now).

Here are this month’s new releases:

121063 Satin Ribbon $3.95

120171 Mini Project Boxes $1.95

120172 Spring Shades Designer Series Paper $4.95

Let me know if you have any questions about these or any other aspects of My Digital Studio.

Yesterday was super exciting and exhausting as we finally got to meet and take home our new Great Dane puppy! His registered AKC name will be Echo v. Evans Hijack My Heart, but we are calling him Jack. His mother Annie is a champion, and his father Humphrey is only  points away from being a champion as well. We’re hoping that Jack will follow in their footsteps. In the meantime, we are enjoying his adorable puppy self. Eve has wanted to do nothing other than snuggle him since before we even got him! She was so excited when he fell asleep in her lap last night, that I just had to take a picture. It seemed to be the perfect picture to use for both the Stamping 411 Saturday Sketch Challenge and the Pals Paper Arts Challenge.

I did it in My Digital Studio, of course, while the puppy is sleeping beneath my legs. One more good thing about My Digital Studio — no small pieces for the puppy to chew on! This is an 8″x8″ page. I figure it’s never too early to start on the scrapbook!

If you are in the Los Angeles area and would like one-on-one lessons in My Digital Studio, please contact me for more information.

Get ready to accessorize your digital projects with two new digital downloads for My Digital Studio! The Sending Love epoxy brads and the Corduroy Buttons digital downloads are perfect for adding depth and dimension to your digital projects. Of course they coordinate perfectly with other exclusive Stampin′ Up! papers, designs, and colors.

The Sending Love expoxy brads come in three colors — Pretty in Pink, Real Red, and Chocolate Chip.

120169 Sending Love Epoxy Brads $1.95

The Corduroy Buttons come in three styles and five colors — Pretty in Pink, Real Red, Summer Sun, Chocolate Chip, and Basic Gray.

120170 Corduroy Buttons $3.95

You know what the best thing about the digital buttons and brads? You can use them on as many projects as you want and never run out! I love that! No hoarding necessary! You can order this now and download them immediately! Visit my website and click on shop now!

Wow! There are some more new downloads available for My Digital Studio, and each one is cuter than the last! I’ll show you them in second, but first, some great news! In addition to ordering albums, cards, and calendars, you can now order individual pages in either 12×12 or 8.5×11. Great news for those of you who have been looking forward to doing some hybrid scrapbooking!

Okay, here are the new downloads, most of which are based on the Occasions Mini Catalog:

My Sweet Pea Digital Kit $9.95

Wow! It comes with  48 patterns of Designer Series paper, a five-piece stamp brush set, and eight felt embellishments!

Recipes by Design Digital Kit $9.95

The kit includes a designer template, an eight-piece stamp brush set, and 16 elements for you to choose from—all the ingredients you need to make a recipe book that will last for generations.

You're Invited Digital Invitation Kit $3.95

This kit has everything you need—Designer Series paper, tag, embellishment, and stitching—to make irresistible invitations for your winter events.

Textured Card Stock $4.95

Your digital crafting supplies just aren’t complete without the Textured Card Stock digital download for My Digital Studio. With this download, you get 36 exclusive Stampin′ Up! colors of textured card stock that will add depth and dimension to any digital project.

I am so excited about these new additions! If you are as excited as I am, you can head on over to my website and start shopping now!

Alright, here they are, the last three months of the calendar I made for my parents. I know you’ve been anxiously waiting to see them, so I thought I’d put all three months in at once, instead of making you wait until tomorrow to see December. I’m considerate like that!

October has to be Halloween right? What else could it be?

For November, I used the quintessential “olives on the fingers” picture. Everyone has one like that from Thanksgiving, right? Is there another way to eat black olives?

For December I used pictures taken this week while we have been here visiting. It was fun to turn them into a scrapbook page so quickly. Makes me want to scrapbook life as I go along. What a crazy idea that is!

I hope you enjoyed looking at the calendar! Just a reminder that today is the last day to order from the Holiday Mini Catalog. The Build-a-Bear items, My Digital Studio, and the Shimmer Paint will continue to be available, but everything else is gone! Make wise choices!

Today’s My Digital Studio is about Opacity. Opacity has to do with how see through something is, or how opaque. A window is 0% opaque – you can see through it completely. A wall is 100% opaque, you cannot see through it at all. A gauzy veil might be about 30% opaque — you can see it is there, but you can still see through it. You can use the Opacity settings to lighten up some of the images and patterned paper on your projects. You can also use it to make a watermark. Take a look at the pages below, and also yesterday. Play around with the opacity settings, and see how it changes this. Remember, you can always undo!

In August we took our epic drive across the country. One of our stops was Hershey, PA.

September is the start of school and also Rosh Hashanah. Thankfully, both use an apple for the symbol!

I’ll be taking a break from the calendar for a few days, since I have some other exciting projects to show you, but I’ll be picking it up again on Monday. Be sure and stop by for the Occasions Mini Blog Hop on January 1st, 2nd, & 3rd!

Today’s My Digital Studio Tip is lettering. You have two options for adding text to your projects in My Digital Studio. You can use the fonts that are on your computer, or you can use the alphabet stamps that are in My Digital Studio. What you do is up to you. The only downside to using the stamps is that if you want to make them really large, they may pixelate, which is a bad thing. For the most part, I’ve just been using the fonts on my computer.

We are into the summer months here! For June, I featured pictures of my Dad and Eve in honor of Father’s Day.

July has a series of pictures we took at Old Sturbridge Village in Central Massachusetts. Eve and I had a lot of fun exploring the recreated town, especially since we were right in the thick of reading all of the Little House on the Prairie Books. It’s not the Prairie, but the time period is about right.

Be sure and stop back tomorrow for more!

Today’s My Digital Studio tip — the undo command. I love it. Use it often, that’s my motto! Sometimes, when using My Digital Studio, it is easy to rotate when you mean to resize, or resize when you mean to move. If that happens — DO NOT PANIC! Just stop, go up to Edit at the top, and choose undo. Everything will go back as you had it. You can “undo” multiple steps, as long as you have not saved since doing them. Then, when you have it how you like it, save!

Moving on in the calendar, we have April and May.

April focuses on Passover, especially the frogs! I tried to make the background of the first page be reminiscent of matzah. What do you think, did it work?

May has both Mother’s Day and my mom’s birthday, so I used those as the theme.

Feel like making your own calendar yet?