2007 September | Scraps Of Mind

Archive for September, 2007

Posted by karooch on

September 24, 2007

My ScrapBlogging Journey - Part 1

Welcome to Scraps of Mind. I'm delighted to see you. Why not check out the site, and if you like what you see, subscribe to my RSS feed and get daily updates delivered to you. If you're not sure what the RSS thing is, then check out this 'RSS made easy' post. Thanks for visiting and I look forward to seeing more of you.

Family Background and the Air Force Years

My back ground is a bit United Nations-esque. My Father was an Irishman who met and married my Mother whilst on a Scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking, hybrid scrapbooking tour of duty in Malta with the British Royal Air Force. They had to fight beaurocracy to get married but fortunately for me, they succeeded.

I was born in Malta and at 3 months old we returned to Britain where we lived for the next ten years with a year’s interlude in Ireland whilst my Father did a tour of duty on Christmas Island as part of Britain’s Nuclear Program.

We then spent three years living in Cyprus. Great years from my memories although shortly after we arrived a civil war broke out between the Greek and Turkish population of the island and that seemed to put my parents off a bit.

My siblings were all born in different places with a brother and sister born in different parts of England and my youngest brother born in Cyprus. You’d think with that much variety in my childhood years I’d be swimming in photographic memorabilia, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately not so.

My parents weren’t the snap happy type and the photos I do have are few and largely of very ordinary quality. I think longingly of the missed opportunities to capture those memories on film.

We returned from Cyprus when I was fourteen, and we were based in Lincolnshire, England. I attended my sixth and final school and completed my High School education there.

My parents had long held plans to emigrate to Australia, and they decided that as soon as my Father’s current contracted term with the Air Force was completed they had better make their move in case my sister or I, who were in our teens, started a long term serious relationship with someone and there was a danger of the family splitting up.

Next Stop, Australia

So at seventeen I stepped out onto the tarmac of Tullamarine Airport, Melbourne for the first time and took my first look at Australia. I have to say that I was disappointed. I was expecting dirt roads and kangaroos all over the place so the bitumened roads and brick buildings were a severe shock.

We quickly settled in to life in Australia, I married and eventually had my beautiful daughter Seona. We did actually take a few photos when Seona was born. I must confess, I had followed in my parents footsteps as far as the lack of interest in cameras and taking photos went. But Seona’s birth sparked an interest to capture some pictorial record of her early days. Sadly this photographic burst didn’t last very long. By comparison with the amount of photos that I take today they were still a rarity. It would take almost a year to complete a single film of 24 pictures!

When Seona’s father and I went our separate ways my life changed again as I was now a single Mum needing to provide for my daughter. I worked full time and started studying for my Bachelor of Business degree at night for the next six years; through Seona’s primary school years. Thank God for my wonderful Mother. She held everything together and was a second Mother to Seona.

Harry Chapin’s Cat’s in the Cradle was the most influential song for me at this time. I used it to remind myself of what my priorities were when pressures from work and study were gobbling up my time. I didn’t want to be like the guy in that song. As a result Seona and I have always had a fantastic relationship, even through the ‘turbulent teens’ and it’s the most valuable treasure I own.

Part 2 of the story to follow.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

Posted by karooch on

September 22, 2007

Words to Live by

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind,

but how to get old ones out.

Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture.

Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.

Dee Hock

Posted by karooch on

September 21, 2007

Five Freebies on Friday

Here we go with Freebie Friday again. Have fun with some more free scrapbooking stuff.

Remember to leave some love when you download your freebie. It costs you nothing and means a lot to the designer.

Hop over to Emily Powers’ blog and pick up these gorgeous doodles with bling.
Some yummy stuff over at Kim’s A Constant State of Amusement. Check it out.
Lemonaide Lucy Designs has some cool freebies on her blog. you have to scroll down because she doesn’t keep them together in a freebie category.
Pick up a pack of paper at Keeping up with the Johnsons
And to wrap up this week, a cute quickpage from Karel’s Blog.

I’ll be Back

Hi everyone. By the time this post uploads to Scraps of Mind I’ll be on that big silver Emirates bird, winging my way to Venice with my Travel Buddy, Yvonne. I know, I know, it’s tough work but someone has to do it.

So I just wanted to let you know that whilst I’m gone Scraps of Mind will still continue to pump out cool and interesting stuff to keep the scrappin’ good times rollin’.

We have some terrific Guest Bloggers to entertain you whilst I am away and they have come up with some great articles which I know you’re going to enjoy. And just so you don’t forget me, I’ll be sharing my ScrapBlogging Life Story with you in a four part series (I figure you couldn’t be expected to handle that much of me all at one go). And I’ll have some ‘On the Road’ posts too, as well as a variety of other articles.

I may not be able to respond to all your comments whilst I’m gone but I will definitely be reading them so please don’t stop taliking to me, and to each other, in the comment section. Seona (bless her heart) is going to be in the drivers’ seat and will field any problems that might arise with the site and will probably add to the comment discussion in my place along the way. In fact this is going to be quite an exciting experiment in the life of Scraps of Mind: we always seem to be doing something new, and now it’s ‘remote blogging’. The only thing I won’t be trying is scrapbooking on the road. That will have to be for another kind of trip. But I will be keeping a journal, like every good scrapbooker should, of my experiences for the inevitable album on my return.

So you’ll continue to get your daily dose of Scraps of Mind whilst I’m away. In fact you probably won’t even miss me. But I hope you’ll fake it a bit when I return in October.

Arrivedirci my friends, stay tuned and I’ll talk to you soon.

MORE Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed

Product Review

Some of you may remember a review I did a few months ago on the suite of computer video training tutorials from Scrap Girls called Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed. These are a terrific resource for those of you who are wanting to get started with digital scrapbooking but are needing help in understanding how to get the scrapbooking goodness out of your photo editing software so you can make wonderful creations painlessly. I tried to find some bad things so say about the product, just so the review would seem more balanced but unfortunately (??) I couldn’t find anything to mark them down on.

Now I’m going to talk to you about the follow up set of training videos, More Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed. And I’m kind of in the same boat.

I do like the quality of the products put out by Scrap Girls. They always have such attention to detail. And these training videos are no exception.

More Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed takes up where the first set of videos left off. And where SSSR was very careful to take you by the hand and show you the basics of your software functions, MSSSR is much more gung ho. This training takes no prisoners! More Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed is definitely not for the beginner digital scrapbooker.

Experienced Digital Scrapbookers read on…

MSSSR takes you from creating the wonderful digital scrapbook layouts that you learned how to do in SSSR to learning the tricks and techniques for designing your own digital scrapbooking papers and elements! These are techniques you can apply to your layout creations too; to take them to the next level. But if you’ve ever thought that it might be cool to try your hand at designing then this training will really give your aspirations a quick start.

Here are just some of the secrets you will learn:

Take the world’s easiest shortcuts to creating your own backgrounds, embellishments, and alphas.

Make sure that you don’t make the biggest mistakes that digital scrapbookers make when they create layouts.

Dip your digital scrapbooking self into some of those “other” cool tools that are sitting there waiting in your software for you to use such as paths, masks, the drawing pen, and more.

See how easy it is to install and manage new Custom Shapes and Styles in Photoshop (or PSE or PSP, depending on which software you use) so that you can make things that are creative and unique.

Learn advanced tricks for using tools that you already know and love.

Watch Ro make some beautiful papers and get a chance to peek inside of her layers. (How up close and personal can you get?)

See a new way for coloring doodles.

Get “IN” on creating your own brush sets. (You do NOT have to have those impossibly long brush sets frustrating you anymore. In fact, when you learn this trick, you will wonder why you haven’t been using it all along.)

Find out why Custom Shapes are so important to you.

Learn how to cut out a title from a background or a photo.

Now to be honest with you, I personally am not interested in creating my own digital kits. Frankly maintaining this blog and doing a bit of scrapbooking on the side takes up all my time so I’ll settle for just creating layouts. But I’ve found this training enormously good value in teaching me how to squeeze the best out of my software. I find I learn much better when I can see a full visual demonstration than when I just read the instructions on the screen or in a book; even with pictures. So this type of training just suits me down to the ground. I can watch the video and pause it whilst I try the technique out myself and go back and replay if I still haven’t ‘got it’.

And I love the nacky little ‘insider’ tips and techniques you learn that aren’t the sort of thing you’ll find in the product manual. Sooo cool.

The important thing is to recognise that this training will not work for you if you are a beginner or if you do not have a good level of understanding of your software. It assumes you’ve been using your software for some time and know what you are doing, and that you just want to take things to the next level. So if you’re not at that level please don’t consider this product. But if you are a reasonably experienced Digital Scrapbooker who knows her way around her digital scrapbooking software, and is interested in learning some cool insider tricks and tips…check out More Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed. And if you do, let me know what you think.