Happy Valentines' Day

Happy Valentines' Day!
DH and I don't usually celebrate Valentines' Day as we find it terribly commercialised but yesterday (on the eve so it's still regular prices) he brought me to a jazz bar for the first time in my life. We like listening to jazz, so he thought live jazz would be wonderful! It was! The only thing was we don't really drink, and had no idea what to order, finally settled for a mocktail and something raspberry that tasted like cough syrup! lol
But better than that, I made a fabulous card for him with this layout which I printed out on tracing paper, and attached to the inside of the card. Can you tell it's in the shape of a heart? We had started taking pictures of ourselves by looking into a camera we held at arms length, because we hardly have pictures of the two of us on trips and the boys are still too young then. Well, these are a collection of such shots taken in HK, Singapore, US, Japan, Malaysia, I turned them into black and white to unite them. I love this layout and he did too! Can't wait to share it with you, scroll all the way down for the template link!
Credits: It's you I love quote by Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals, ribbon tie and angels stamp by Gina Cabrerra, We will be friends quote by Jackie Eckles, I 'heart' you word art by Studio ELlie, heart patch by purescraps, clip from kiki's springtime kisses, background paper by TracyAnn designs
Today the scripture passage I read included Mark 1: 7 " where John the Baptist said of Jesus :" the throngs of whose I am not worthy to stoop down and untie." WOW. This really helps me to picture a glimpse of Jesus' Greatness and my unworthiness, and helps me appreciate a little better how great His love for me. May you know His love this day when the world celebrates love.

And I want to tell you of the blog of my new found friend Lynette, you must go check it out here . She does beautiful photo and digiscrapping art which she shares DAILY for FREE, and also shares beautiful words of inspiration and truth. What a dear she is! Thanks Lynette!

I'm behind in scrapping my project 365, but intend to catch up and will share more templates then! I will try to make more 365 templates too as requested!

Thanks to Rebecca who highlighted to me that the Shutterfly offer is only for CK books, well, since I got started, I'll still be hurrying to finish the remaining layouts of my 2008 photos. I'm so proud of myself I did the below layouts in less than one and a half hours each. Normally I take up to 3 hours, mostly spent on searching for the perfect background paper (!) and on arranging the photos and making the shadows, of course. How long do you normally take per layout?
Credits: Background paper from Lauren Reid's Create Wings, and everything else from Michelle Coleman's Island Adventures


Credits: Background paper by Gina Cabrerra, Stamped swirl by Lori Barnhusrt,stitched flower by Dani Mogstad, word arts by Vinnie Pearce, alpha by Sarah Robinson, you & me word art by Krystal Hartley


These templates are now available in the store thanks for looking!

Download this heart shaped template HERE and I'm excited to see what you make from it! Email me with a copy (and indicate if you don't mind me showing it on my blog) to yindgs at yahoo dot com dot sg.

Being a parent

Well, admidst the chinese new year festivities which ends today, I have finally caught up with the boys' birthday prayer layouts which is something I want to do annually (last year I started making layouts - see them here). This year I got dh to write the prayers! I love it when he writes, both because it is rare, and because i love his thoughts and words. Credits: background papers both by Weeds and Wildflowers, Love and ABCD wordarts both by Emily Powers, cream heart by Mira designs, glitter star by Loreta Labarca, red letter f by suzy scraps, square stitches by Margote, grateful and heart shaped word art by Weeds & Wildflowers, circle stitching by Natali designs.
I have made them into templates for you, scroll all the way down!

Being the boys' parents has been so much pride and joy, and in equal parts worries and headaches, I'm sure you can all testify to! I always remember this article dh wrote for our church bulletin about 8 months after Jared was born, (I think he won't mind me sharing it with you! :P)
"I wanted to write this when my first son, Ryan, was born, but the thoughts and feelings were a bit overwhelming then. Things are still pretty chaotic but I might as well start.
I think few people would sign on for fatherhood if they knew the whole deal! It was daunting, the first year. Handling poo, diapers, rocking the baby in the wee hours of morning in an empty hall, crying fits (from mum (yin: that would be me!)and child). Imagine giving up most of your favourite pastimes (movies!) and instead being able to discuss breast-feeding intelligently with your female colleague. Talk about shifting paradigm.
When you have children, a part of you is constantly looking out for them, checking if they are safe or hungry or dirty or wet. They're asleep? - let's sneak off for some coffee! Even when you are apart, you'll think of them. I think I understand prayer a little better now. If I as a sinful man can look out for my kids, how much more our father God who love us and died for us. He is Omniscience and, before you even pray, is already looking out for you.
Psalms 139:13,14 : 'For you create my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.' "
Hope you are blessed as I am every time I read this.

I am also rushing out layouts from last year to put into a 20 page album, in time for the free offer shutterfly and CK sent to my mail box! Apparently it is a one time use coupon so I can't share it. The next few layouts are going to be ultra-simple and quick! And which can be lovely, I think :) These are both from walks and weekends spent outdoors.
Credits: Red background paper by Studio MGL, brown paper from Weeds & Wildflowers, leaf cut out from Vera Lim's the most wonderful time of the year, Priceless charm by PureScraps.
Credits: straight stitch by Loreta Labarca,ribbon and journaling tag by studio ellie, stitched flowers by creshens, soft dots and background paper all by Weeds & Wildflowers
Have made them into templates as usual:You can find the templateshere!

Here's the templates I used for the birthday layouts, combined as one double page. You can use them as single or double, quite versatile, isn't it? :) I've added two more photo mats to each side of this template, so that you can use them for Project 365 if you wish. This template is now available as a set in the store HERE

Printing double pages on Shutterfly

Thank you for your loveliest comments on my latest templates and layouts, you're unbelievably nice, thank you!
Now there was a very good question about whether I made any adjustments for printing my double pages on shutterfly. And I'm going to share with you as best as I can, what I did.
Firstly, it is important that anyone who prints at Shutterfly downloads their printing guide here. The first time I printed a double page, I did not know about the "trim" they do and the result was that the edges and centre were a bit cut off. See this post here
So the next time I was printing double pages, which was the US book you all saw here, I tried out adjustments on some pages, like experimenting!
Well, for pages like these two, where there was nothing important in the middle, nor at the edges, I did not make any adjustments, simply "cut" the layout right down the middle, saved the left and right sides and loaded them up to shutterfly:

Below you see how they turned out:

But for these two layouts, where I had titles down the centre, I made an adjustment when I saved the left and right sides, such that there would be an extra overlap of 3/8ths of an inch. Let me try to explain:
This is the layout with the line showing the exact centre of the 12x24 layout at the 12 inch point. I saved the 12x12 right side of the layout as it is with the cut off at the 12 inch point (cutting through the right side of the H)
But when I was saving the 12x12 left side of the layout, I pushed the layout to the left by 3/8ths of an inch, such that the left side had the centre cut off point shifted to the right (down the middle of the T)
Below is what the left side and right sides (which I loaded up to shutterfly) looked like. Notice the portion of overlap in the middle for the left and right sides. I figured when shutterfly cut off a bit of the left middle, and of the right middle, it would join up nicely. Well, lucky for me, they pretty much did.

This is another page which I tried the 3/8ths of an inch overlap down the left and right sides:

They turned out great too!


However, I must show you the Ground Zero page - there is just the slightest off-alignment of my journaling that went diagonally across the page - on hindsight, I should have split the journaling into two halves in two separate text boxes on the left and right sides. That's a bit tricky too. Well, you probably don't want to try journaling this way unless you're a die-hard double pager like me!:p
Hope all this helped!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year to every one who celebrates this holiday! We are at the end of day 2 of this 15 day celebration, and it's definitely hectic but so wonderful as we meet up with friends and relatives some of whom we meet only once a year.
Dh is from a large family (he is the youngest of seven siblings) and everyone gathers at our place so it's one big party! On my side of the family, we spend time with my mom's family (my grandma turns 100 this year!) and my dad's family (although my dad has passed nearly thirty years now) which has about eighty of us meeting together every year!
This year one of my cousins who lives in HK brought back from the village my dad's family was from in China, a two volume book with records of his family's ancestors and family tree, starting almost five hundred years ago! I had heard that there was a record but never saw it before! Apparently our ancestor was an official in an imperial court, and the record continues from there! He gave the naming conventions for 23 generations of his sons and grandsons, and it has been faithfully followed, and my dad was the 16th generation, and my brother the 17th generation! I found my dad and mom's names in it, but my brother's name has yet to be updated, whereas mine will never be added because it only records sons. Totally awesome and amazing!
Well, I can't spend too long, so want to show you the boys' birthday layout which I will add to my Project 365 book, which I've decided will just be my 2009 book, so everything goes in it, but I have to be mindful that Shutterfly only makes 100 page books!
Credits: Background paper from Weeds & Wildflowers, and ribbons from Studio MGL

And this is another layout of another outing we had in 2008 -I'm still playing catch up! Credits: Background paper and floral print both from Weeds & Wildflowers

I've put the templates in the store here!
And here's my 365 layout for the next 14 days after the boys' birthday celebrations. I'm liking the graphic style! Don't you? It's just a little hard to find graphic embelishments, I found this beautiful circle set by Tracy Ann Designs but I can't share it with you so have replaced with some similar shapes.


HERE is the template link. Oh and thank you for all your wonderful comments!

About cameras

Just drop in to answer Susan who asked what camera I use.

Well, if you've been admiring my US trip photos, it was all taken on dh's Canon G7 - yes, most of the photos were taken by him, he likes to say that's at least half the reason my scrapbook pages are great, hehe. I have to admit a lot of what he does on the G7 I won't know how to do, although I complement a lot on photoshop!! lol

But he got me a Canon Ixus 801S last year, and I used that to take all the 2009 Project 365 photos, and I love it! I usually take with the flash off, and it turns out lovely.

We noticed though for our Japan trip photos taken with both our cameras, that the Ixus photos had a much warmer tone, not sure why, but I will need to harmonise the photos from both cameras on photoshop once I start scrapping them - which is not yet!! sigh.

Well, what cameras do you use? point and shoot like me?

I gotta run, hope to post more and some layouts this weekend. We're soooo busy spring cleaning and preparing for Chinese New Year starting with the reunion dinner this Sunday.

Have a great day everyone!

Oh Susan, you can email me at yindgs at yahoo dot com dot sg

A quick post

Too busy to post much today, just dropped in to share more inspiring layouts, and also to post the template for my linear/graphic style 365 layout, which some of you requested. Have fun!
Don't you just love Christie Hayes' fabulous and sparkling engagement layout! Congratulations Christie!

And here is a wonderful family-filled desktop layout by Kathy Christensen

And I love this spirited layout of the cutest daughters of Meghan Justice!



You can get the template HERE!