Meredith Fenwick is one of those designers that has been around for as long as I can remember!  I have always especially loved her feminine florals, but she can do a great boy kit too!Here’s a closer look at Meredith’s contribution to THE DIGI FILES 15:

You get this PLUS all of the FABULOUS products you see on our amazing sponsor’s page for ONLY $5!!!  Such a great deal and even though it seems too good to be true, it’s not at The Daily Digi! Here’s some inspiration created by our team:

Layout by Steph, fonts Weathered and Printing Primer by Fontologie

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: Queen of Quirk/Songbird Ave. blog template

Layout by Katie, additional supplies, Hillary Heidelberg template, Century Gothic font btw, that’s me

Layout by Janet, additional supplies: Stitching by Traci Reed, fonts are Typewriter Scribbled and JB Angel Baby

Layout by Katie, additonal supplies: template by Ali Edwards

Hybrid pillow box, by Leigh, additional supplies: Pillow box template from Heather Roselli

Meredith Fenwick, from New England. I am a momma to my two tenacious little boys, Alex and Max and am married to my wonderful husband, Gordon. We have a few fur babies too – two cats, Lullabelle & Mr. Peterson and a dog, Wrigley.

STORE

WEBSITE

BLOG

Supplies: P22 American Typewriter, Apron Strings Mini Kit by Meredith Fenwick, 29-Day Template by Meredith Fenwick

A tip about Photoshop…Learning keyboard shortcuts will cut your time down greatly when working in Photoshop. The best part about it is that they are mappable. I keep all of my letter-key shortcuts the same but have modified my function keys to run actions, trim pages, add layers and that sort of thing to make my workflow that much faster.

After my son Alex was born in 2004, I started playing around with computer graphics. After many hours of headaches and frustration, I started to get the hang of Photoshop. Somehow I stumbled across digital scrapbooking and found scrapoutsidethebox.com, theshabbyprincess.com and a couple of other digi sites. I decided to try my hand at designing some pieces and sent in a submission to Scrap Outside the Box. I was lucky enough to be offered a spot in the store to sell my goods and I was off. I’ve always been a good study and learned so much about scrapbooking from the designers and members that I would chat with. Around the same time I also befriended the owner of a local scrapbooking store and started working part time there and learned a bit about paper scrapbooking too.

It is constantly changing. I am not always inspired though – I go through periods of struggling to find something that inspires me and then I go through a period where everything inspires me. Lately I am feeling a springtime vibe so you will probably be seeing more springy-feeling pieces coming out in my store.

I use a MacPro with a dual-core Intel processor that is pretty much dedicated to my design work. I have another desktop that I use for surfing the web and that so my Mac doesn’t get mucked up with all that stuff. I have 4GB of RAM in the machine right now.

I have an Intuos 6×8 tablet that I use with my Mac and a small Bamboo that I use if I decide to work with my laptop (which doesn’t happen too often).

I use a Nikon D50 camera. I use Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3, and Art Rage.

My favorite product that is available in my DHD shop right now is the Strawberry Frappe Mini Kit because I love the colors and I am very pleased with the patterns.

My best-selling products are my 29, 30 and 31 Day Templates. I think they are nice and versatile and easy for scrappers to use to get loads of photos into a layout.

Here are some of my favorite products by Meredith:

Here are some inspirational layouts using Meredith’s products (images without credits are linked to originals):

Layout by Amy, supplies: Meredith Fenwicks Daydreams collection papers and elements
(everything else is retired ie. Natalie Braxton ribbons, Janet Phillips template)

Go have a look in Meredith’s store and come back and tell her what you like, we will randomly select a winner from those comments to win $10 in product from her store! (Comments must be posted before midnight EST and must include a product name to qualify)!

THANKS, Meredith for being here with us and sharing your fun creations with us!!

I am so excited to have Krystal Hartley joining us this month and share with you her contribution to THE DIGI FILES this month!  Krystal really has a talent for putting together kits from shabby classy to themed little boy kits.  She always includes some unique elements as well!

Let’s take a closer look at Krystal’s contribution to TDF15 this month:

You get this whole kit along with everything else that has been revealed so far and so much MORE for ONLY $5!!  The sales from THE DIGI FILES are what allow us to be here doing what we do!

Here’s some inspiration created by our team:

Layout by Steph, additional supplies: template by Janet Phillips

Layout by Karen

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: template by Janet Phillips, font is CK footnote

Layout by NeeNee, additional supplies: All Worn Up In You by Penny Springmann and Lauren Grier, Font is Sugar Free Straight Up

Layout by Jackie

Hybrid project by Kim: a mini comp book for jotting down notes for the big “talk”

I’m a native Texan living with my husband and two children just outside of Dallas.

STORE
BLOG

Tips for clustering:
- I pick a background to start with and then I open every element in the kit and throw it onto the paper.
- I apply a temporary drop shadow just so I can see better what I’m working with. Then I get busy.
- There are some items that I immediately know I won’t really use for that page, and I’ll go ahead and delete them.
- Others are too large for the dainty clusters that I’m trying to do, so I’ll shrink them.
- I sort of organize the different types of elements into piles on my page…ribbons, borders, flowers, stamps, frames, etc.
- Then I start to arrange things. Some in front of photos…some behind. I tweak the shadows as I go. Shadows are critical to great clusters IMO…it’s what gives you the illusion of depth…some things closer to the layers below and some things farther away.
- Duplicate your elements! They add more interest and depth to your cluster. Pay attention to scale, shape, and color to create a balanced image.
- Walk away. Grab a meal or something and then come back to it. What’s your first impression? Did it seem off-balance? What can you slide a wee bit here or there to get it just right?

I started scrapping May 1996 when my daughter was a baby. I was looking for a way to organize all the little baby photos, keepsakes, etc. and fell head over heels for scrapbooking after seeing a Creative Memories presentation.  In fact, I loved it so much that I eventually found a thriving business as an independent consultant (for the now defunct Top Line Creations). Through the process, I went searching for
scrapbook inspired graphics to use on my website and promotional items and discovered digital scrapbooking. When TLC introduced their own digiscrap product, I was over the moon happy to embrace it fully to further expand my home business, and it was at that time that I created my blog and my philosophy of “the pursuit of scrap happiness”–recognizing that I would never be satisfied with just paper or just digi or
just one brand, etc.

Sadly, TLC and I had a difference of opinion on the direction of their digital program, and I chose to leave the business and just enjoy scrapping again. It was literally days (August 2007) later when I discovered a digi design contest and took a chance.
I won the contest and the rest is history.

I use primarily Photoshop CS3! I love my laptop but I couldn’t give you all the techy info. That’s my husband’s job.  I have an Ituos 4 pen tablet that I love!  I have been using a Nikon D70 for several years, but I added my adorable little Canon Powershot with HD video this past summer. I love how portable it is.

Here’s a couple of layouts about those things:

Here are some of my favorite products by Krystal:

Here are some inspirational layouts using Krystal’s products:

Layout by Katie, supplies: Platinum Dreams by Krystal Hartley, Photo Finish template by Krystal Hartley

Layout by Jacki supplies: Study Hall kit

Layout by Karen, supplies: Krystal Hartley Platinum Dreams; Lauren Reid Cuts Ups (altered); Font is Underwood 1913

Go have a look in Krystal’s store and come back and tell her what you like, we will randomly select a winner from those comments to win $10 in product from her store!  (Comments must be posted before midnight EST and must include a product name to qualify)!

THANKS so much to Krystal for joining us in THE DIGI FILES this month!  We have enjoyed getting to know you better! As a thank you to our readers, Krystal has this coupon for us:

I am so excited to have Heather join us in THE DIGI FILES this month!!  The first time I used Heather’s products was on an album I created for my dad for Father’s Day a few years ago.  I have since learned that Heather can really rock the boy kits (as well as hybrid projects)!

Here’s a closer look at Heather’s contribution to The Files this month:

Our team really had fun working with this kit:

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: Fizzy Pop Designs template; Lauren Reid Scritchy Scratches; Natalie Braxton string; Eva Marina alpha

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: template by Janet Phillips, Fill-a-bet alpha by me, Pea Jiawei font

Layout by Kellie, additional supplies: Template by ChrissyW; Date Element by Bella Gypsy; Photo Action by My4Hens

Layout by Jacki

Layout by NeeNee, additional supplies: Alpha:  All In A Day’s Work by Heather Roselli and Libby Wiefenbach and Font:  Pea Squeaker

And a hybrid project by Leigh:

Paint tin from Archivers.

Heather Roselli

Nashville, TN

Married for 11 years with 3 boys – 8 years old and identical twins 5 years old

Store

Blog

Supplies: Kit – Party On by Heather Roselli
Alpha (6) – Party On: Build a Cupcake by Heather Roselli
Template – Sketchers Set 2 by Julie Billingsley

Supplies:  Kit – Pet Shop: Crazy Cats by Heather Roselli
Template – Scrap with Laura by Darcy Baldwin
Font – DJB Messie Amanda by Darcy Baldwin

We sometimes try to create for others…and it often times just doesn’t work (in layouts and in kits). I always tell my team to scrap what they want to in the style that they love…because the layouts they love will almost always be their greatest work. I truly believe this. Do what you love, love what you do…and your family will love you and your efforts to preserve your family’s memories.

I began scrapbooking in January 2002 after my first child was born in order to share his new life with my Mom and Dad since they lived so far away. I soon became frustrated with having pictures the wrong size for what I wanted to do. I started laying out my page spreads on the computer so I could crop the photos the way I wanted to before ordering my digital prints. Somehow while doing that I stumbled across digital scrapbooking and realized that was what I had been doing, except I was then translating my digital layouts to paper ones. I put up all my paper supplies and immediately started creating digital pages!

Within just a few weeks I started designing my own kits based on the colors and patterns in my children’s clothes, not with the intent to sell them, but just to use for myself. Soon I had 10 kits on my hard drive! Turned out that I loved designing! I was incredibly lucky to be involved with The Digi Chick forums at that time and was accepted as a designer there in the Fall of 2005. In July of 2007 I moved to my dream gig at Sweet Shoppe Designs and absolutely love it there! What a wonderful group of designers, staff members and community members we have there!

When I’m not designing (is there a time when I’m not??), I spend time with my three sons (8 years old and 5 year-old twins) and husband of over 11 years in Nashville, TN. My oldest is in 2^nd grade and the twins attend preschool two days a week. When not in school we attend Cub Scout meetings, swimming lessons, go to the zoo, play at the park, visit my in-laws just up the street, take geo-caching hikes, etc.

My kids, their clothing and activities, my team’s ideas, the seasons, different websites…everything! hehe

I work on a 17” HP Pavilion Entertainment PC laptop running the new Windows 7 that is just 5 or so months old. It has 8GB of RAM and handles all my programs really well. What I hate is the screen…it is the worst I’ve ever had. It is darker/more saturated at the top and gets lighter toward the bottom. I swear I don’t what my colors really look like anymore!!! hehe

I use Adobe Photoshop CS3 (I need to upgrade!) and Adobe Illustrator CS3. I also use several filter/texture plug-ins on occasion.

I have just a Nikon Coolpix S10 point and shoot, but my dh has a professional Cannon 1DS that is on “permanent borrow” from a friend of his that loves photography and buys every new camera that comes out! My husband’s photos are the ones I really love scrapping these days.

I have a wireless Wacom tablet that I don’t use near as much as I should! Turns out I draw better with a trackpad than a pen I guess! hehe

Hmmm…impossible to answer…each new kit is my new favorite most of the time…right now I’d have to say that my Pet Shop series is my favorite. It has such bright colors and cute graphics…I’ve scrapped several pages with it (which is very unusual for me these days).

For 2009 by best selling kit was What’s Your Story? with Water Play Days a very close second.

Here are some of my favorite products from Heather’s shoppe:

Here’s a little inspiration using Heather’s products:

Layout by Katie, supplies: Good Night by Heather Roselli
Template by Janet Phillips (modified)
Traveling Typewriter font

Layout by Kellie, supplies:  Whatever Floats Your Boat by Heather, White Almond Alpha by Amy Hutchinson; White Stitching No. 2 by Anna Aspnes

Go have a look in Heather’s store and come back and tell her what you like, we will randomly select a winner from those comments to win $10 in product from their store!  (Comments must be posted before midnight EST March 11, 2010 and must include a product name to qualify)!

As a THANK YOU to our readers, Heather has this coupon for us to use in her store:

I would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to Heather for joining us this month in THE DIGI FILES and sharing her many talents with us!!

I am so excited to welcome Wendy of Studio Wendy as a contributor to THE DIGI FILES this month!  You might remember her post she did not too long ago about printing an album/photobook. Wendy is not only knowledgeable and talented in all things printed, but in all things action related too!!  Here’s a closer look at her contributions to The Files this month:

These actions are based on layouts of mine (Steph) and they really do the work for you!  There are instructions included for installing and running the actions and they work in PSCS2-4 and PSE5-7.  I use CS and I literally dragged and dropped the actions into PS and then click play.  The action will run and then stop with instructions on what items you will be selecting next!  I really LOVE them!  I was able to create a layout that followed the action exactly in under 3 minutes.  I created another layout and changed and tweaked things, in under 10 minutes.  Not bad!

Wendy will be posting a tutorial tomorrow for us as well!

Here is what our team created using Wendy’s actions:

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: Jennifer Barrette Love Blooms kit; Laura Bratcher Once Fabulous frame; Fontologie Printing Primer font.

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: Cathy Zielske word art; Lauren Reid paper strip and staples.

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: Scrapbook Graphics Impressions of Friendship kit, font is Pea Jiawei.

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: Scrapbook Graphics Impressions of Mother Earth

Layout by Kellie, additional supplies: Paradise Found by One Little Bird (photos and placement altered after action completed).

A graphic designer for the printing industry by trade, I was creating rudimentary “digital” scrapbooks using inexpensive scrapbooking software and Photoshop in the mid 1990s. I even designed my first brag book using Quark Xpress and Photoshop a full year before I discovered the digital scrapbooking world in June of 2006. A whole new world of artistic expression was opened up to me and I was immediately taken with digiscrapping. I began designing templates based on my layouts and began selling my designs in early 2007.

In the course of my personal scrapping, I decided to try printing my layouts in a photo book. I found the resources a bit confusing and in the creation of my first books, I developed a set of tools including actions and templates to help make the process painless. Shortly thereafter, I began making those available to my customers as well. Since then, I’ve developed countless tools and time saving actions for both scrappers and designers. These tools help you get back to what you love to do, creating!

When I’m not at my computer scrapping or designing, I can be found enjoying a good book, movie or TV show, or spending time with my precious family.

WENDY’S STORE

I’m currently working on a digital art journal, inspired by Studio Tangie’s Art Journal Caravan. I’m well behind the scheduled itineraries, but you can view the work in progress in my gallery.

This is my favorite new tip! It’s called “scrubbing” and it has nothing at all to do with cleaning the house. In Photoshop and Elements, you can adjust most of the sliders by clicking on the text next to the drop down menu and dragging left or right. For example, adjust your opacity on the layers palette by clicking on the word “opacity” and drag left or right. So, start scrubbing!

My very first experience with digital scrapbooking was with a cheap little scrapbooking program that was clip art based. Although I did a few pages with it, I never did anything with them. And, they were not much better than what I could do paper-wise. When my son was born, I attempted paper scrapbooking. I got all of 3 pages done in a year and had to call my sister in to help finish the album, which was still, um, well, pretty bad! After that, I created my first digital brag book using Quark Xpress and Photoshop! It was a big step ahead from anything else I had done, but was very basic, using just solid blocks of color and photos. It wasn’t long after, that I discovered digital scrapbooking as we know it today. I was instantly hooked! I had finally found a way to preserve my memories. I was not limited by my lack of paper scrapping talent. I could use my 15 years of experience in graphic design and Photoshop to create things that I was proud of.

It wasn’t long before I started giving away templates based on my layouts, which led to my first design spot in early 2007. As I worked on my templates, I began to see the need to save time doing repetitive tasks, first with resizing my layouts for photobooks, and then for designing, and scrapping and anything related to both. And, so began my transformation from a template and kit designer to an action and tool designer. As passionate as I was about digital scrapbooking, I became even more passionate about both photobooks and saving time! Three years later, my shop at Scrapbookgraphics is stocked full of actions, templates and tools that help me (and you) be more productive, and back to doing what we love, creating!

Sometimes, my inspriation comes from an “a-ha” moment when I realize that I can automate that certain thing I’ve been doing over and over again. Other times, it comes from customers or fellow designers who wish for something specific to make their lives easier. Other times, I get an idea in my head that I need to work and massage and turn over until I can figure it out. I love a good challenge or puzzle, and love it when I get something to work perfectly. In my scrapping, I am equally inspired by my photos and memories as I am by the kits that I work with. Sometimes I see a kit and know exactly what I want to create. Other times, I start with a photo and build around it until it takes on a life of it’s own. I love that my job and hobby cross paths and allow me to express my creativity and my analytical side.

15″ MacBook Pro, 2.25 ghz, 4gb ram

Programs:  PSCS3, Illustrator CS3, PSE 6 and 8 for testing

Camera:  Canon T1i, a huge splurge this past year and it’s well worth the money compared to my old point and shoot.

Other tools:  I have an old Wacom Graphire 4 tablet, and a really bad scanner LOL

That’s a really hard question! My Trim It action and Shadows & Borders come to mind because I use them every day. Then, there are my photobook toolkits which I use to resize my layouts for printing. Those are huge times savers. But, going through my shop, I have to say I really love my Lift It Templates: The Collection. These are templates based off of the amazing pages designed by the Studio Crew. The help you create stunning pages in a short amount of time.

I had to look this up, but by far it is ACTION: Cut & Cluster.

Here are a few of my favorite products of Wendy’s:

Here’s some great inspiration created with Wendy’s products (images without credits are linked):

Layout by Steph, supplies: Scrap It 5 (included in collection 2), Papers and Elements from FireFly Lane by Amanda Heimann and Ziggle Scraps, “forever” signature series alpha 2 by Taylor Made, font Fontologie Printing Primer. Photo by Lisa Hysteck

Go have a look in Wendy’s Studio and come back and tell her what you like, we will randomly select a winner from those comments to win $10 in product from their store!  (Comments must be posted before midnight EST and must include a product name to qualify)!

As a THANK YOU, Wendy has a couple of things for us!!!

First is a coupon:

In addition to the contest WE are running here at TDD, Wendy has these two contests going on at Scrapbook Graphics:

I would like to thank Wendy for being here with us this month and sharing her knowledge and talents with us!!