Today will mark one of those bigger changes that will be happening this month.

After the results were in from our survey this fall and I saw the things you wanted to know about our contributors, “In the Designer’s Studio” was born.  It reminds me a bit of that show “Inside the Actor’s Studio” where an interviewer asks standard questions to Hollywood stars.  The questions below are the questions you said you wanted asked, along with a few other suggestions you had. I hope you enjoy these new designer features!

I am so excited to have Danielle of Something Blue here with us this month!  Danielle is one of those designers that I remember from my early days in digital.  She has some great digital products and she is also the home of those very cool magnets you might have seen around!  I love that her designs are always unique and fresh and INSPIRING!

Here’s a closer look at Danielle’s contribution to THE DIGI FILES this month:

Here is what our team created with this very versatile kit (you will see my layouts using this kit on Friday):

Layout by Karen

Layout by Jacki, additional supplies: Font is SmartyPants by Darcy Baldwin.

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: font CK Rugged.

Layout by Melissa (included as a layered quick page in TDF11, minus the fonts), additional supplies: Fonts are CK Becky and Century Gothic.

Layout by Rachael

I am Danielle Catalano-Titus, a New Yorker living in Boston.  I have a wee boy, a sweet girl, a cat, and a husband.  I work full-time as a high school art teacher.

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Here is layout by Danielle:

There are a couple of tips on my blog, and here is  a Photoshop tip from my newsletter:

I learned this tip at Photoshop World and wanted to immediately kick myself for not knowing it sooner. So, you know how when you’re trying to use the Elliptical Marquee tool (or the rectangular one – but that’s easier) to select something, and it never ends up where you need it to be? So what do you do? If you’re like me, you start over, or you keep the selection and then use “transform selection” to tweak it. No more! Try this: While you’re dragging that marquee tool, hold down the space bar. Now you can move the selection AS YOU’RE SELECTING IT! Wahoo! Add the shift key to the mix and you’ve got perfect circles, wherever you want them. Hooray!

Mine is a long convoluted story, but basically I was a Photoshop lover who enjoyed making stuff to “decorate” my photos with before I printed them. I had never heard of digital scrapbooking. One day in summer 2004, a Google search led me to a post about a contest for a Memory Makers Digital Scrapbooking book, and the rules were that everything had to be computer generated. I said “I can do that!”, and so I made some papers and doodads and created a page to submit. It was accepted for the book, and I was hooked. Unfortunately I was only hooked on the contest/publication aspect of it all, and so all of my early pages are not really dear memories but just pages thrown together based on what I thought that particular contest or magazine was looking for. Doing all that led me to some great opportunities, but I don’t submit stuff anymore. I just design because I love it, and scrap if I feel like I have something real to say. And if there’s time.

Everything I see. And magazines. I’m a magazine junkie. It’s a sickness.

I have a Dell PC, and I’m running whatever came before Vista. I have no idea how much ram, but I know it’s not nearly enough and we’re looking into another computer as I type. I’m lucky I even know what ram means. Ask me anything about Photoshop, but don’t ask me about a computer’s innards. No clue whatsoever.

I use Photoshop and Illustrator. Both CS3 right now. I don’t feel the need to upgrade to 4. I think I’ll wait for the next round.

I have a Canon Digital Rebel XT, and that’s good enough for me as I have no idea what I am doing and just shoot on automatic most of the time.

I could not, no way, no how, design without my Wacom Intuos tablet. How did I ever live without this thing?? And I so love my scanner – the CanoScan8800F.

I would have to say my Love Story kit. My most recent thing is almost always my favorite.

Any of the worn overlays. By a mile.

Here are some of my favorite Something Blue Studios’ products:

Some physical products that you can have made with your digital creations:

Here’s a bit of inspiration using Something Blue products (images without credits are linked to originals):

Layout by Karen, supplies: Something Blue Studios Love Story kit, Paint, and Sentence Strip Wrappers; Font is Darcy Baldwin Angel Baby

Layout by Katie, supplies: Project 365 Quick.ish page by Something Blue Studios (TDF11). Fonts are Fontologie Textura Traced and calibri

I want to say THANK YOU to Danielle for being with us at TDD this month!!  Please go check out her store then come back and leave a comment telling us your favorite SBS products.  Tomorrow’s GIFTaway will be chosen from those comments.

As a THANKS to our readers Danielle is offering 20% off all digital downloads, now until January 31, 2010: TDD20

You can even use the code during her 30% TDD feature sale for an even bigger discount!  All digital downloads are on sale for 30% from now until January 7!

WOW!!  What a deal!!  Thanks, Danielle!

P.S. Congratulations to Kate who is the winner of today’s GIFTaway!  She was randomly drawn from the customers that have purchased THE DIGI FILES to this point so far.  She won a $10 GC to Something Blue Studios!

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