MyMemories Scrapbooking Giveaway

As I mentioned yesterday, I was asked by Liz, at MyMemories.com to host a giveaway for their scrapbooking software. I was able to download it to try out, and have found it fun and easy to use.
I launched right in, without looking at any instructions, and managed to create a variety of pages and layouts. There are lots of resources in there, to help you create interesting pages, and everything is easily altered to suit your own creative needs. So whether you are making a photo album, a story, a journal, a calendar, or anything else your imagination comes up with, the tools are there to be able to do so.
Having used photoshop and also made photo layouts in Word, I find the advantage of this programme is its ease of use. Photos upload quickly, and can easily be moved, resized and have effects applied to them. You can apply embellishments, background papers and textures to your pages, and can use your own textures or embellishments if uploaded as a jpeg. I discovered how to make my own page backgrounds last night, and loved this. You can alter the opacity of photos and layers so allowing pretty layered effects to be made easily. There are ready made albums, or you can make your own. You can easily export albums to jpeg and pdf which allows it to be used for your blog or other websites.
Below are a few of the pages I have made....
Click on them to enlarge and see the details.

The first day of our holiday.

Story telling!

A layered page with marbled papers and 'The Head'.

A page showing Tiger and Lily having a love in on the bed!
(Texture from here)

A page with a Skye photo as background and the word Mountain faintly floating above the scene. You can use WordArt in the programme as well as normal text-loads of fonts available just as in Word.

So, the giveaway!

The prize is the chance to download the MyMemories suite for free!

Please visit the MyMemories site to have a little look, then leave me a comment here. All commenters will be entered into the draw next Monday. Something cheerful for my first day back at work!

MyMemories has also generously provided a promo code which any reader can use to get a discount of $10 if buying the MyMemories suite, and $10 to spend in the Mymemories store.

However, I have lost the code! I downloaded it, wrote it down carefully on a piece of paper. I then used the piece of paper to collect embossing powder from something I was doing yesterday, and stupidly threw it away! I emailed Liz and am hoping she will be able to provide me with a new code! Until then I wanted to put the post up as I am a day behind. The draw will continue until next Tuesday now!

Thanks!

A Giveaway and Shadow Shot Sunday Return

I have been away from Shadow Shot Sunday for so long now and I do miss it. I never seem to be organised anymore on a Sunday but today I am! Cassie is the model for shadows today, sitting on her post and looking sweet.

Just look at that face!

Squinting!

Visit Hey Harriet for more shadows!

The giveaway part is coming later tomorrow. I was approached a while ago by a lovely lady from MyMemories.com, about hosting a giveaway on here. I have had a couple of approaches like this in the past but chose not to accept them, as the products were not really to my taste. This time was different! My Memories is a digital scrapbooking software suite, which I have been trying out over the last few days. I really like what it can do. I will share more tomorrow and explain the giveaway properly. Please pop back then for a chance to win the My Memories software.

The Head

The Head doesn't have a name. He is a little snooty so maybe it is just that he won't tell me. I made him by following this tutorial for a fairy head in clay. I still find heads so hard to do but I suppose the more I do them the easier it will get. I made the plinth to stand him on as he seemed to need something like that. It takes a lot of wool to make a plinth-most satisfying when it is done.

He has one blue and one red eye. This has no great significance-it is just that is all I had left! I have ordered some more eyes now as it is good to have them when the mood takes me!

I used one of Kim Klassen's lovely textures on the photos.

I hope if you are in the path of Irene that you are safe and secure and it doesn't turn out to be as bad as predicted. It looks pretty scary but at least precautions are being taken.

A Presence

Little felty legs...
A magically smooth stone from the fairy filled island of Skye...
A glowing candle...
Who can it be?

I am priviledged by a visit from a member of the Daoine Sidhe, who are trooping fairies-hence the long legs. Nata is her name, which means 'dancer'. She has a strange sense of rhythm which is not quite like mine-but maybe she thinks the same thing!

She has a wire frame, which makes her very springy somehow. She was started on Skye, and finished in London, so she is able to live in either environment.

Fairy lights and stars appear magically whenever she is around. She is confident in her magical skills.

She has danced off now. Tomorrow I will introduce her friend 'The Head', who is on the shelf at the moment contemplating life and being quiet. He is the complete opposite of Nata really!

Garden News

We came back to find that the squash has turned into a monster! It is right across the chamonile and almost into the honeysuckle. It has loads of blossoms and a couple of baby squash already showing. Amazing what can come from one tiny seed.

Below is a drawing to show the various plants. The bag of compost is gradually being used up. The tree stump has loads of sprouts which look really good against the fence. The path is what I need to decide about next. Not sure what to do with it. Any ideas?

The red sunflowers are lovely. Especially with the sun shining through them. They have loads of flowers on and more still to come.

I have been doing lots of felting and making myself laugh at what appears! I will show you tomorrow-after I get back from Rye. My friend and I are going for our summer holiday browse around the junk shops, though I am determined not to come back with anything too big! Last year it was a ladder, formerly used for apple picking. It stood in the little gap between bathroom and sitting room for most of the year-coming out at Christmas to be decorated as an alternative tree. Recently though I have put it to use as a bookshelf next to the bed and it works well.

This week has flown by. Time always does that towards the end of the holidays! Oh well.

I did do a bit of work today as I suddenly had a feeling of panic. It soon went though as I think I have done enough really and need to get back into the place now before I do much more!

St Bride's Pages

"In the late autumn and winter, when the deer grass turns red, the moor is a sheet of flame under the setting sun, rivalling an English poppy field. A little later, and 'fairy curtains' of icicles adorn each peat hag, while in the early summer the acres of white bog cotton dancing over the peat bogs rival its winter beauty. It is easy to imagine St. Bride moving among the cotton with her bird, the oyster catcher, or Page of Bride, crying over her head, busy gathering those armfuls destined to be a bed for little, tired children, and causing it to flourish wherever she passes."
from: "Skye The Island and Its Legends" by Otta Swire.
In reading this beautiful description, in this fascinating book about Skye, I found out this interesting fact about another of my favourite birds. They are pretty common I think in the south west, as well as up here, but I have never seen them in such numbers as I did at Broadford. Such noisy and comical birds, colourful and full of character. I love the bright orange of their beaks, their pinkish legs and the contrast with the stylish black and white of their feathers. I suppose if they serve a saint, they should be pretty smart!

These two were having a very vigorous bath.

In this group one of the birds was hopping like he only had one leg, or one was injured.

There were at least thirty birds in this group.

I wonder what the collective name for oyster catchers is.

Nothing is a mystery these days-just looked it up here-it is a 'parcel' of oyster catchers.

Herons

I love the blurriness of this photo. I think this one was really far away. On the first evening we walked to the local pub for dinner and saw this heron really close by.

He stayed there for a few pictures. I woke up on the second morning to look out and see this beautiful scene, reminiscent of a Japanese painting.

At first I thought there was one heron fishing the bay. But on the third day I saw Ella, a little dog living next door, (I know her name because she is a little bit of a naughty dog who needs to be called an awful lot!) running happily on the beach, scaring all the birds trying to feed. Especially exciting, was to see four herons flying away to avoid her. Then, when I looked more carefully each evening I could often see two or three perched on the rocks. One of my favourite birds and I got to see some every day!

Again, a lot of photos but I can't choose my favourite!

Rabbit

A very sweet looking rabbit visited our garden each day to eat dinner.
Ears wiggling back and forth showed how the rabbit could hear us, but after a second or two it just carried on eating. Such pretty big brown eyes. I zoomed in on the eye, and I think you can see the house reflected in it. I loved how my camera enabled me to take wild life photos that I never could have before. I will show you some of the bird pictures tomorrow. Somehow I imagined seeing lots of birds of prey, but instead saw waders and crows. All good! We saw one hawk type bird on the drive to the ferry on the morning we left. It was just sitting by the side of the road on a rock, watching.

Skye Skies

We got back today after two days journey. You could do it in one but it would be exhausting. We stayed in Cumbria last night and left at five this morning. The roads were clear so we were back here by ten, in plenty of time to collect Cassie from the cattery. I love going away but I love coming home-especially to see the little cats! Our holiday was on the island of Skye off the west coast of Scotland. It has truly awe inspiring scenery. Imagine you are at my house in the seventies, and this is the beginning of a long and possibly tedious evening of slide shows of my holiday snaps! But no, luckily it is the tens and you only have to tap the little arrow key to see 26 of my favourite sky, water and mountain shots! So much easier, you are not a captive audience, and I have saved a large amount on the nibbles and wine. Having said that I would of course love to have you round for wine and nibbles. And love you to look at all the wonder as well of course! Quite a few of these are taken from just outside our holiday cottage on Broadford Bay. There were constantly changing skies and amazing sunsets.