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Wednesday 6 November 2013

Storybook to Artisan

Panstoria Artisan

I have decided to become an Affiliate for Panstoria and promote their Artisan program and Historian program which replaces Storybook and Memory Manager respectfully.  If you would like to convert your Storybook Program to Artisan and your Memory Manager program to Historian please follow the links below.

Artisan -Buy Here



Historian - Buy Here


Thank you for your patience!

First of all, I'd like to thank each of you for your patience as you stuck it out with me over these past few months when I could not give you a firm answer on what we're going to do to continue our Digital scrapbooking and printed projects. Today I have the solution for you.



A Digital Solution for YOU:
I am pleased to announce that I will be working with Heritage Makers - www.heritagemakers.com/betht.  Here's why I think it will work for YOU:
  • It is a digital-only scrapbooking company. 
  • their free software program is web-based so can be used on both a Mac or PC. 
  • their concept for you, the customer, is interesting - the software, templates and art kits (in the thousands) are FREE. You can chose a Basic account or chose to have a Club HM membership - these monthly memberships are at the $30, $50 and $100 and, in essence, you are pre-purchasing print plans at a discount. These "publishing points" accumulate and you use them when you are ready to print your project - interesting, eh? So rather than spending $ on the software, templates or art, you spend it only on printing. 
  • you can stop or start the Club HM subscription any time. For instance, if you are considering a few Christmas gifts, it would be to your advantage to take the Club HM at the Gold Level ($100) for November and receive 150 publishing points - take the savings now - print your gifts and then decide if you need the Gold Level in future months.
  • many of us are still happily using our StoryBook Creator program - that's ok, too. You can continue to create pages/books/projects in SBC and just load the completed pages/projects up to HM's website as jpegs for printing. This is my plan - I will begin to play in the HM Studio program, too, but there is no need to make any changes. I have a video that explains the "how-to" - let me know if you want to see it.
  • Heritage Makers has all the same products we had at CM - including our 12x18 calendars! And a few more items that caught my eye.
  • you can work with me and Heritage Makers from both Canada and the US - there are no border restrictions as I had in CM. 
  • Heritage Makers has been in Canada for approx 7 years but mainly out west.  Although it was founded by 2 women in Calgary, it is a US-based company and so you will note that all prices are US$. Since so many of us are now online shoppers, I knew you've be familiar with factoring in an exchange rate. Heritage Makers prices are, in some cases, less than CM. I'm preparing a comparison chart on a few items so I have that info at hand for you.
  • at one point in the past, Heritage Makers and CM printed at the same large printing company - I am good with the quality and I hope to  have samples on hand soon for you to see and touch.

What next? Please go check out my website - www.heritagemakers.com/betht - there's lots of information. Set up your account, join the Club HM if you want to get going on printing your projects. Keep working on your projects!! 

I'll be coming out with lots more help and information for you - again, thanks for sticking with me and let's keep having fun with our photos and creating wonderful photobooks and gifts for our families!!!!! I am SO happy to have this sorted out. 

Monday 13 May 2013

Possibilities are Endless!!!

StoryBook Creator has been a great addition to my business and my family!  I do everything I can in Storybook Creator Software, invites, cards, books, photo panels, Valentines, Christmas cards and on and on...
  Since Ben has been in Novice Hockey I have done a Hockey Storybook for him every year.  In the first few years only a handful of the parents bought the books, but then the word got out and more and more parents would ask me, are you doing the hockey books this year?  Now almost all of the parents buy a copy.  It is such a nice keepsake.

 Here are few examples of pages from this year's book.






I do a page for each child on the team and then one on the coaches.  The parents and team love them.  This year I did a new project for the team, posters.  They were 24" x 18" and we had them laminated.  The kids loved them, but what hockey player wouldn't love to have a poster featuring themselves!!!




Baseball season is fast approaching and I will be on the field snapping photos again!


Tuesday 7 May 2013

L.O.V.E.

My favourite subject for my photos is my family!  I have learned so much from Nick Kelsh on manual photography and I feel like I have gotten a lot better at shooting portrait photos of our children.  Lauren took Nick's Going Manual course as well and she took the photo of Todd and I.  Great job Lauren!

I had a blank spot on my dining room wall and I thought this idea would look great here.  


I designed these 4 photo panels in Creative Memories Storybook Creator.  I did the 12 x 12 size but you could just as easily do the 8 x 8 size depending on how much wall space you have to work with in your home.  I ordered these on the wood photo panels because I don't like the results of black and white portraits on the tin photo panels.  






I love where I have these hung because I see them from where I watch tv, where we serve our meals, the kitchen and it is one of the first things I see when I walk into our home.  Also, I have them hung beside one of my other favourite photos that is seven years old.  I love seeing the difference  and similarities in the children in those seven years.





These are easy to create and add so much charm to our home!


Love my CM Personalized iPhone case!

I love my iPhone case! I didn't waste anytime opening it and putting it on my phone the minute it arrived!   I love that you can just do a new insert when you want to change up the photo.  I am already thinking about what my next photo will be!


Wednesday 17 April 2013

NEW Creative Memories iPhone Case!


I love my iphone and now I am going to love it even more!  I have created my NEW personalized case in Storybook Creator 4.0    and I love this photo of our family because it reminds me of the great time we had together this past March Break!  I love that I will have it will me all the time because I NEVER leave home without my phone.!


If you have a teenager in the house you can create a fun one for them too!  Here is the one I created for Lauren.  I used the Tattered Skirts Digital Kit and Digital Expressions of Text Messaging
If you are not feeling creative you can use one of the templates on the Creative Memories Digital Center. There are 10 different styles to choose from!  Available for 4/4S and 5 iphones.

I can't wait for my case to arrive!  I will post a photo when it does!  

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Creative Memories Baby Blog Hop!


Welcome to the Creative Memories Blog Hop!  If you arrived here from the Creative Memories Traditional Blog you are in the right place!  This the second hop for this Blog Hop event.  


So you know the old saying that with every child you have you take less photos? Well not always true! When our first two children were born all those years ago, I wasn't a scrapbooker, but when our third was born I had been a consultant for 6 years so I was going to take all of the “right” photos this time. Now, don't get me wrong, I took lots and lots of photos of Lauren and Ben, but with Grant I went a little overboard, shall we say. In the first month of his life I took 1000 photos and I know this because of being able to look that up on Memory Manager.

Well I didn't just store the photos in Memory Manager, I have made beautiful albums about Grant. So, two StoryBooks created in Storybook Creator 4.0, an 8 x 8 traditional album, an ABC album, paper albums and two 12 x 12 albums later I am still not caught up on Grant's photos. Grant is now seven years old and in his albums he is only about 20 months old.

I love when Creative Memories comes out with new baby products, because I get inspired to work on my backlog of baby and toddler photos of Grant. With the NEW It's a Boy products I am determined to bring Grant's albums up to date. I love that all of these products coordinate and look beautiful together and I can do some pages digitally and some traditionally and they will looking amazing together in Grant's album. The digital products will help me get caught up quickly!





Growing Up

Ingredients:
Font: Tekton Pro Ext

How to Create:
Begin with a blank 12 x 12 page and add Its A Boy Paper 37 from the Digital Kit to the background.
Add Its a Boy Paper21 and Paper 1 from the Digital kit.
Add 4 photos and add a solid white mat to each one.
Add Notebook Tag from Its a Boy Digital Kit and text box.
Add Orange Circle Burst and Shooting Star embellishment. Add 3D filter to Shooting Star.
Text wrap journal box around circle burst.
Add "growing up so fast!" embellishment from Its A Boy Digital Kit.
Add dark blue fastener and orange fastener and add 3D filter to each.
Add heavy shadow to all elements.

Oh Boy!

Ingredients:
Font: Dandelion in the spring

How to Create:
Begin with a blank 12 x 12 page and add Its A Boy Paper 3 from Digital Kit to background.
Add 3 photos and add double mat frame to each one. Choose transparent for smaller mat and Paper 4 from Its A Boy Digital Additions for larger mat.
Add Journaling Mat 1 from Its a Boy Digital Additions and change opacity to 50%.
Add "oh BOY" embellishment from Its A Boy Digital Kit.
Add Orange Star Cutout embellishment. Add “on the move” embellishment over star. Add another orange star cutout and line it up perfectly with other one. Use straight cutter to cut out section of star that covers "on the move" embellishment. Add green star and dark blue star and resize to cover cuts in orange star.
Add text box and text wrap it around orange and blue stars.
Add heavy shadow to all elements.      



So if you have baby and toddler photos not scrapbooked yet take a look at these pages for some ideas and then hop on over to see what the talented Aly Dosdall has designed! 



Clue for your prize entry at the end of the Blog Hop is - A




Thanks for stopping by...


Have a hoppy day!

Beth


Monday 8 April 2013

Blog Hop Pre-Announcement

Creative Memories Baby Ideas



Join me and the other designers from Creative Memories for a Baby Blog Hop on Wednesday and Thursday  this week.  I love all of the new It's a Girl and It's a Boy products that were introduced recently and am excited to be designing for this blog hop!  These products are perfect for baby albums in digital or traditional, cards, birth announcements, photo panels for the nursery and storybooks.  Here is one of the pages I have designed with the new baby products.



Ribbit - Click on this to see the full instructions on how to complete this page digitally.  

Don't forget to come back on Wednesday for a chance to win a prize and see all of the beautiful ideas!



Retreat Treats!

We get spoiled at the Old Orchard Inn by everyone! What a fun scrap booking retreat weekend. I did 44 traditional pages and had a great time with my best girlfriends! Joe the Chef spoils us everytime!







Wednesday 3 April 2013

Stubborn one....

Funny story I wanted to share...our trip to Disney over March Break was so much fun for all of us but not as we thought it would be.  We thought Grant was going to be the perfect age for meeting the characters, well not so!  

For the first day he went along with meeting a few characters, Buzz, Stitch, Donald and Goofy and then on our second day he put his foot down.  No more! He didn't want to wait in a line up to get an autograph or a photo.  So on the inside this was crushing me, but we just couldn't convince him.  He even said "they aren't real you know, they are just people dressed up in costumes".  Well I didn't believe him.  We are in Disney and they must be real. 

So at Hollywood Studios I didn't listen to him when he said he didn't want to meet Lightning McQueen and Mater, I stood in the line while he stood with his arms crossed and said I am not doing it. I wish I had a photo of him in line, but I didn't see the humour in it then.  We got to the front of the line, and no way could I talk him into getting a photo.  I said "Grant, you wasted our time standing in line and now you won't get in the photo?"  He very politely responded, " you should have listened to me because I told you I wasn't getting in the photo in the beginning."  Needless to say I was thrilled when Ben said "I want a photo!"  

So no more character lineups for us, just rides and shows were on Grant's agenda!  







Sunday 3 February 2013

 
 
I am finally going to offer this course after many people asking me to offer a Beginner DSLR Photography Course.
Would you like to get more out of your manual functions on your Digital SLR camera? This will be a very beginner photography course on what all of those buttons that baffle you on your camera mean. We will look at ISO, F-Stops and Shutter Speed and the relation between them.
Two week course
Fri. Feb. 8 7pm - 10pm Instruction and bring your camera
Fri. Feb. 15 7pm - 10pm Instruction and go over questions from your homework.
Fee: $75 for both weeks
Please RSVP as space will be limited.

Email me to register:  ethomander@gmail.com

Friday 4 January 2013

Need new business cards? I did!

Want to freshen up your business cards?  I can help you with that!  I just designed mine in Storybook Creator 4.0 and having them printed at a local photolab.  I love that I can print as few or as many as I like and when I want to freshen them up again, it is easy to do! 

Design Fee is $25 and you can print where you would like.  Just contact me at ethomander@gmail.com   Thanks!!!