New Background and Swarm Pictures!

As you can tell, I've got a new blog background!  I've moved away from 'abstract' digital design to an actual scrapbook oriented background.  I had alot of fun designing the background, and was able to do so by following a tutorial found here off of The Cutest Blog on the Block.  I really do like their work, but I wanted to have something orginial and so I followed the tutorial.  I didn't use it so much because I had no clue how to use photoshop, but because I needed to know the exact dimensions that my background elements needed to be.  I spent about an hour or more doing the green background.. it was extremely time consuming because of the size of the file and how large the background was.  Then I created the branch and the owl by taking screenshots of design studio and turning them into vectored images and then went from there.  However, I'm unsure how much of them you can actually see, but here's a better view of the owl and branch.

Anyway, I went to the Swarm on Saturday that was graciously organized by Tomi Anne from the CMB.  I had alot of fun!  It was great to put faces and voices to the people on the CMB, and while I was probably the only person who did not stay the entire 12 hours, I will definately plan on doing that next time!  Here are some pictures.

 

The first picture is a candid picture of Tomi Anne explaining... something.  Then the next picture is of all of us posing with our swarm shirts on.

 

I participated in what's called an ATC swap; also known as Artist Trading Cards.  Basically it's a card that's 3.5" by 2.5" (or the other way around depending on how you wish to orient your card) and you make a specific number and then trade them with other people.  Only five of us participated, but that's okay!  From the top left, it's mine, then Tomi Anne's, Ronny's (Red Hat Lady on the CBM), then on the bottom row is Lynn's (Lynn on the CMB) and the last one is Jason's (scrapindad on the CMB).  Yes that's right, one of the most active participants and the person who organized our make and take is a GUY!  He's a really talented scrapbook and creator, and he was super patient with me when explaining to me one-on-one on how to correctly do the make and take; I was on the other side of the room and I couldn't hear him very well.

I'll take pictures later and post the make and take, and what I created with the goodie bags that Robert's provided for us.  I really should have taken a picture of the kits they gave us BEFORE I started gluing together the pieces and layers.  They also provided a second goody bag, in which I got a chipboard album, some clip thingies, a container of prima flowers and some foam letter stickers.  I never thought to use prima flowers until the swarm, but I can tell you they are AWESOME!  Funnily enough, I went with the intention of getting scrapbook pages done and I really didn't get anything done; kind of sad really.  I did create a mesh in Design Studio, and used vellium and chalks that was graciously loaned to me by Karen (Chiddy on the CMB) and I got hooked on chalks as well!

I really had a blast chatting and creating with everyone around me and my only regret was that I didn't stay longer!