Erin Taylor Designs

Hey there! During the past few weeks two of the designers I work for, Karla Dudley and Shannon McNab (of Scotty Girl Designs), have transitioned from Pixels and Company to their new home at The Digital Press. I will continue to work for both designers at their new store, and I have a layout finished using one of Karla's new kits, Gilded. 

The templates in this kit are super cute and easy to work with. I used one of my favorite photos from this holiday season and wrote up a quick little blurb about Jack's first hot cocoa experience.

I was delighted when Scotty Girl Designs' newest kit, This Year 2014 Fall, popped up on my Facebook feed... it is absolutely gorgeous! 

We don't have traditional fall weather here, so I had to go through my photo archives to find photos for both layouts. The first layout features photos from our year in Ohio (2010). Mark's parents were in town and we visited an air museum with the kids. It was October and the leaves were turning colors... it was beautiful. 

Last year I created a scrapbook layout to celebrate Evan's first day of school. I love how that layout turned out (you can see it here), and I used that layout as a template to create layouts for this year's first day of school photos.

I used a new collection from Mommyish, called Scholastic, for Evan's layout. He has changed so much from last year! I used a color photo instead of a black and white photo, but the basic layout is the same.

In June, Jack and I spent 10 days together while Evan was in Washington visiting my parents. Jack loves art projects, and we pulled out several unopened Kiwi Crate boxes to work on. 

One of his favorite projects involved using markers to color sea animals, then spritzing them with water so the ink bled, creating an awesome blended look. I took a ton of photos while Jack was creating his project, then created a layout using Scotty Girl Designs' Stitched Grid Templates.

As a scrapbooker, I love perusing online galleries, looking at beautiful layouts for inspiration. The Pixels & Company gallery is one of my favorites to look through... stunning layouts, a lot of variety, and great CAS pages. I looked at several layouts using this fabulous template set, called Stitched Down Templates Vol. 6 by Laura Passage, and I had to create my own page with the stitched hearts template.

I paired the template with Karla's newest collection, Hush, and a photo of Jack and my friend, Cindy, from 2012. I used almost all of the patterned papers from the collection, mixing the colors and textures. The title was created using Karla's Calipso alphabet, which is one of my favorite alphas ever. :)



I have a few links for you today. Just some fun places I like to visit, and a couple of places that I contribute to on a regular basis.

• Gallery Standouts | A great collection of new (and awesome!) layouts every week. I have been featured a couple of times (including this layout), and my peers at Pixels & Co. are often featured, too. 
• Scotty Girl Designs Blog | Shannon, the designer behind Scotty Girl Designs, has a wonderful blog that she updates regularly with digital project life layouts, tips & techniques, recipes, and layouts. Starting Wednesday I will be contributing a bi-monthly blog feature. Check it out if you are a digital scrapbooker!
• Pixels & Company | I have been on the P&Co. CT for a little over a year, and they are truly one of the best digital scrapbooking stores out there. Amazing designers, active message board, and tons of layouts in the gallery. 

I hope you will check out Shannon's blog on Wednesday. I have a new layout to share that highlights a fun new blog feature. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Hello there! I hope everyone is having a great week. 

This month Pixels & Company is having their annual Dollar Days sale, and there are so many awesome new kits in the shop! My personal favorites are this one, this one, this one, and this one. I used Deena Rutter's template set for this layout. 

Layered templates are great for quick pages, but they are also fun for creating layouts that are layered with lots of papers and elements. I clipped papers and cardstock from several different kits to each of the stars, circles, and photo mats. The font is one of my favorites: Rough Typewriter.

Good morning and welcome to National Scrapbooking Day with Pixels and Company! 

Pixels and Company has a ton of fun challenges going on today that I can't wait to participate in! My favorite challenge is the Template Challenge using this free template. If you get a chance, download the template and play along! 

The amazing P & Co. designers have put together a beautiful kit to celebrate National Scrapbooking Day. Below is a preview, and you can purchase it here.  



I have a fun little freebie for you using the Bermuda Triangle collection. I designed two journaling cards for you: one vertical 3x4 inch card, and one horizontal 4x6 card. These cards are perfect for your pocket scrapbooking or digital layouts. A preview of my cards is below, and you can download them here. 

Here is a complete list of the blog hop participants. If you get lost along the way, head back to the Pixels and Company blog!

• Pixels & Company  
• Lynnette 
• Amy  
• Jenn 
• Linda 
• Laura 
• Barbara 
• Anna 
• Kelly 
• Mandi 
• Jen H 
• Erin << YOU ARE HERE
• Jen E.  
• Carey 
• Kat 
• Rachel 
• Nettie 
• Becca 
• Pixels & Company Forum

To kick off  iNSD, I have some digital inspiration for you. I am obviously on a one-photo-and-neutral-backgrounds kick. It might be time to branch out a little bit! The Bermuda Triangle kit has a fun color scheme (and no black or kraft!), and I hope to have time to play with it today. You can view my gallery here to see a list of supplies for each layout.





Jen E. is next on the hop! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful National Scrapbooking Day! 

For years, I have been buying Lego sets for the boys, but they haven't been interested. Sure, they open them up and maybe put a few pieces together, but usually the very expensive sets end up in one giant bin, and the firetruck/airplane/whatever is never actually assembled. 

Then we went to Lego Land in December. They boys loved every second of it, and they quickly put their new Lego sets together. A couple of months later we saw the Lego Movie in theaters, and Evan discovered the TV show Ninjago, and an obsession was born. 

Of course I had to document Evan's new hobby. I used a 6x12 inch digital template from Simply Tiffany Studios and elements from Karla Dudley's Life Story March & April kits. I usually create 12x12 inch or 8.5x11 inch layouts, and occasionally 8x8 inch layouts, so this was a fun change.

Shannon McNab (Scotty Girl Designs) has a passion for all things Disney and she has created some fabulous Disney kits lately. She released Hollywood Magic last week, and I created a layout using a photo from our 2011 Disney trip.

I used one of her Singled Out templates, plus the Hollywood Magic alphas, papers, and elements. 

This photo brings back so many memories from our trip. I can't believe how little the boys are! Jack wasn't even 2, and Evan had just turned 5. We haven't been back to Disney in almost 3 years. I think a family trip needs to be scheduled for next year; I know the boys would love it.  

When we had our professional photos done in November, I really wanted a few pictures of just Mark and me. And I am so pleased with the results! This photo is especially sweet, and the Pillow Talk collection from Creashens was perfect for it. I also used a digital template from Scotty Girl Designs called Singled Out.

I had the privilege of working with Mye's new Hopscotch collection last week... a fantastic new Project Life style digital scrapbooking kit. Well, kits. She has created so many new products that coordinate, including templates, 2x2, 3x4, 4x4, and 4x6 cards, vellum cuts, flair, and many more!

I used one of her new templates and a handful of other Hopscotch products to create a layout with some cute photos of Evan. He has the sweetest smile... I just wish he would allow me to photograph him more often!

**This is my second post of the day. To see my Paper Smooches Sparks Designer Drafts challenge card, scroll down or click here.

I've had another busy month for Pixels & Company, creating layouts for Scotty Girl Designs and various P&Co. designers. Working with so many wonderful people is one of my favorite things about being on the P&Co. creative team.

Baseball
The kids and I met our friends, the Kriners, at a Brevard Manatees game last year for dinner and a late game. The little boys were a little antsy before the game started (due to a rain delay), but we had a fun evening together.



Instagram 2013
These film strip/photo slides are awesome! I used them as "homes" for 6 Instagram pictures.


evan & jack | november 2013
I love, love, love these pictures, and this frame shows them off beautifully.  


Playmobil
Jack-a-boo and his favorite Playmobil sets.


Pool Day
Evan and Jack are counting down the days until it is warm enough for a swim. Hopefully by spring break they can dive in. These photos were taken during our last trip to the pool last year... a sad day for Evan and Jack! They want to go into the pool year-round. :) 


Love This
A perfectly sunny day at the soccer fields. The spring season starts next weekend and our weekends (and most week nights!) will be full of soccer games and practices for the next 10 weeks.  


New Room
Jack and Evan now have their own rooms, and I captured this shot of Jack playing by himself in his new room. Jack didn't want his own room at first, but he had a habit of waking up at the crack of dawn and turning on all the lights, waking poor Evan up early on the weekend. Evan was more than happy to kick Jack out so he could get some sleep.  


Reading
My two sweet boys... look how little they are! And Jack with his pup-pup and hippo. He was such a cuddle bug. Still is, most of the time. Evan was a reluctant reader when he was younger, but now he goes through books faster than I can download them onto his Kindle.  


Snow
I can't believe it's been four years since our first winter in Ohio... and Evan was a little munchkin in these photos! I bundled him up and sent him out to play in the snow, but I couldn't find his mittens, so he was wearing layers of socks on his hands.

I have been working for the insanely talented Karla Dudley for almost 4 years, and she finally(!) created her own class to show off her favorite tips and tricks at Scrapaneers.com. I created a couple of layouts using her methods and I love them. :)


 I used a new kit from Scotty Girl Designs called Distressed Patterns 2 for this layout:

It's been another busy month at Pixels and Company and I had the privilege of creating layouts using some awesome actions by Jennifer Valencia Photography. I used two of her actions: Color Pop and Beautiful Black & White. 

The photo on my first layout was edited using the Color Pop action. The photo was slightly under exposed and now it looks great!

Happy Friday! We had a l-a-z-y afternoon here. The boys watched Monsters University and A Bugs Life (oh how we love Pixar movies on our house!), while I did some scrapbooking. We can be so busy that sometimes it's nice to just relax and watch a good movie (or two!).

I have been busy creating layouts for the designers at Pixels and Co., Karla Dudley, and Scotty Girl Designs. It's been a while since I've posted layouts, and I have quite a few to share today. You've been warned... this is a photo heavy post!

Our sweet kitty, Lilly, is making a couple of appearances today. She is just so darn cute, and has a habit of being underfoot (or on the table, or in the cabinet, or on the couch, or wherever else I am. All. Day. Long.). She is a very social cat and manages to be photographed often. We have another sweet kitty, Gabby, who is skittish and anxious, so I only have only a few photographs of her... and non in the presence of our kids! They tend to overwhelm her. Gabby's favorite spot is sleeping behind the couch in the master bathroom closet (Mark's "man cave"). It's hard to photograph a cat who sleeps in the most secluded part of the house all day!

Anyway, when Lilly was just a kitten, she followed Jack around the play room, fell into the toy box, and was very mischievous. Jack adores her.


Up next is a layout featuring Evan and Jack, and their friend, Nick. Getting three boys, ages 6 and under, to sit still and smile at the camera is nearly impossible. But I actually like the goofy shots... these photos show the true personalities of all three kids. And I'm shocked that Evan is the one kid smiling at the camera in all three photos... with his good smile! Not his "I would rather be eating worms than smile for one more freaking photo, MOM!" look that I have been getting a lot lately. Sigh. But for now, I get these three adorable, and completely goofy, shots of Evan, Jack, and Nick.


Bikes! Our weekends now include lots and lots of bike riding. Evan and Mark riding to the school and back (9+ miles round trip!). Jack and Mark riding to the park (.5 miles round trip!). Jack falling and scraping his knee twice while walking his bike across the street. Oh yes. The tears. The wailing. The sheer agony my poor, wounded child was in. Yes, it was very sad and I'm sure his knee hurt. He was bleeding some and required neosporin and a band-aid or two, but his carrying on was something for the record books. Jack is a wee bit on the dramatic side (which is one of the things I love about him the most).


Is there anything better for a kid than baking Christmas cookies with Grandma? According to my kids, the answer is no. And Jack is very fond of sprinkles. :)


The photo template is, well, perfection. I used 7 seriously silly photos of Jack with a few anecdotes about my favorite 4 year old.  


And we are back to cat photos. When I work in my office, Lilly likes to sit on my computer. Or in my box of inks. Or, even more helpful, on my printer. So finding her resting on the spare desk is a welcome change to her usual (obnoxious) ways.


The final layout I have to share features a trio of Jack photos, all adorable (if I do say so myself). In the center photo he has his favorite accessory of the year... his very first mohawk. It's actually a faux-hawk, but he was damn proud of it. And had no problem telling the stylist at Super Cuts when he walked in the door that he wanted "a blue mohawk" after his hair cut. And she sure delivered! Jack sported the look for two days and was devastated when we finally had to wash his hair.

Welcome to the Pixels & Co. DSD Blog Hop! 

First up, a quick tip for those of you who like to upload your layouts to different galleries. When I first started sharing my layouts in galleries, I had a hard time keeping track of all the different products I was using. I am the type of scrapbooker that likes to hop around between different kits, designers, and stores. I like to use a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Then I would try to upload my layout to a gallery and not have a clue where each product was from. It was so frustrating! I tried opening up a little sticky note on my desktop, but remembering to add each new product (and delete products that didn't make the page) was annoying.

A couple of years ago I realized I can simply add the designer and the kit name in the layers palette in CS6. Each time I open a new element/paper, I rename it in the layers palette to include the info I will need when I upload it to a gallery. Simple, fast, easy, and if I need to wait a few days or weeks to upload it (due to an assignment or delayed release), I can simply open the PSD file in CS6 and all the information is there. 

Here is a screen shot of a layout I'm working on right now:


Next up on the hop is Sarah. And in case you get lost along the way, here is a list of all the designers:


Pixels and Company http://pixelsandcompany.com/blog/
Mandi - http://ryanmandi.blogspot.com
Jennifer H http://jenniferhignite.blogspot.com/
Anna - http://scrapownia.blogspot.com
Lynette - http://scrapping-is-life.blogspot.com
Mary - http://justus-photographyanddigistuff.blogspot.com
Becca http://beccanicole05.blogspot.com
Jen F http://jenflaherty.blogspot.com
Erin T http://erintaylor718.blogspot.com/
Sarah http://pinklimeproductions.com/
Jen E https://www.facebook.com/JensCre8tivity

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Digital Scrapbooking Day!

Erin. :)

The first month of school is always a crazy-busy time for us, but I did manage to create a few layouts for the Pixels and Co. designers. I worked with current photos, but I also pulled out a bunch of older photos, too. I love looking back at photos of the boys from years ago... they have grown up so much!