Meagan's Creations at Scrap Matters, Mix-A-Kit and WINNER!

October is here! And Meagan's Creations has finally opened shop at Scrap Matters with all your favourite kits! The store is on sale for 30% and the bundles are already 40% off! Here's a glimpse of what you'll be able to grab there.

(linked to the scrap matters store)

Meagan is participating in Mix A Kit at Scrap Matters this October. Her pieces are called My Favorite Things which have stunning blues, pinks and yellows! Each piece is very elegant, will work with all kinds of photos and is on sale for 30% off.

Check out the beautiful MAK pieces Meagan's Creations has in store (pun intended ;) ) for you.

And here are the individual previews (all linked to the store):

 

The journal cards (A set of six 5.88" x 3.88" journal cards) make a beautiful way to journal on and alternatively, you can use it to make a hybrid project and fancy cards.

And here are some of the wonderful layouts by Meagan's CT:
Lahni:

Belinda:

Dana:

template by Little Bit Shoppe Designs

Stephanie:

Laura:

Lauren:

Lindsay:

Kandice:

Kendra:

She used Meagan's Squared Away templates (Gotta Pixel store)

Finally, what everyone has been anxiously waiting for. The winner who correctly guessed Meagan's new store is....

...Sarah!! Congrats girl! Please contact Meagan at meagan2t@gmail.com.

Thank you all for participating and we hope you keep dropping by for more chances to win and some great kits. Happy shopping!

Meet Meagan's CT: Lindsay

 

Hi, my name is Lindsay and I love to digiscrap! About 4 years ago, I was frantically trying to make a calendar for my MIL for Christmas (by traditional scrapbooking) and my mom and sister talked me into making it digitally. Oh my, was I stressed out over the whole ordeal. I didn't really know how to use my program (PSE7 at the time) and of course I didn't have any scrapbooking kits. So after I got the calendar done I looked into digital scrapbooking more and I was hooked. I love to scrap without having the mess of traditional scrapping. I'm still learning new things and I love the tutorials that Meagan does each week.  I also like to camp and spend time with my husband of 11 years and our 5 children. You can find my blog here and a couple of my scrapbooking galleries here and here.

I had a hard time picking just one favorite kit of Meagan's Creations....besides all of her AWESOME templates! I have to go with the kit that I made my favorite layout with and that is Dreamy Skies. Here is what the kit looks like and the layout that I made with it.

We don't really travel much so I haven't been anywhere exotic but a couple of years ago we visited an elk ranch that is up by our cabin in the mountains, and it was really cool!

There are two things that I don't think I could live without......Dr. Pepper and chocolate! I love fountain drinks and my husband always give me a hard time about having to stop and get me a fountain drink when we go somewhere.

Someday, I would love to go to Hawaii with my husband. He is such a home body though so I don't know if that will ever come to pass.

I just recently took an online photoshop techniques class and learned so much. One of the things I learned was how to make your picture blend into the background. I think right now that is my favorite scrapping technique and I love the look of a finished scrapbook page with a blended background.

Meet Meagan's CT: Shaheen!

Hey all! This is me:

I'm an Indian (from India) living in Dubai, UAE, also known as the city of gold and famous for the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa tower. 

Most of you may already know my name since I often help create posts for Meagan on her blog. Here are some of my galleries (STS, DST, DSA) and you can find my blog here.

Besides scrapbooking, I have a great interest in photography. I generally prefer photographing nature and places over people since people make for fussier subjects. Myself included. ;)

I also love henna designing or, as most people in the west refer to it, henna tattoos. Applying henna has both a cultural as well as a religious significance. So we are commonly known to decorate our hands, arms and feet with it during weddings as well as religious holidays such as Eid.

I love visiting places and have travelled to countries like USA, Canada, UK, France and a few places in the Asian continent as well. Meagan asked each of her CT to share a photo of an exotic place we've been to. I suppose India would be an exotic choice for most but since it's normal for me, I've decided to share photos of my visit to Oman, a country neighbouring the UAE. Oman lies at the southern border of UAE and is an amazing place to visit!

Unlike UAE, essentially a desert that's been changed into a bustling city and country, Oman has a variety of landscapes. From mountains to seaside, not only is it pretty different from UAE, but it's far more greener and cooler too.

Instead of simply showing you a bunch of photos, I've decided to use a template from Meagan's Stack Me set (STS; GP) and her Dreamy Skies kit (STS; GP) to share just some of the amazing sights one can see in Oman.

One thing I cannot live without would probably be my laptop and the internet. I keep in touch with all my friends through the net and I'm absolutely addicted to it. Plus, nowadays, it's impossible to get anything done if you don't have the net. It's a great source of knowledge if utilised correctly besides being an unlimited source of entertainment. If it wasn't for the internet, I would have never learnt about scrapbooking! :o

Talking about scrapbooking, it's about time I show you some of my favourite layouts. The first one is Meagan's The Simple Life kit (STS; GP) which I used to scrap a layout about my budgies. Did I mention I have budgies and finches as pets? :P

Here's another layout about my trip to Al Ain (southern city in UAE) and their hanging flowers garden which has set a record in the Guinness Book Of World Records. As Wonderful As She (STS; GP) was the PERFECT kit to scrap these beautiful flowers!

And of course, here are the kits by Meagan that I absolutely LOVE!

As Wonderful As She has to be the kit that I fell in love with at first sight. The colours are absolutely stunning!

(STS; GP)

Wishes And Wings is one of Meagan's newer kits that I haven't had the pleasure of working with as yet but love the colour palette and elements. It's one that will easily work with all kinds of photos.

(STS; GP)

Another thing Meagan would like us to share is about our dreams. I'm a doctor (yes, of medicine) and I'm working my way towards starting a specialisation and my dream would be to be able to help people through my work. Wish me luck!

Finally, a favourite layout technique of mine is highlighting the colours of my photos with the use of a kit. I'm sure that's easy to see with my layouts above. :D

Thank you so much for patiently reading!

Design Principle 4: Proximity

We are on the last week of my 4-part design prinicples! This last one is called Proximity and the idea is that things that are related to each other are close together. Now, Since I make finished word art, I put the words close together, if you were doing a title for a page, I don't think there would be any problem with placing part of the title at the top of the photo and the rest on the bottom. As long as they are close to the photo, you are still following proximity.

I almost always put each word of my title on a different layer because I want to move them closer together. You can use that same alpha toolbar I showed you in the last tutorial to space the rows differently, which I use often when I am journaling if my text doesn't line up with the journal lines. You can find that tool where you see it on the screen:


Credits: Steampunk Quick Page

But then when I have several rows of words and I am making word art, I will definitely put them on different layers.

Now, you might see me play around with placing words even on top of each other. When I do this, I try to make sure to also include the principle of Contrast so that each word is distinctive enough.


Credits: Steampunk Word Art Clusters

I often will add a stroke to the word on top too so it can have a drop shadow and stand out more, especially if it was a more dainty font. You can see this below:


Credits: Wishes and Wings Word Art Clusters

Here you also see my proximity tool with word art is sometimes to make the words touch each other and then use Contrast to make sure they stand on their own and don't get lost. I placed "key" and "heart" on different layers so I could more easily position them as close together as I wanted.

Play around with these tools and I'll see you next week with another tutorial for making your layouts and designs great!

Meet Meagan's CT: Lauren!

Hi! My name is Lauren. I love to digiscrap! You would think with all the scrapping I do, I'd be caught up by now! But I'm nowhere near!! Maybe its because I have too many projects I want to do! I also love to read, when I can find the time. Right now I'm reading Fifty Shades of Grey (GASP!!!) I'm on the second book. You can find my digital scrapbooking blog here. And you can find some of my galleries here and here.

My most favoritest  (yep, I used that as a word) would have to be one of Meagan's newest kits called Wishes and Wings. This kit was made with the palette of my 2 year old daughter's room. I have BIG plans for this kit!! Here is a layout I made for my daughter's room with this kit.

And I just love this layout too. I used a template from QueenWild Scraps and Meagan's kit Playground Play. I think that might be my 2nd favorite kit. I love the bright, bold colors!!

I don't think I've been anywhere exotic...unless you count the bear farm in Michigan exotic??!! We went there in June. They used to let you hold the baby cubs, but 2 days before we went there, the Feds came and made them stop doing that. I was very sad about that! I ssoooo wanted to hold a bear cub!!

And here is another picture from that trip. We took a little visit (about 2 hours) into Canada for dinner and ice cream!

The one thing that I could not live without would have to be......my cherry chapstick. Yes, I know I'm weird and I'm pretty sure I'm addicted to this stuff. I don't EVER leave home without it!!!

My biggest dream is to, one day, own my own daycare. Maybe when all the kids are in school I can focus on that!

And my favorite layout technique...hmmm. I would have to go with clustering. Whether its photos or elements. I LOVE clusters. I'm not that great at them, but I think my clustering has gotten better with time!

Design Principle: Alignment

When I was learning about this principle it mainly was applying to documents and flyers and how you shouldn't change between left- and right-alignment and center alignment without a purpose in mind. But the idea of alignment is very important in word art, too. Today, I'm going to talk about alignment in some different ways.

First, I like to make most of my word art left-aligned just because I find we write and read left to right but then I also indent the second line, like you can see in this word art (from my new release today!)

Credits: Steampunk Word Art Clusters

You can see in this one as well as other word art I do, I don't particularly like to make the words line up right under each other. Then of course, the ampersand is not really aligned with either but I do that for some visual interest and to add that contrast!

Included in alignment I think is letter spacing. Do you know how to change the space between letters? Here is an example of a word I have typed out and then decided I want the letters to be closer together. Hi-light your text, and then find the alpha toolbox. Then, you will see a drop down menu next to a symbol with AZ and an arrow underneath it where you can space the letters out further or move them closer together. Some fonts I have found place the letters really close together and I use this to give them some room. I don't however, recommend this for script fonts as the curves won't flow into each other when spaced out.



Here are the settings I used on this word. I used -25 to move them closer together. You can always type in a different value than the menu gives you an option for.



I especially use this trick when I make a text path on a shape. Here I have made a circle text path and want to write "Beautiful Baby" three times. Sometimes changing the font size doesn't fix the spacing issue or the text is just the size I want but too close together. This alpha tool is perfect for that.



I hi-lighted the words and then spaced them out, using my own value after playing around with the presets.



One other thing I wanted to show you was that text paths don't only have to be on the outside of shapes. You can move them to the inside using the Direct selection tool.


Click on the text and hold the button down as you drag the cursor inside the circle.



And there you go! You now have text inside the circle.

Play around with these alignment tools and I'll see you next week for the Proximity design principle!