Random Scraps Grab Bag

So, I've been doing a lot of designing recently, but none of the kits are yet to my satisfaction for sharing. In the meantime I have come up with a lot of bits and pieces that I don't think I'll include in anything big, so I decided to do some "Random Scraps" bags. The first one is HERE
There is over 45MB of stuff included, lots of papers, tags, and more, most coordinating. Enjoy, and I will maybe finally have another kit up over the weekend, as the kids are going to my sister's from Saturday until Tuesday. I am very excited about the quiet. Well, the quiet after the party/cookout we are throwing Saturday night in honor of their absence, lol.

Cool Tutorial

I get a cool newsletter called The Photoshop Roadmap. There are always cool things in it from tutorials to brushes. Today there is a great tutorial on Pop-out photos, which I've noticed are getting to be one of the new trends in digi-scrapping. For some reason it won't let me place a hyperlink today, so here's the address: http://www.showandtell-graphics.com/picture-pop-out.html
And the address for the site & newsletter: http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/
Check them out. Very cool.
I am almost done a new kit, based on rock & music. It, like the others keeps getting bigger and bigger, lol. I should have it, or a chunk of it posted within the next few days. The glorious days of my kids being at camp from 8:30-4:00 are over, that lasted 2 weeks, although I am not in the least a morning person so the wake up and drop off was rough, but the quiet days were great. They leave Saturday to spend 3 nights in Virginia Beach visiting my sister with my parents, and then in mid-August they are going to Texas for 10 days with my parents to see my uncle. My parents have also apparently promised to take them camping for several nights at the end of August right before school starts. I'm not sure my parents know what they are getting themselves into since they won't be able to just send the kids home when they get annoying like usual. While I will miss the kids a lot, I am looking forward to the quiet, as my house seems to be a World War 3 battlefield most of the time now with the older one thinking he can discipline the little one, then the shreaking starts, then the physical part of the battle, and I become the referee. My nerves are shot by bedtime which keeps coming later and later as the kids lay in their beds not sleeping but screaming at each other. Did I mention my parents are DRIVING from Maryland to Texas with the 2 kids in the backseat of a Subaru Outback wagon together? I remember those days....It won't be pretty. Perhaps I should send my parents some emergency valium, lol.

The Big Bang phreebie kit

So, I started a small little Independence Day kit to go with the loads of pictures I know I'll take, and ended up with a HUGE kit to share. Not all of the elements are shown in the preview, and you can't really get a feel for the texture and design of the papers from it either. There are 17 papers, 4 alphas (all upper case) and 34 elements included. This kit was a lot of fun to make, I started it using the trial version of PS CS3, and it ran out while I was still working on it. Then I couldn't get my old PS7 to work, even when I reloaded it so I had to reformat my laptop and start from scratch, but it wasn't a huge deal since I had everything backed up. I wiped out my drives to avoid going into PS withdrawal, lol. I didn't have a working copy on my PC for several days and it was getting depressing. I played in CorelDraw, Corel Painter, and Illustrator, but none was close enough to my precious PS to make me happy. Then on Friday my husband bought me CS3 as a get well gift. I have had an extremely bad kidney infection all week, and even though I've been on antiobiotics since Wednesday it has not improved at all, and may have gotten worse. I've had tons of these infections, and 2 kidney stones before, and this is the first time I have had pain from laying on my left side or touching my left kidney area. Usually it hurts, bot not to the touch. I spent much of the weekend doped up and playing in Photoshop. Hopefully it starts to improve soon. I am already on one of the strongest antibiotics, and after being no fun for my kids all last week I made a lot of plans for this week thinking that after this many days of antibiotics I'd feel much improved. Tomorrow One of my friends is coming over with her friend from Florida and her friend's son to go swimming down at our beach with us and to go pick raspberries in the woods. They came over the weekend before last and the kids got along great as we swam, kayaked and crabbed. I need to catch more crabs this week, nothing like Cheasapeake Blue Crabs steamed with Old Bay and the necessary Maryland touch, adding beer to the water for steaming. Yummy! Now that I've rambled on forever, we get to the good stuff. The kit is in 3 downloads in one folder. You can access that HERE. Please remember to TOU and leave me a comment to entertain me if you can! Oh yeah, and I was getting bored with all of the standard 4th of July kit names I could come up with, they had all probably been done, so I went with The Big Bang for a dose of some fireworks and contraversy in one, lol...