Thank You Mike Sutton

I've been using iGoogle as a home page for a couple of years now.

In case you're not familiar with it, iGoogle was a web page you could personalize with your own gadgets and feeds.  Mine was pretty simple, but it did the job for me.  It was my landing page, my home page.

I had feeds to a couple of my favorite websites, my google reader at a glance, a couple of clocks and calendars, weather, my gmail at a glance, and a translator so my dear sister-in-law couldn't get one over on me.  I hadn't changed it in years and didn't feel the need to. But I loved having it as my home page.

So you can imagine my disappointment (and that of thousands) when we heard iGoogle would be gone November 1, 2013.  Ugggh!  Now what will I do?  Where can I have all my "things" together in one place?

Online, you could read about people were scrambling to find a replacement.  I didn't find one that really suited my needs.  I had even started to create my own "home page" by trying to customize a blogger blog with feeds and gadgets, but I'm really not that tech savvy.

I was googling this weekend to see if an alternative had recently come up and I found igHome, developed by Mike Sutton.  THANK YOU Mike Sutton.  Not only does this replace iGoogle for me, it's even better.  Why I like it better probably has more to do with the enormous amount of time I've spent with it in just 2 days compared to the minutes of time i spent putting my iGoogle page together.

I love igHome.  It's in beta right now, but I haven't had any problems yet.

There are tons of gadgets - not the amount of gadgets that were available on iGoogle, but I can only imagine the number will increase.  Not only can I have my home page, but I can have tabs on my home page to give me even more pages to customize.  I'm finding the customization to be a great part of this product.  The background you see if from a personal photo.  There are themes, colors, etc to use.

On my second tab I have feeds to my favorite blogs that I can see at a glance ...

and on the third, some of my favorite websites shown at a glance.

I'm one happy camper.  I can delete that dang blog I was trying to customize into a home page.  If you're looking for a cool home page, that's customizable for your needs, with a good selection of gadgets that will certainly only grow, try igHome.

Documenting My Days

and so the month rolls on and I'm documenting a piece of each day for my October daily.

Here's how my layout looked on the screen before printing it out:

This is truly going to be an easy way to create my little book!

Some shots after 6 days:

I'm going to add these lovely gold foil leaves as I go along.  I found them in New York City.

some favorite photos will be full size: 3 x 5 inches ...

I'm still working with the wonderful October Mercantile kits!  Can't wait to show you how I used this old blueprint paper from the Antiquarian kit in a layout:

and this creative way to display your photos will have to wait until the full reveal on the 10th:

Thanks for visiting! Have a creative day!

Getting that October daily ready ...

After playing around with a bunch of different ideas, I finally decided on the photo / journaling format for my October daily.

There's a lot of talk on the message board about how we are approaching this, so I'll share my way here:

I'm creating the template for my mini pages in a word processor - I use Mac Pages - but something similar can be done in Word.

This is the template.  The green boxes will have photos in them.  They're small - only 2x2 inches, so I have a space for a larger photo that will be included now and then.  This same template will be copied and used every six days.  All I have to do is change the numbers, photos, add my journaling, and print it off.

The colors I chose for the print match the mini book I made from the October JBS Mercantile kit.  To match them nicely, I simply pulled the internet image of the kit up on my screen, and used the color-picker in my Mac Pages to "choose" the colors I wanted.

Here's the general idea:

click image to view larger

I just love it when your computer makes life easy for you ... !

so .... I'll be waiting every six days I think to print my photos out .... if I can wait that long ...  ;)

If you've never used a color-picker, you should try it!  PSE has a color-picker that does allow you to get the color code for anything on your screen.  You can find a bunch online, too - apps for your Mac and programs for your PC. Many are free or very cheap!

"Auntie The Nerdy Scrapbooker" Rocks It

OK, I don't usually like blowing my own jazz saxaphone  horn, but I think I came through on this one.  :)

Dear brother and dear sister-in-law called me to make invitations STAT for my dear niece.  They were having a Rock Star party and they wanted concert ticket invites.  Dear brother sent me some ideas like this:

and I was in a panic!  It was late - they needed them that night - I worked all day - I wasn't feeling well - and man . . . THESE LOOKED COMPLICATED!

But I'd do anything for these guys . . . so . . . I studied and looked . . . and the pink one was calling my name . . . "make this one auntie" . . . "she'll love it" . . . and I realized it wasn't that hard at all! 

Look at the pink ticket and you'll see that it is just a collection of squares and rectangles in 4 colors: white, light pink, pink, and bright pink.  Once I figured that out, it was easy peazy!  And although I loooooove my computer, I'm no digital genius.

I used PSE.

You make your squares and rectangles:

Add that computerized-like text:

The pixelated type text is Pixelmix and the bardcode type font is aptly named Barcode font.  The little squares on the side of the white square is the period character from the font Orator - I think that was installed on my computer.  I just kept making "periods" until I found something I liked.

Then I added all the specific info and other stuff to make it look like a "real" concert ticket:

Graphics to wow it up a bit were right from the "shapes" in PSE:

and to dress it up and really make it special, I added some photos of dear niece:

How cute . . . and really easy in the end! I think for one little moment, Auntie the nerdy scrapbooker, was a rock star! LOL!

Have a GREAT GREAT weekend!

If you have some Jenni Bowlin mini bingo cards, I have a great easy gift or decorating idea for the holidays - coming soon!

And I do think that Gallery Updates for the Jenni Bowlin Mercantile December Kit are being added tonight - take a look - the stuff is incredible!  I think I should have 5 projects in my gallery when the updates go live.  Should be tonight.

And did you see what Jenni is doing on her blog?  Yikes! Take a look at what she's doing with rub-ons, JBS Dabber Paint, and some tape!  So inspiring!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Finding Great Color Combos and JBS and a Blog Giveaway

So . . . I've switched up my blog again, trying to find some colors I like. It's actually a fun and relaxing thing to be doing at 2am! I found a pretty cool way to pick great color combinations online and I plan on using this in my scrapbooking, too!

I searched Art.com for a piece of artwork I liked, opened it up in PSE, and used the eyedropper-color picker-thing to use the exact colors from the artwork on my blog.

For example, the colors on my blog right now, are all taken from this piece of artwork from
Don Li Leger on the website:



I got such a kick out of this (easily amused?) that I used another piece of lovely artwork by Stefania Ferri:





for my Etsy logo:



You can bet that I do some of this on my next digi project!

On another subject:

For the past couple of months I've posted some of my Jenni Bowlin layouts on her Jenni Bowlin Mercantile Customer Gallery and I was recently asked if I'd like to be part of a customer spotlight. It was a blast and you can see it here. You can be next! It's tons of fun and you get stuff to play with! Post to the gallery and give it a try!

And check out this blog giveaway on Pam's blog right here: Pamela's World of Scrap
Jeepers that's a lot of stuff!

Thanks for reading and have a creative week! - betsy