Scrap Outside The Box is already turning 5! It was one of the first sites I found when I started digi-scrapping back in 2005. Been wandering around, and returned in 2008 because of a scrapper of the year-contest they had, which I even won! They discovered I was also designing, and asked me to join. Since then I've been part of the team, without regret, it's a wonderful set of people here!

This is my part of the blogtrain

Did you “derail” off the tracks? No worries, here are all the Designers participating!
Scrap Outside the Box (Ilona Havenaar): http://www.scrapoutsidethebox.com/blog/

(Digidesigned) byWilma: http://digidesignedbywilma.typepad.com/

Missy’s Bits: http://melissas-place.blogspot.com/

Caroline B.: http://bbk-scrapbook-corner.blogspot.com/

Kimberly Schlehahn Designs: http://scrapaddict1969.blogspot.com/

Danielle Designs: http://drfenning.multiply.com/

Scrapsational Scraps: http://scrapsationalscraps.blogspot.com/

Totally D Designs: http://totally-d.com/Blog

Ilona Havenaar Designs: http://sokkiesspot.blogspot.com/

Garden Girl Designs: http://www.gardengirldesigns.blogspot.com/

My store (see link in side-bar) is 30% off this weekend! Top that with the coupon you find in the blogtrain-freebie, and you have an awesome deal!

Made by Rae Jackpack Backpack GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Made by Rae Jackpack Backpack GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Sale and news!

It's all good news :), don't worry.

First of all, I've got a sale going on at Scrap Outside The Box, Divine Digital and DigiScrapWarehouse... 40 % off on everything! It's my hubby's 49th birthday (the kids got him a card saying "happy 50th birthday LOL, they were mistaken 1 year), and this Saturday Sept. 5 it's our 12,5 year anniversary!

This is us on March 5, 1997:

We both had a son already from a former relationship, and 4 more boys followed. It's been very stormy weather, but I hope it will calm down a bit soon. It's not as bad anymore as it has been anyway.

The other news is that hubby's son is living with us again, now since a month or 2. We hadn't seen him in 8 years! Or even been in contact. It's a long story, not so happy. But he's 18 now, and is free to choose now where he wants to go, and he chose to be with us. You can't imagine what this means for Dante! Now we're back at 5 sons again, as my own son isn't living with us anymore. He's 18 too, but had/has some problems. He chose to go his own way unfortunately. It hurts for me as a mom, but if he's happy now... He'll always be in my heart.

So, take your chance again this week, and visit my stores for awesome deals!

Little House Pouch

Here are some items that I made for swaps on swapbot:

Some Altered tags:

A purse with stuff to alter puzzle-pieces

An Apple-dotee

A little stuffed owl

And more, just visit my Flickr-gallery. There are some more dotees, matchboxes, stuffies.

Look what I found a tutorial of today

Isn't this the cutest little purse you've ever seen?? Just love it. Found it here: Little House Pouch, on The Long Thread. Got this site bookmarked for a while now, and it's a great source for inspiration. Don't visit if you're already over your Etsy-spending-limit...

But this little purse isn't for sale, it's a tutorial, that you can find there! I'm so going to make it :)

There's going to be a sale this week, because tomorrow it's my hubby's 49th birthday, and this Saturday it's our 12,5 anniversary! Check back for the details tomorrow!

My past week

It's been a busy week again, as usual. All boys are home, it's the fourth week of their holiday. Fortunately my hubby has 3 weeks of now too, so we can split our attentions between all the boys. He promised to go fishing with René, but now there's a great weather-forecast, so cleaning and filling up the little pools.

This is my contribution to week 3 of BOTCT at DSA (click image to go the gallery, if you want to see it big/leave me a comment there):We had to use a list this time, from 10 to 1. This was our list:
10 circles
9 flowers
8 staples
7 Leaves
6 Animals
5 grass elements
4 Papers
3 photos
2 alpha
1 glitter scatter
You can still vote for Kristin's Peeps here: http://www.digiscrapaddicts.com/battle/designer.html, till 11:59EST this Tuesday.Last week I received this gorgeous set of inchies from Jeannie, amongst others. Love the felt she sent to protect them in! I also made and sent some stuff:
2 birthday-card sets

René made this giraffe for Ola, a boy who wants to collect 1 million hand-made giraffes. You can read about his project and contribute if you like HERE.

And I made my first needle-book!
An altered matchbook filled with different types of stickers

An altered matchbox filled with flowers (brads, fabric roses, pins, fabric flowers, buttons)

A dotee with the theme O is for... and I filled in the dots with Octomom...

And a dotee for the theme Sixties. Isn't she all Flower Power cuteness? Used some vintage fabric from the era too :)

And last, but not least, yesterday I did another drop for the Toy Society. This time a little denim bird with a plaid/flower flanel belly. Dropped at the Autism Centre in Oegstgeest.

We had to be there with our son Alexander, who was already diagnosed with pdd-nos, but now he's got the official diagnosis from them too, with autism. There was good news too! He had a test back in 2005, which was below average, 83. Now he did the test again, and he scored much better, 98! So he's an average boy now, and it was harmonic too. So happy about that. He has his strong points of course, and his less good things, but nothing alarming. He'll get training, we'll get training too. It will take months before that happens though, as waiting lists are terrible as usual.

We had a barbecue last Saturday, just for our family and grandma. I never have to do anything for it, as my hubby is the cook here and doesn't allow me near the kitchen or barbeque then ;).

Only afterwards, when the stuff has to be cleaned....

But it was de-li-cious, and so we divided the jobs equally that way.

I also sent another matchbox and Harry Potter-atc's, but didn't have the pics yet, so those will follow later.

My week 2 layout for BOTCT

This time we needed to something with a song. Kristin's Peeps took the song "Somewhere over the Rainbow".

Here is my take on it: I love his eyes in this picture! I find myself doing lots of layouts of Martin lately. You don't see them (yet), but I just got the proof-issue of RSC for August/September and I realised that ALL of my layouts were with pictures of Martin! Just as if I don't have a couple of more boys :)

Anyway, I did some cute hybrid stuff too for it. If you wanna see, buy the issue at http://www.readysetcreate.com/ when it comes out on August 1. Or wait one month (and a bit), when I can upload them to the galleries. I did some hybrid cards, a teabagbook (so cute!), a cupcake-pincushion, an altered wooden fruitbox and a whole lot of layouts. Think that was it.

Besides that I also made some goodies for swaps on Swap-bot. See my Flickr-gallery. Working on some matchboxes right now, they are addictive! As are dotee-dolls... never heard of them, but they are nice to make. Only did one yet, but working on the second, themed O- is for Dotee. They are working on the alphabet, so this one should be with the letter O. I was thinking Orange, Octopus... suddenly it struck me, OCTOMOM! So now I'm busy making 8 tiny babies, as the doll itself is only between 4-6 inches... will show you when I'm done, in my head it looks cool already LOL.

Bit of Whimsy's Christmas in July give-away! And mine too :)

Bit of Whimsy is having a Christmas in July give-away on her blog till Friday!
Day 1 were patterns of her dolls (check out her store, she has such cute softies!), and day 2 are some pretty fat quarters:

Aren't these lovely? I don't have much nice cotton fabric (IF I have them...), only fleece, sweater-fabric, jersey, denim... but without girls in the house I didn't get them until now. I just started sewing, and until now mainly by hand, so I really need to build my stash from scratch!

For another medium I have a give-away too! Recently I found Swap-bot, a great swapping site. Lots of atc's too. Now me as a digital girl can go both ways if I want too (although the hands-on method is challenging for me!), but paper girls/guys often struggle with the computer. Which program to use, how-to?

To give a head-start, I made a little freebie starter-pack, with 2 atc-templates, an atc-sleeve, some papers 6x6 inches and a finished atc. I made those papers when I was trying out some settings, but they never really fitted in a kit, but for this purpose they are just perfect!
You can download the pack when you click the image.

More info to get started with it can be found here:
http://www.scrapbook-bytes.com/a-tuts/publish/index.shtml
or
http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/university/tutorials/tutorials.shtml
You can find info and tutorials for the programs, and how to start, and techniques.

Free trials:
Adobe PSCS
Photoshop 7
Paintshop Pro X
Photoshop Elements 7

So, this should get you going :). Enjoy!