Feelin Wonderful 2 and Call Update

I hope you like envelopes, I went a little overboard on them but what you are getting is Mix ‘N’ Match envelopes, I still have more to add to the set, you might want not want to keep all of them when you get them but this way you can decide. Well everyone seems pretty happy with Feelin Wonderful. There are already some quick pages and layouts in the gallery which amazes me because I have only given out a few embellishments, I can’t wait to see what you can do when you get the whole kit.
I have been VERY busy here, I got some good responses to my call for designers, the creative team and co administrator, The CT call will close tonight at midnight central because I had SO many good applications for the team. There are some very good designers that are interested in having a shop at the store but the call is still open, if you have some good designs and have been considering having a store don’t be shy about checking out the possibility here. As for the co-administrator position I have decided to divide this into two positions one for helping manage the store and forums and the other for the advertising guru who will take care of designing and placing ads and making up the newsletter. The reason for this is I might find someone who is great with the managing forums part but does not feel comfortable with the advertising, and advertising gurus might not care for administration. It might be the best way to handle that position so that we could all have the best of both worlds. By the way, this is a paid position so the co-admin and ad person will not just be working for “scraps”…LOL.

To those of you that applied for the Creative Team, please give me a few days to get back to you, I really need to focus on the designers, co-administrator and the ad person so that they can start doing what needs to be done to get ready for our Grand Opening. I hope you understand and I promise I will get to you as soon as possible, in the meantime you should have plenty to play with now that you have another part of Feelin Wonderful.

I have not been able to do much on the forum the last few days but there are some great people who are pitching in and getting involved, BIG HUGS to you all. Which reminds me, besides the other positions I did the calls for I am also looking for people who would like to get involved in the forums and gallery doing such things as moderating and getting some fun things started. I already have a few people in mind but if you are interested in having a hand in shaping this site I would love to hear from you.
I am doing a bonus again, A few people did have trouble finding the last bonus so I will tell you where it is, part 1 is in the “Flavors of the World” forum. I don’t want to waste your time making you hunt all around but I do like to have you stop into the forum and gallery, so I will make it super easy and tell you this one is in the “Down Through the Ages” forum, both of these forums were Jasia’s idea and Janalyn has been posting all kind of great links in them (BIG HUGS to you girl)
The next piece will be up Monday or Tuesday. I am going to spend the weekend getting the team together. If you are thinking about applying for a shop, co-admin or advertising wiz there is still time. To all of you that applied for designer and co-admin I will be in touch with you by Monday, if there is anything else you want me to see get it sent in soon and if you have any questions I will be glued to my keyboard so I can get back to you fast. Thanks all for your patience. Enjoy!
Grambie, did you get my e-mail??





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A Little Update

I was hoping to get this posted early tonight but between taking care of some things for the calls and getting carried away making envelopes for Feelin Wonderful it ain't gonna happen. It will be there in the morning. A few people can’t find the bonus, but they tried, so it is in the forum “Flavors of the World. See ya tomorrow.

Previous post today
I just wanted to let you know that I am spending the day working on the embellishments for part two of “Feelin Wonderful.” I am not going to be answering e-mails unless they are an emergency until I get this part posted, probably early this evening. One more thing, all of the calls are still open but I am considering dividing the co-administrator position into two parts, one for helping manage the store and forums and the other for the advertising guru. The reason for this is I might find someone who is great with the managing forums part but does not feel comfortable with the advertising part, and vise versa. It might be the best way to handle that position so that we could all have the best of both worlds. By the way, this is a paid position so the co-admin will not just be working for “scraps”…LOL. A few people couldn’t find the bonus so I will give you a little hint, it is in the forum that is “Yummy”
Enjoy!

New Mega Kit Freebie and Mega Announcement

I bet you have been wondering where I have been for the last few days, Well, I have been busying tying up loose ends on my big plans and designing a mega kit to give out to you over the next few weeks. I have been telling you that I have been working on something and today is the day to tell you about it. I will be opening Stone Accents Studio store near the end of August, and I am looking for 8-10 Designers, A Creative Team of 4-6 and a Co-administrator. I have that great big beautiful store waiting to be stocked with pretties and I know there are a lot of you that have great design ideas you would like to sell, so if you are looking for a home for your designs or if you are an established designer looking for another store in a warm pleasant “working” environment I invite you to apply for a position. I am also looking for 4-6 exciting people to be on my creative team, and to get my products free in exchange for making layouts and posting them in galleries, basically to do what you love to do only getting to do it for free. The most important position I need to fill is for the co-administrator, I need a person who is familiar with the digital community and advertising. This position will also involve management of the forums and the store, so if you are a real “Go Getter” and want to get in on the bottom floor of this new business I would love to hear from you.
If you are interested in these positions please e-mail me at stoneaccentsstudio@hotmail.com and I will send you all of the information you need to apply. These calls are open until the positions are filled; I look forward to hearing for you.

Now for the Mega kit. I hope you like paper, ribbon, flowers and all kinds of goodies. I have named it “Feelin Wonderful” partially because that is how I have been feeling, so the paper with text on it has synonymous of the word “wonderful”. Once I got started on it things just flowed. Like Eastern Spice I wanted to make it very versatile for you. I have made over 50 papers that all coordinate together. I have designed about 20 flowers and over a dozen ribbons with more to come, and I am working on the journaling pieces right now. I am sure that by the time I am done there will be at least 70 elements, Like I said they will all coordinate but I am mixing styles so you can get many different looks out of this one kit. I want to give special thanks to Carola Designs, I used her “Colored Flowers” commercial use gems in this kit, and also Al Ward Action FX, I incorporated his styles and patterns in the designs. I will post each part of Feelin Wonderful on the blog, because I really miss the wonderful comments I get here. Each part will also include bonus elements that will only be available in the forum or gallery for a limited time. They won’t be too hard to find because the forum and gallery is not so big that it would waste your time (I hate having to go all through a site to find something so I wouldn’t do that to you.) While you are in the gallery or forum I hope you will take the time to post a reply or to open a gallery and upload some of your layouts. Like Eastern Spice this kit lends itself to quick pages so starting next week I will be putting out the call for some more great contributions from you. Everyone enjoyed it so much last time and I have all that room in cyberspace so we might as well fill it up. The posting contest is still going on, 3 people a day that post will win a coupon for a free kit and if you start a really good thread or have a good idea you will also receive one. I hope that you feel this kit was worth the wait, I am very excited about sharing it with you and look forward to seeing some layouts and quick pages from it. Enjoy!






Some of the 48 papers for this kit.



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I got the comments about changing the tabs for the forum, I was planning on doing that soon, I just need to talk to Grace first so I don't blow the place up doing it. If you click the link above it will take you directly to the forum. Thanks.

A Mix of Quick Pages

The quick pages I uploaded today brings me to the end of this exciting journey I so innocently (naively?) started a few weeks ago. What an adventure it has been. I have learned so much and accomplished something I thought was too big of a job to handle. The day I put out the call for the quick pages I never imagined where it would lead. It defiantly changed what I was doing with my days, until then I spent at least 3-4 hours a day looking for freebies and cruising various sites and blogs, there were daily downloads and personal stories I followed on a regular basis, along with keeping up with the “real life” things. Since that day I have spent 12-15 hours a day working on the site and have started giving my teenage daughter “allowance” again to help keep up with the housework. Every morning no matter how cruddy my arm feels I am ready to get up and get to it, and I am always reluctant to go to bed. Yep, this has been a big adventure.

Things have settled down a bit, the site is running smoothly and I am back to designing. I am very happy with some of the things that have been started in the forum, it is a good beginning, but it is only a beginning. I have lots of plans that I would like to pursue and ideas that I want to see grow. things that are starting to take shape. I do hope that you will take some time to visit the forum on your way to the quick pages, we have started forums for Era, Ethnic and Genealogy themes and I would love it if you would post a link or two there. We have some things going on in the Gimp users forum and I have just started a forum for Newbies, I am going to try to answer many of the questions we all had when we first started digital scrapping, so if you want to lend a hand there it would be much appreciated. There is also a posting contest going on daily, 3 people a day that post will be randomly be selected to receive a coupon for a kit (5 of which I am working on) and anyone that starts a really good thread or has a good idea for the forum will also receive a coupon.

I would love to see some of the layouts you have done with the kits, there is plenty of room in the gallery so you could post it there or send me a link to whatever galleries you have posted them. One thing that I can just about guarantee, now that I have this wonderful gallery and forum set up I WILL have a quick page challenge for every kit I give out. I hope to have the next freebie posted by Monday, so be sure to check back in.

I have the Infatuation QPs up and will have about 8 others from the other kits up within the hour. Enjoy!






Click Here to go to Stone Accents Studio

30 more Eastern Spice Quick Pages

I am in the process of uploading 30 more of the Eastern Spice QPs today, With these, the total of QPs in the gallery from various kits is over 70, all of which are free for the taking. When you look at the gallery of Eastern Spice QPs you will be amazed at the variety of styles that have been achieved from one kit. Everything is running pretty smoothly with the site now so I have able to catch up a bit around here, my DH has a fondness for clean underwear and more than cereal for dinner so he is happy about that. I have been able to get some designing done and have 12 papers for three kits done. I hope that by this weekend I can get back to giving out some freebies. I have really missed that, because all of the comments from you have been a real bright spot. So I will probably give out the freebies from the blog.
If you haven’t been to the site you might not know that I have a posting contest going on, 3 people each day will be awarded a coupon for a free (as yet unmade…LOL) kit. The details of the contest are in 2 posts in the forum. When you come by stop in to the member’s gallery, there are some beautiful layouts there and there is plenty of room for you to upload yours.
Well I better get back to uploading the QP’s, I will be working on it through out the day. Enjoy!
Grambie, as far as I know I have never received an e-mail from you, please e-mail me and let me know it is you.



Click Here to go to Stone Accents Studio

Dusted Blossoms QPs Uploaded

I hope by now that most of you have made your way to the gallery to have a look around and to help yourself to the quick pages in the gallery. I got the Dusted Blossoms QPs uploaded today, now there are 40 QPs available. We have the start of a nice member’s gallery and you are all invited to add your layouts there. There are also some good links for Gimp, PS and Photo Impact users in the forum. There is a daily posting contest going on, the details for that are in the forum also. I have about 6 “irons in the fire” today but things are under control now.

I have been able to get some designing done and that makes me happy. I am making some scroll brushes, I have tried to draw them with a paint brush before but I don’t have too steady of a hand (too mush coffee I think) so they never looked very good, I decided to make them with the pen tool and it is much easier and they are also much more adaptable like that, so you can expect to see a lot of fancy scrolls from now on. I have 5 new papers made and a good start on the embellishments. I will post more of the Eastern Spice QPs on Tuesday. The link to the gallery is below the preview, Enjoy!




Stone Accents Studio Gallery

Posting Contest

We are going to have a posting contest. Every day for the next 4 weeks the top 3 posters on the web site for that day will get a coupon they can redeem for a free kit of their choice. Now it might seem silly to have a contest with a prize you have never seen but I do have plans to start selling my kits in the next few weeks. I have a few in the works but I kind of got side-tracked for the last two weeks working on the site. So if you like what I have done so far I think you will be happy with what I come up with next. Just about everything you do here will increase your count. Posting replies, starting threads, uploading to the gallery, comments on peoples uploads all count for 1, and for referrals you will get 3 towards your count instead of 1. Some of you are so active and sharing anyplace you go, so to give everyone a chance to win, you can only win one coupon a week.
I have not quite figured this part out yet but if you have any ideas on interesting things we can do here and want to get it started you will most defiantly get a coupon for a free kit. Here are the top posters as of right now; they will receive a coupon (as soon as I design it.) The contest started the day the site opened on the 10th and goes from midnight to midnight, central time. I have posted the names of the winners for the first two days in the forum.
Link to the forum

I Survived the First Two Days!

Things went better than I could have hoped with the opening of the site. I expected a glitch or two and I am still not able to figure out how to make the “Contact Me” link work, so I have my e-mail address plastered all over the place in case you have any problems. I got the first draft of the newspaper off to the editor, which leaves me the rest of the day to work on the site. I have some of the Butterfly Garden quick pages uploaded to the gallery and I will be uploading more as the day progresses. I have a post in the forum under “General Chatter” that I would appreciate it if you would read it if you have the time. I have been warned that I am leaving myself open for problems if I do not require people to register in order to post or download things, so even thou I would rather not do it I am going to have to. When you register it will take care of both the Forum/ Tutorial area and the Gallery. If I ever open the store that will require a separate registration. I did make a few sales yesterday, I have a “Welcome“ sign in the store that has an “Add to cart” button on it, 8 people “bought” and downloaded it...LOL. Well, get over to the gallery and help yourself to the goodies. The preview I made is not great, they look LOTS better in person, Enjoy!



Click Here to go to the Gallery

Today is the Day, the Site is Open!

I can’t believe that I am opening the site today. Until I started writing this I was OK, but you would not believe how nervous I got all of a sudden. I have uploaded over a dozen of the quick pages that were sent in (in alphabetical order, but they show up in reverse,) and I will be uploading more after I get the newspaper done. Be sure to stop by the forum to check out the suggested reading list and leave me a note so I will know you stopped in. Feel free to use the gallery to display your layouts and to give out your freebies. And I would love it if you would share any tutorials that you have. Think of it as your gallery, because without your encouragement and quick page contributions I never would have undertaken this. I did just find out that there is a problem with my e-mail link so if you have problems with ANYTHING please e-mail me at stoneaccents@hotmail.com
Click here to go to Stone Accents Studio.
Enjoy!

Coming Soon!

I have some good news. I figured out (with the help of Grace) how to put a direct link under the previews. The way the software usually works is that you have add a photo to your favorites, then download them from there. That option had a few things I didn’t like so I was determined to do it with a direct link. I have a lot of the quick pages uploaded and have checked the links (THEY WORK, WHOOPIE!!) I am so excited, when I see all of those beautiful pages lined up side by side, it is GORGIOUS. I have a little tiding up to do in the gallery and I want to add some book reviews to the tutorials section in the forum. If you have a good tutorial or a link to one it would be great if you would add it when you come by. The gallery will be available for you to show your layouts, you can register and set up your own gallery if you would like. If you have any other quick pages to share you can do it through your file-sharing site and put the link in the description or you can send them to me and I will do it.
After going through all of the things involved with setting up a site and seeing the limitations the software that control it imposes I will have more tolerance for those sites that have things out of whack. It takes a lot of time to track done a problem and sometimes the fix involves a compromise, one of which I had to make in order to keep the site from growing too big for the screen as you browsed the thumbnails.
I have to get a lot done on the newspaper before I can finish up the site so the opening will be late Wednesday. You better start cleaning out your hard drive to make room for the quick pages because you will have a hard time choosing which ones you don’t want…LOL.

Eastern Spice Pin Alpha

I made this pin alpha for the Eastern Spice kit that was not included in the freebie yesterday. I thought it might be too many alphas, with uppercase and lower case in “hot and mild” and the pin alphas in “hot and mild” and upper and low that made 8 alphas. But since it is already done I might as well let you decide if you want it or not. These 4 alphas are about 17 mgs.
I worked my way through two of the control panels for the site yesterday and I think I have them figured out. It was a lot of trial and error. Fortunately I didn’t mess anything up so badly that it was not fixable…LOL. I have another few things to learn but I am going to start uploading the quick pages today. The site is SO pretty, I can hardly wait to show it to you.



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Eastern Spice Bonus + Clarification

First I want to clear my last post up a bit. I said I was reading the comments “with tears in my eyes and a silly grin on my face” I wasn’t in tears from my cruddy elbow, I was just touched by the very sweet comments that I had received, they really meant a lot to me. I did a little rewrite on that post.
Now the next thing I want to say is THANK YOU for being so patient in waiting for your Eastern Spice bonus. As I mentioned before, getting the web site set up for the quick pages you sent in was a LOT more work than I ever imagined. I kind of got side tracked with what needed to be done, designing the graphics and learning about all of the control panels. Grace has done a wonderful job, that girl deserves more than she charges, especially if you consider how many questions I asked her, Everything is all set up and ready for me to start uploading those beautiful quick pages. I am going to be doing it in batches. Today is the start of production week for the newspaper I do the layout and design for. I have 6 ads to design and another dozen to make changes to. We usually print in black and white but this month we are doing full color so that takes me a LOT longer. Hopefully (but no promises) I will have the first batch ready sometime Tuesday.
I think I am ready to move on from Eastern Spice, it has been a lot of fun to design and I could go on and on with variations on the paper, but there new creations floating around in my head waiting for me to put them on the screen. I hope these new pieces will make Eastern Spice even more versatile for you to work with. I made the alpha in “Hot and mild” again and I couldn’t resist making sone new papers. If you look closely at 04 and 05 you will see that they made like stain glass, they have pieces from 7 of the other papers and came about while I was experimenting with a technique, not the prettiest of the lot but kind of interesting. There is a cluster frame and I also have two bare naked frames for you to work on. I also included the beads in their original size for you to play with, I really like how they look and there so many different arraignments you can make with them. I would sure love to see some of your creations in the gallery when it is set up. I hope you will all come back for the gallery opening. Enjoy!



Here is the preview of the beads.



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Tears in My eyes and a Smile on My Face

Wow, you guy are SO great. I came by to see if anyone had any ideas of how to fix my gallery download problem (see post below) and I read the comments that were put up in the last few days. I just sat there with tears in my eyes and a silly grin on my face, THANK YOU, I needed that.
I’ll tell you a little story that I mentioned in my “About Me” when I set the blog up that will kind of explain why I do this.
A little over a year ago I was walking across my kitchen to get my daughter a glass of OJ to go with her 17th birthday breakfast and I tripped over my REALLY big dog. I landed on my elbow and shattered it into little bitty pieces, The Dr said it was the worst break he had ever seen, and called it “the worlds smallest jig-saw puzzle.” He put it back together with all kinds of screws, bolts and plates. He did a great job of that, after two months in a cast, then two month in a removable cast and A LOT of therapy it is functioning pretty well. BUT he did not want to prescribe much in the way of pain control. So for almost 8 month I was in the most miserable pain I could ever imagine. I could not function in almost any way, and I definitely lost anything in the way of creativity. About 5 months ago I started seeing a pain specialist and he is prescribing what I need to take the edge off of the pain enough so that I can think clearly. I feel as though I have gotten my life back. It still hurts too much to do most of the things I use to do, like quilt, spin yarn (yep, people still do that,) lay tile and household decorating, the kind of projects that kept me busy and excited. But the silver lining to this very dark cloud has been that I found digital scrapping. I’ll tell you, it is what gets me out of bed in the morning. I only sleep 4-5 hours a night because I can’t sleep on my back or left (broken) side. When I wake up I usually feel like I have been run over by a truck. Digital scrapping, this blog, giving out freebies, your comments and the plans I am making have given me a happiness and excitement I have not felt in a LONG time. I am enjoying the heck out of this and have a hard time dragging myself off to bed. I have always been a night owl, but I take a nap in the afternoon. Thank you again for you very sweet comments, they made my day.

Now for a little update. The site is all together and I have figured a lot of things out. The one thing I can’t figure out is how to make the items in the gallery downloadable. There are a lot of sites like Scrap Artist and 3 Scrapateers that have member downloads, I am using the Photo Post software they use, but nothing seems to work for me. If I can’t work this out soon the other option I have is I could upload the quick pages to the “Store” area and you could just put them in your cart and download them like that. If anyone knows anything about this, HELP!!!

I will have the alpha and some other things here sometime Thursday afternoon.

It is 3:30 a.m. Again

It is 3:30 a.m. again and here I am posting instead of in bed. What an exciting night it has been. I was working on a cluster frame (I have mentioned that I LOVE clusters haven’t I) for Eastern Spice when I got a message from Grace that everything was ready. For the last 6 hour we have had e-mails going back and forth getting a few things tidied up and I have been busy TRYING to figure everything out. Do you know that to run a full website with a store/gallery/forum you have three control panels to handle, and that does include whatever it takes to make changes to things like the header. Fortunately the control panels are pretty straight forward, once you figure out what things like “Bread Crumbs Navigation Separator” and the “option name manager” mean it isn’t too bad at all. I am not going to have a store yet but I did get a lot of those things figured out. But the bad news is that I still do not know how to make the QPs downloadable from the gallery. That is what I am gong to focus on tomorrow or I guess I should say today. If any of you are familiar with Photo Post I could use some advice.
Because of all this exciting stuff I was not able to get the next download packaged up and uploaded for you. I PROMISE that I will have the alpha and some other goodies up by this evening. Like I said I am working on a cluster frame and it is looking good so far, I should have that done by Thursday morning or afternoon. If we all keep our fingers crossed and think good thoughts I should have at least SOME of the quick pages uploaded to the gallery and ready to go by Thursday. Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments, they always make me smile.

Having a Heck of a Time

I may not be able to get the new goodies up tonight. I still want to make a few things and I have been tied up all day trying to get the gallery figured out. Send good thought my way. I will update you tomorrow.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You, More Freebies and QPs!

It is 2:30 am here and if I stayed up until 5 or so I could get everything finished and uploaded, but since I had one day this week when I did not get to bed until 8 in the morning I probably should quit for the night. I am real happy with the alpha, although it went through many incarnations to get to the point where it was what I envisioned. These new pieces might even inspire you to make more QPs…LOL.
Some really great news is that Grace is almost finished with the site. And what a beautiful job she did. The only hold up now is me finding the time to organize and upload the QPs. Of course that is dependant on me learning HOW to use the software…ROFL. Wish me luck. I should have the alpha and other things up sometime Monday night, and hopefully I can get the first batch of QPs to the gallery later in the week. Stay Tuned!