Congratulations to our Blog Header Contest winners!

Notice something new on your screen today? You should! This bright, cheerful design is the work of Amanda Sok, winner of our blog header contest. Congratulations, Amanda, and we hope you enjoy your prize: a gorgeous leather Bay Box album from Scrapworks.

With so many great entries, we had a tough time picking a single winner. And so we've decided to award a runner-up prize to Marissa Carranza, whose design grabbed our attention with its clever use of a laptop as a design element--just the kind of techie touch we love to see. Marissa will receive two kits from Pixel Canvas for her work.


Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest! If you missed out this time, don't worry--we'll have another contest to keep our blog header looking fresh in just a few months.

Digital Scrapbooking Day!

This is just a quick reminder to check out our Digital Scrapbooking Day page for exclusive content. It's now available and you can get to it here: http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/content/viewissue/951/45.


We hope you enjoy watching our new videos, participating in the challenges, joining our group and learning some great new techniques!


Have a great day!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the Digital Scrapbooking and Simple Scrapbooks magazine teams! We combined forces this year for a killer team costume and we wanted to show them off to you all.







We're prisoners in Warden Martin's Die Cut Row. (Ha ha, get it?) You'll see from the poster that we all have hilarious scrapbooking related nicknames. We've also installed prison bars made out of PVC pipe outside our cubicles so we can really be locked in the pen!We even have tough scars and tattoos!


We'll add more photos of these hilarious costumes throughout the day, but while you're waiting, posting a comment about what you're dressing up as this year. One random person will be selected to win a digital scrapbooking kit!


Happy haunting!

VIsit our Zazzle Gallery!

Show off your digital style with your very own pair of the official Digital Scrapbooking magazine sneakers! Created in honor of Digital Scrapbooking Day, these unique Keds, made on zazzle.com, feature cool swirled brushwork for a hip design you won’t find in any store. Three different colors and styles are available. Get your own pair here: zazzle.com/digitalscrapbooking




create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Design a Skin and Win!

Skins are in! Design a myTego skin and you can win!






Ever think of your laptop lid as a canvas for creative projects? Skin customization is the newest thing in personal electronics.



In celebration of Digital Scrapbooking Day, myTego, a producer of custom skins for all kinds of electronic devices, invites you to participate in a design challenge. If your design is chosen, you’ll win a gift certificate to order your own skins using your design and the opportunity to have your design included in their catalog.




Here’s how to enter:

•Visit the myTego site to see how skins work and how your design can be applied to dozens of laptops.

•Download the PNG template below by right-clicking and selecting Save As.

•Using the photo editing software of your choice, open the template file and design a laptop skin. The design must be the same size as the provided template (3000px wide, 2400px high).

•You may use product from any designer or company All product used must be cited as follows: kit/set name, designer name, store/company website. (Example: paper from "Harvest Moon" kit by Amanda Dykan (amandadykan.com) Submissions without materials list cannot be considered.

•Save your design as a medium resolution JPEG no larger than 600px wide and 480px high.

•Upload it to the Digital Scrapbooking Day group gallery (http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/component/option,com_groupjive/task,showgroup/groupid,681/Itemid,68/). Entries posted in places other than this group cannot be considered.

•The title of your project should begin with the word “Skin” so we can find it quickly in this alphabetized gallery.

•You can enter as many times as you like.


Prizes and Contest Dates

Three grand prize winners will receive $100 gift cards and three runners-up will receive $35 gift cards for mytego.com.



Entries are due by Sunday, November 9 and winners will be announced by Friday, November 14.


We can’t wait to see what you create! Good luck!

Dazzle with Zazzle Challenge

Dazzle us with your Zazzle shoe designs and win a free pair of custom Keds!







For this Zazzle Digital Scrapbooking Day Challenge we’re inviting you to design your own pair of custom Keds at zazzle.com! A variety of styles are available and you can use any JPG image you like on the shoes.


How to enter:

•Go to Zazzle.com, create an account and pick a pair of Keds to customize.

•Then simply upload your images and start creating! When you’ve completed your shoe design, click View Pair at the top of the page in Zazzle.

•Next, do a screen capture of your pair of shoes. To do this on a PC, press the Print Screen button. Then paste the screen capture in a new document in your photo-editing software and save it as a JPG. On a Mac, press Command + Shift + 3 and the screenshot will be automatically saved to your desktop. Rename it and save it as a JPG at 72 dpi.

•Post the image of your shoes in the Digital Scrapbooking Day gallery (http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/component/option,com_groupjive/task,showgroup/groupid,681/Itemid,68/). Shoes posted in places other than this group cannot be considered.

•The title of your project should begin with the word “Zazzle” so we can find it quickly in this alphabetized gallery.

•Please include a materials list with your shoes when posting it to the gallery that includes names of all products and fonts. Include kit titles, designer names and the web site that sells the product (if applicable) when you post your layout. Designs should be original and should not include designs already on the Zazzle site.


Enter as many times as you like.



Prizes and Dates of Contest

Two winners will be chosen and each will receive a pair of Zazzle shoes sporting they’re dazzling designs.


Entries are due by Sunday, November 9 and winners will be announced by Friday, November 14.



Contact Us with Questions

If you have any questions about this challenge, please post a comment on this article or email us at editor@digitalscrapbooking.com.

Thanks and good luck!

Scrapblog Digital Scrapbooking Day Challenge!

Challenge: Scrapbook Your Holiday Greeting

Digital Scrapbooking magazine and Scrapblog have teamed up for Digital Scrapbooking Day with a challenge for you. The challenge? Design and display a custom digi holiday card created at scrapblog.com. The challenge starts now and entering is easy. Just:

1. Visit scrapblog.com/digitalscrapbookday/
2. Log in or sign up
3. Create a holiday card
4. Set one of the tags for your design as “DSD”
5. Publish your design on scrapblog.com

Be sure to publish your card by the end of Digital Scrapbooking Day (November 1). The following week, five lucky winners will be chosen, and each will receive 50 printed cards featuring their designs and a free one-year subscription to Digital Scrapbooking magazine!

Get Our Newsletter!

Digital Scrapbooking magazine now has its own newsletter, the DSM Wire! if you want to receive the premier issue, just in time for Digital Scrapbooking Day, sign up by sending an email to webmaster@ckmedia.com with "DS Newsletter Subscribe" in the subject line by the 5 p.m. MST on Monday, October 27th.



You won't want to miss out on this newsletter because they'll be freebies, news, contest information and more!



Enjoy!

See Your Work Here!

Always wanted to see your name in lights... or at least your work in pixels? Here's your chance. We're revamping and rolling out the DSM blog, and we're looking for our first-ever guest artist to produce a blog header that captures the excitement of digital scrapbooking in a fun, fresh way.

Here's how to join in the fun:

• Click the image below to open a full-sized version of a layered PNG file. Right-click the full-sized version (Mac users: Option-click) and save it to your computer.
  
• Using the photo editing software of your choice, open the file and design a blog header. The header must be the same size as the provided template (660px wide, 300px high).
• The header must include the following text (capitalization optional) in the font, color and size of your choice:
• Plugged In [in large type]
• The Official Blog of Digital Scrapbooking Magazine [in small type]
• The header must include the Digital Scrapbooking Magazine logo as shown. It may be repositioned as desired but may not be resized or recolored.
• You may use product from any designer or company. All product used must be cited as follows: kit/set name, designer name, store/company name. Submissions without materials list cannot be considered.
• E-mail your design and work to digital.scrapbooking.mag@gmail.com. Include "Blog Header Contest" in the subject.
• Deadline for this contest is Wednesday, October 29.

If your design is chosen, you'll receive this gorgeous brown leather Bay Box album from Scrapworks, plus bragging rights with all your digi-scrapping friends. You may even see your work in print in Digital Scrapbooking!

Share Your Thoughts and Win BIG!

Be one of the first to fill out our reader survey and be entered for a chance to win great prizes!


12 Winners- 12 fabulous prize packages!


Help us start the New Year off right! Tell us what you’d like to see in our coming year’s Digital Scrapbooking magazine and be part of our Calendar Girls Sweepstakes.


Simply visit http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/content/viewContest/12181/, complete our reader survey and then enter for a chance to be one of twelve lucky winners who’ll each receive a prize package worth over $485.


For full rules, click here.

Are you stumped by color?

Yeah, me too, sometimes.

So imagine how excited I was to discover the Palette Generator (thanks to a tip on Nancy Nally's Scrapbook Update blog). This tool lets you upload a photo--or select one from a Flickr or Photobucket account--and automatically generates a palette of coordinating colors. Perfect for scrapbooking, creating a new blog header or even planning a new look for your living room.

Once you've created a palette, you can download it in Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) format to use in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, or you can use the automatically generated CSS code to trick out your Web site.

Here's what I got while playing around with a couple of my own photos:

Photo editing on the go

Hey, check this out:

Checking your e-mail in a cafe? Sneaking a few minutes of "me time" at work? Why not spend time getting your photos share- or scrap-ready while you're at it?

FotoFlexer lets you edit your photos online for free. You can do basic fixes (like getting rid of red-eye), erase away blemishes and wrinkles, even--my favorite!--add text and stickers to your image.

It's integrated with sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr, so you can grab photos from your collections there, add cool embellishments and reload them to share.

Have fun playing around... then share your work with us in our online gallery!

Congratulations to our "Have a Ball" winners!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the "Have a Ball" layout contest... we loved checking out your work. (And, just speaking for myself, it definitely put me in the mood for some NFL games this weekend.)

Our winners are:

• Dream Big by jazzmatazz (shown here)--look for this layout, plus details on how jazzmatazz got this cool effect, in an upcoming issue of Digital Scrapbooking
  
• Good to See by Aly D
  
• Kickoff by bunnynose
  
• Baseball 2008 by JenniferJ
  

Congratulations to all our winners, and thanks again to everyone who played! Thanks, too, to Emerald Innovations for sponsoring this contest.

Calls for submissions for April/May issue

Fall is here! Fall is here! My favorite season... the leaves turning, the crisp mornings, the smell of smoke from our neighbor's woodstove (or is that a batch of cookies I left in the oven?). And in the midst of all this seasonal splendor, we're asking you to... think spring!

That's right. We're in search of spring-y layouts and projects to include in our April/May 2009 issue. Here's what we need from our talented readers:

T3: Tips, Techniques and Tutorials

Our hands-on how-to column, "T3," features both cutting-edge techniques from our Creative Team and tips and tutorials from our talented readers. For this issue, we're looking for:

* Spring! Share your layouts about spring holidays and traditions, warm-weather fashion, spring sports... anything that makes us "think spring."

* Shape! Do you have a special tip for using shapes in a layout? A layout featuring strong shapes? A layout or project that's a shape other than a rectangle or square? Send it our way!

Tips. Have you found a great way to use layer blending modes? A quick fix for less-than-perfect photos? Send us your tips of 50 words or fewer on any digital scrapbooking subject, along with a layout or project that illustrates the tip in action.

Techniques. Busy scrapbookers are always looking for ways to make scrapbooking quicker and easier. Send us your time- and stress-saving tricks, along with a layout or project that shows how you've used them to create.

Tutorials. Send us your projects featuring intermediate- to advanced-level techniques, along with complete instructions for achieving the look.

We also welcome layouts on other themes or topics, and we're always in search of seasonal photography and awesome new ideas.

Are You Cover Material?

We're looking for simply amazing reader layouts to feature on our cover. For consideration, layout should have the following:

* a single large, well-composed photo of one (or, at the most, two) subjects, preferably making eye contact with the camera

* "only with digital" techniques combined with a clean overall design

* legible title and minimal journaling

* seasonal focus—for this issue, we'll be looking for spring shots, featuring seasonal clothing and activities.

Please submit no more than three layouts to this call.

The deadline for all April/May submissions is October 26.

How to Submit:

• Save a low-resolution version of your image as a JPEG file no larger than 150K.
• Attach image to an e-mail addressed to digital.scrapbooking.mag@gmail.com Include "T3" or "Cover" in subject line.
  
• Include your name, e-mail address, street address (including city, state, country and postal code).
• Write a materials list including names of all products and fonts. Include kit titles, designer names and the web site that sells the product (if applicable).
• Provide the name of the photo-editing software used to create the layout (e.g., Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, LumaPix FotoFusion, Scrapblog).

Thank you, and we're looking forward to seeing your work!