MDS Monday: Final Disneyland Pages

First off, I owe my readers and apology.  I've been promising posts I haven't delivered this past week.  The Stampin' Addicts My Digital Studio Blog Hop that was suppose to be this weekend got postponed until next month.  So watch for that November 16.

I did promise to show you some more pages from my Disneyland Album and today, I am delivering on that promise.  The pages I'm sharing today feature the pictures from Disney California Adventure:

Colors: Tempting Turquoise, Crushed Curry, Whisper White.  Digital Stamp Brushes: Hip and Handsome Overlays. Digital Punches: Tasteful Trims.  Digital Embellishments: Downtown Grunge Frames.  Fonts: Waltograph and Mouse Deco

I love the look on my older son's face in these picture.  He really did have fun at Disneyland, he just didn't want to smile for another picture.

Colors: Real Read and Basic Black.  Digital Punches: Circle.  Font: Tristan

 Wouldn't be Disney if you didn't stop to see a few characters along the way.

Colors: Pacific Point, Cherry Cobbler, Whisper White.  Digital Stamp Brushes: Solid Stripes.  Digital Punches: Tasteful Trims.  Digital Embellishments: Stitching and Brads.  Font: Script MT Bold

These pages were all about cramming a lot of pictures on each page so that the album wasn't 100 pages long. So they are light on embellishments and stamps and heavy on pictures.

Colors: Soft Suede, Early Espresso, Very Vanilla.  Digital Stamp Brushes: Decorative Overlays. Digital Embellishments: Mis-Stitched, Downtown Grunge Frames.  Font: Rockwell Extra Bold

If you missed the other pages from my Disneyland Album, you can click on the Disney tag below and you will see them all.  We are planning another trip to the Disneyland Resort next month to celebrate my birthday and check out the new Carsland.  Working on this album and sharing it with you is making me even more excited to go back!

To get back on track, on Wednesday, I will be sharing the Christmas Card I promised to share last Wednesday.  And on Friday, I will share the Halloween Wood projects I talked about last week too.  I hope you will come back and check them all out.

MDS Monday: More Disney Pages

A few weeks ago, I told you about the Disneyland Album I made using MDS2.  Since then, I have actually received the completed album and I LOVE IT!  I love the quality of the print product you get with My Digital Studio.  They albums are just gorgeous.  And Stampin' Up! Announced last week a permanent price reduction in My Digital Studio Print Products.  Many of the prices are now on par or cheaper than they were during the recent print sale.  You can see the prices over on MyDigitalStudio.net.  Now I won't have to wait for a sale to get my projects printed!

I promised to share some more two-page layouts from that album and here they are:

Colors: Tempting Turquoise, Real Red, and Whisper White.  Digital Stamp Brushes: Hip and Handsome Overlays.  Digital Punches: Get It Done. Digital Embellishments: Celebrations ribbon and Downtown Grunge frames.

Colors: Not Quite Navy, Cherry Cobbler, More Mustard.  Digital Punches: Tasteful Trim Border.  Digital Embellishments: Stitching, Blast Off Digital Kit.

Colors: Crumb Cake, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White.  Digital Stamp Brush: The Open Seas, Vintage Overlays.  Digital Embellishments: Downtown Grunge Designer Series Paper, Misstitching.

Colors: Calypso Coral, Pool Party. Basic Gray and Whisper White.  Digital Stamp Brushes: Domestic Goddess Digital Kit. Digital Punches: Flag Punch.  Digital Embellishments: Domestic Goddess Designer Series Paper and Stitchings.

As you can see, every page had it's own distinctly look and feel.  Usually when I make an album for a trip, I try to keep a central theme and color. But part of what I love about Disneyland, is that every corner of the park has a different look and feel to it so I carried that over into the album.

I still haven't shown any pictures from Disney California Adventure.  That will have to wait for another MDS Monday in a few weeks. 

MDS Monday: Disney Vacation Pictures

It's time for MDS Monday again.  And today, instead of showing you a tip, I'm just going to share with you some page from the album I finished up last week just in time to get 31% off.  Most of the albums I've made so far are for an event like a family reunion or a family vacation.  Our family likes to travel a lot and one of our favorite places to go is DISNEYLAND!

At first I was worried that I would have a hard time using My Digital Studio to scrapbook Disneyland pictures.  I was concerned I would need to find some Disney-licensed elements to include with the pictures.  But as I got going, I decided it wouldn't matter: the pictures bring Disney to the album.  And with a few circle punches, anyone can make a Mickey head and since My Digital Studio uses the fonts you already have on your computer, I downloaded some "Disney" fonts and went from there.
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First the cover.  I kept if very simple and didn't even include a picture on it:

Polka Dot Parade Digital Designer Series Paper, Digital Circle Punches. Font: Started by a Mouse.

 Then the inside cover:

Colors: Basic Black, Crushed Curry, Real Red and Pacific Point.  Small Polka Dot, Large Polka Dot and Grid Digital Designer Series Paper.  Digital Circle Punches.  Digital Stitching Embellishment.

And a few random spreads from inside:

Colors: Summer Sun, Custom Orange, Whisper White, Basic Black.  Digital Punches: Circles, Tasteful Trim Shape 1.   Digital Stamp Brush: Solid Stripes and Pumpkin Patch. Digital Embellishment: Stitching and Downtown Grunge Frame. Title font: Gracie's Curse

Colors: Real Red, Ruby Red.  Circle Digital Punch.  Digital Stitching Embellishment. Font: Started by a Mouse.

Colors: Rich Razzleberry and Tangerine Tango.  Digital Stamps: Decorative Overlays, Spooky Bingo Bits, Picture This Designer Kit.  Digital Embellishments: Candid Frames Designer Kit, Downtown Grunge Designer Kit (stitching).  Fonts: Gracie's Cruse and Nightmare Before Christmas.

Colors: Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip.  Digital Stamps: Decorative Overlays.  Digital Embellishments: Downtown Grunge Designer Kit (Frames), Stitchings, Antique Brads.

The Album ended up being 52 pages so these are just a few samples.  I will show more in a few weeks.  And while the sale is over, the opportunity to get your free 30-day trial of MDS2 is not.  Head on over to my store and download your trial version for yourself.  Even if you have already used your 30 day trial of MDS, you can do it again for MDS2.

Come back on Wednesday for a closer look at some of the projects from my upcoming Halloween Class on September 29 and October 5.  It is always my most popular class and I have lots of prizes to give away so come on back.

MDS Monday: Span Across Pages

I have another new feature of MDS2 to share with you today: spanning an item across a layout.  This is simple and easy to do so there won't be a lot of screen shots.

First, you need to be designing in two page spreads.  If you've forgotten how to do this, you click the little icon on the bottom, just left of where the thumbnail of your pages appear:

Now, add your stamp or embellishment and move it so it is hanging off teh edge of one of your pages.  You will not be able to see the portion that is hiding behind the other page.  To fix that, right click on the image and select Span Pages:

You can see from this spread that I've used that function on two stamps and the stitching.  I've added a page guide to the center of the spread so you can see where the page break would be:

 
Now another word of warning on this one.  I have had success doing this with embellishments and stamps.  I haven't tried it with text, but I'm sure that works as well. But I tried it with a punch and resizing it and moving it around was difficult.  So I would not recommend using this feature on a punch just yet.  Hoping that is another fix in a coming update.

Here is the competed two page spread:

Colors: Basic Gray and Basic Black.  My Digital Studio Brush Stamps: Toxic Frameable, Bulletin Alphabet.  Digital Designer Series Paper: Howlstooth and Scaringbone.  Digital Embellishments: Mis-stitched and Delightful Digital Tape.

This Friday, September 14 is the final day to order print projects at 31% off.  I ordered two albums last week and I'm hoping to finish up this Disneyland album this week.  Next MDS Monday, I will take a break from showing you MDS2 features and will share how I used My Digital Studio to create a Disney album without any licensed Disney materials.  See you then!

MDS2: First Impressions

I promised to give you some more information on the new MDS2 software today.  I've been playing with it for two days now and I all have to say: WOW!

I mentioned on Wednesday that there are 75 new features with the software. For the next several weeks I will be sharing some of these new features, tips and projects each Monday for MDS Monday.  I know today is Friday, not Monday, but I couldn't wait to share so you get a bonus today.


One of the first things to love about My Digital Studio is the ability to work in 2 page spreads instead of just one page at a time.  That was something that used to annoy me about the original My Digital Studio: even though you could view two pages at once, going back and forth between the two pages was slow and cumbersome.  This is a screen shot of the first project I started working on in MDS2.  It is an album of our trip to Disneyland last year. Since all print projects are 31% off this month, I'm hoping to complete this album, plus at least one more before August 31.

To toggle in between the two views, you click on the icon just to the left of your individual page previews at the bottom.  I circled it in this screen shot so you can get a better look:

Toggle between working on one page at a time or a two page spread by clicking these icons.

As you can see from the screen shots, the overall look of the software has changed.  The screen is darker and some of the icons have changed just a bit but I found it easy to use and figure out what is what. 
We were told at convention that Stampin' Up! had an internal goal of releasing MDS2 on August 1.  Someone leaked that date accidentally to the public so the company did everything they could to get the software in our hands on that date.  Unfortunately, that means there still might be a few bugs.  They have promised to fix those in the next several weeks with free updates.  However, in working with it the past two days, I have only crashed the program once trying to use the new "draw" feature.

Over all, I find the software faster than the previous version.  There doesn't seem to be as much lag time between switching pages or adding new elements.  Of course the speed of the program is completely dependent on the computer you have and how much RAM you have on board.  Stampin' Up! recommends a Pentium 4, 1.6 GHz  processor with at least 2 GB of RAM. (Just FYI, my laptop runs 64-Bit Windows 7 on a 2.00 GHz Pentium Dual-Core processor with 4GB of RAM.) 

I chose to purchase MDS2+ for $79.95, instead of just the upgrade for $19.95.  But this is a personal decision.  I went through the list of downloads included with the plus version and there were more than $70 in downloads I didn't have that I knew I would use. The full version of the software with very limited content is also available for $39.95.  You can see the difference between the content here:

• Content included with MDS2+ ($79.95)
• Content included with MDS2 ($39.95)

If you already have the original My Digital Studio, all the downloads you have purchased will automatically transfer to the new program when you install it on your computer.  Any projects that have started in the previous version transfer over just fine as well.

Anyone can try a free 30-day trial of MDS2, even if you've already tried a 30-day trial of the original MDS.  The free trial includes about $200 in content (select content that comes with MDS2+) so you can really get a feel for the program and play around with all the features. 


Here is a closer look at those pages I showed you above:

Colors:  Green Galore, Basic Black, Whisper White and Almost Amethyst.  Digital Stamps: Blast Off Ensemble.  Embellishments: Candid Frames.

Just a couple of quick things to mention about these pages.  You probably noticed I used "retired" colors on my page.  With MDS, there is no such thing as retired.  Green Galore and Almost Amethyst just matched Buzz Lightyear best.  Also, the Candid Frames download is one of the 31 digital content items available for 31% off this month.

If you are ready to get started with MDS2 head on over to my online store to download your free 30-day trial or to purchase your software.  All versions are now available as a download so you can get started right away!  If you have questions about MDS that you would like me to address in future MDS Mondays, please post them in the content section and I will do my best to get them figured out.