Half Price My Digital Studio, Shadow Technique

Would you like to test drive Stampin' Up as a business?  Sign up today for half price and enjoy the benefits of being a demonstrator for a few months with no obligation.  If it isn't for you you can drop in March, no pressure!  Until then, you will get Stampin' Up publications and a discount on your stamping supplies.  Sounds like a win/win to me!  Email me to join my stamping team  wrightplace4@mindspring.com

Are you still holding out on Stampin' Up's digital crafting solution?  I can't imagine why!  You will find so many ways to use this digital papercrafting solution and the price can't be beat.  Tell someone they want to give it to you for Christmas before the price goes back up! 

What can you do with MDS?

• Create quick and easy scrapbooking pages, of course!
• Create your own photo Christmas cards
• You can add videos and/or music to your projects, how cool is that????
• Use the stamps that are included in the MDS program to create cards and other projects without having to buy and store the stamp sets
• Create professional looking flyers for work, school, church and other things you might need a flyer for
• Create invitations, baby announcements or any other card
• Create games with pictures
• Create on the go!  If I am going to get new tires, a tune up, bus ride or somewhere I know I'm going to have to wait for a while I take my computer with me.  With MDS I have everything I need to create a project, ribbons, buttons, stamps, Designer Series Paper, cardstock, everything is there with the click of the mouse!  The pictures are handy right on my computer and so easy to import into MDS if I decide to create a layout. 
• Do you deliberate and take forever doing a "real" layout?  Sometimes I design the layout in MDS and then translate it into a paper layout.  I can get the design right, decide on the size of the pictures and colors of cardstock I want to use and figure how to place each element.  This is a huge time saver!  When I get it how I want it I can go get just the colors and page elements I want and not have to drag everything out on my table until I can barely have enough space to  create.  I've been known to create a card on a 6"X6" space on my desk, do you work like that too?  It is insane but I do it!
• I used to have a terrible time making flyers for classes or other things I needed to make a flyer for.  With MDS I can easily place pictures, text and embellishments where I want them and size them until everything I need is there.  If it is too much I can quickly delete any page elements I decide aren't needed, make them smaller or move them to a different place.
• My Digital Studio boxed software includes nearly 2000 unique elements—stamps, embellishments, designer and photo templates, punches, Designer Series Paper, card stock and more. If you were to individually buy all of the products already included with the software, you would spend more than $500!  It takes up a lot less space too  :-)
• Email your projects, post them on your blog, print them either professionally or on your home printer or put them on a DVD and mail them.
• MDS comes with lots of predesigned templates or you can open up a blank page to create your own individual design. 
• Stampin' Up has a webside just for people to learn and share with the MDS program!  Very cool, look what I just learned to do in the tips and techniques section, you add your stamp, change it to the same color as your background paper, add a drop shadow of 75% and it looks like a dry embossed image!  I love the Baroque Motifs swirly image anyway but was so excited to learn this technique that that stamp is just perfect for!

There is lots more you can do with MDS, I'm still learning and exploring after a year and it will do so much more than I know about!  It is fun to just open up a project and play around with all the buttons to see what happens.  

Did you know that MDS comes with:  61 stamp brush sets, 11 embellishment KITS (273 pieces), 13 background paper packs (442 patterns), 25 punches, 6 designer KITS (497 pieces), 7 designer templates (5 album/15 greeting card), 30 photo templates (available in photo album sizes and card sizes), 2 calendar templates, all of the Stampin' Up! colors (including some past In Colors).  There are also downloads available from time to time at great prices so you can add your favorite Stampin' Up stamps and papers as well as ribbons, buttons, etc.  Don't forget, the half price sale ends today!  Go to my website to order or email me and I'll get the order placed for you.

MDS Memory Game

I keep coming up with more ideas for using My Digital Studio. Stampin' Up calls it a "digital crafting solution", not a scrapbook program and they are so right! I realized on Christmas Eve that I hadn't gotten a thing for my son (slacker mom that I am). OK, he is 33 so it isn't like it's a little 3 year old that I forgot but still, how could I have forgotten?? So I thought and thought and decided I'd give him a gift card to the local office supply store so he could use it toward the new office chair he has been needing. I went online but they said it wasn't available for our zip code. WHAT??? It's a stinkin' gift card, the recipent can drive in to the nearest store to use it! Anyway, I decided to make my own gift card and MDS made it so easy. It looked so good that he actually asked if they had mailed it to him. When he figured out that I had made it he said, "I don't think they will honor this." Tee Hee
I used my MDS for another Christmas gift. I made memory gifts for the grandchildren. When you open the program up for an 8 1/2 X 11 scrapbook page, option #5 has a template for 12 square pictures. I just looked through my pictures and picked out 12 per page. I chose pictures to include grandparents, cousins and aunts and uncles as well as some pictures of fun memories, like getting to sit in the General Lee.

I made 3 pages but that is probably way too many. With younger children I would probably only put out 5 or 6 pairs. With my 5 and 7 year old grandchildren last night we used 10 pairs and it seemed like a good amount. I enjoyed it about as much as they did. I even made a match now and then. Of course, I let a few matches go by so they could win them.

I also personalized the backs of the card. I changed all the photo boxes to text boxes and put the family name on the back along with a "stamped" image from the many stamp sets available on MDS. Since they are exact on the programs I just printed the game titles on the back of the pictures and they matched up perfectly. I laminated them and cut them out and it was so quick and easy! Gotta love that. I used the same design from the backs to make a larger game title piece to cover the box. I looked around for the perfect box and found that the smallest stamp case fit the game perfectly. I like that it snaps closed securely so the game pieces are safe inside. Of course, who knows how safe they will be in the hands of the 2 year old! Have I ever told you how much I love this program???