Thanks for your feedback on my little toilet drinker. No, not Mr. Mint – I was talking about the cat. From what I understand it’s not that unusual but shouldn’t be encouraged. I’ll have to be more diligent in keeping the lid down for now. What really gets me is that I bought her a fancy self-filtering water fountain because I noticed how much she really liked moving water.

It’s the coolest. They can drink from the bowl or as the water slips down the dome on top. And it’s really fun to drink off the dome. Yea, that’s right. I tried it. It’s not beneath me – I was curious!! LOL. Anywho. Both the cat and dog seem to really like it but she still sneaks off to the toilet once in a while. I’d hate to think that the toilet water tastes just as good as filtered tap water. Don’t worry, I won’t be trying that out!

In other news, my Yankee Candle Factory Catalogue finally came in the mail today. I highly recommend it – it’s SCRATCH n’ SNIFF baby! FYI they are having a sale but I will not tempted as I already have a cupboard (literally) full of jars to burn.

I can’t believe how great the layouts are for the final round of DNTS. I’m going to give myself a little pat on the back for making you do a page with a specific color scheme because these have to be some of the best looking pages I’ve ever seen! Hopefully you’ll be able to use this technique in the future when making pages. I’m also thinking that we should all start creating pages from the POV of inanimate objects much more often! When you act as the voice of an object you are pretty much forced to tell a story and you guys are really funny! LOL. I think I’m going to go find me an object to scrap.

Believe it or not (and I don’t) tomorrow is the LAST day of the month. September is upon us – alas the summer is over. So sad! I just wanted to fill you in on my September game plan and I promise it is not to be missed – well worth saving your pennies for! It’s all going down around the 7th. I say ‘around’ because I’m not ready to commit! LOL. But you can expect the newsletter, the new freebie, new products and some super special hybrid projects coming then. I’ll keep you posted.

We’ve got a new addition to the Peppermint Creative team – and it’s a BOY! Congratulations to Trisha who gave birth to a very handsome little fella early last week. Isn’t he cute? I made a little birth announcement!

And what a trooper she is – she’s already scrapping pages! LOL. Gotta love that.

Layout by: Trisha

Anyone watch the 2007 Miss Teen USA contest? Me neither. But luckily, thanks to the good ‘ol internet we can all shake our heads at Miss South Carolina together. I’m just going to assume that she didn’t win. Enjoy!

And finally before I go I have to ask – is it normal for a cat to drink out of the toilet?

Me again! I just wanted to give you a little ‘real digiscrap demo’ of the theories below in use. I threw together some papers from my stash to demonstrate how to take the theory from the post below and use it with your digital supplies. Hopefullly this may help any of you still sitting around scratching you heads! Here is an example of a Primary Color Scheme. I’m sure you all have a fair share of reds, yellows and blues in your digi collections. Using several different shades or tints of the same color will give your page depth and visual interest. Don’t feel limited to using only one shade of blue for example.

The Analogous Color Scheme is pretty straight forward and easy to put together. If you use the color wheel as a guide you will always have a well coordinated page. Again, the key is to use different tints and shades to add depth.

The Triadic Color Scheme is a little challenging. You have to choose your colors wisely and decide which to use in moderation.

Hope thae helps!! Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for YouTube Tuesday!
Have a great night.

I can’t believe that we are already on the LAST assignment for this year’s DNTS contest. Time is just flying by. Once again the gallery was FLOODED with incredible layouts. My only complaint is that many of them contained mouth watering pictures of delicious baked treats and which caused me to have to get up mid comment to get a cookie…or three.

Part of this week’s challenge is to utilize either a Primary, Triadic or Analogous color scheme in your layout design. So for the benefit of anyone who is unfamiliar (or a little rusty) with these terms here is a quick little crash course in color theory.

No doubt you’ve all seen a Color Wheel before. The color wheel is the basic tool for combining colors and was designed so that virtually any colors you pick from it will look good together. The three Primary Colors are red, yellow and blue. They are called primary because all other colors are derived from combining these 3 colors together. For example, mixing red and yellow produces orange, mixing blue and yellow produces green and mixing red and blue produces purple. This bring us to the Secondary Colors (green, orange and purple) which are created by mixing two primary colors together. The six Tertiary Colors are created by mixing primary and secondary colors together.

Colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel are called Complementary Colors. The three Complementary Color Schemes are red/green, blue/orange and yellow/purple. Analogous Color Schemes use any 3 colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. They usually match well and create serene and comfortable designs. When using an Analogous Color Scheme choose one color to dominate, a second to support. The third color is used (along with black, white or gray) as an accent.

A Triadic Color Scheme uses colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel. To use a triadic harmony successfully, the colors should be carefully balanced – let one color dominate and use the two others for accent.

EDITTED TO ADD:
Adding white or black to any of these colors changes the Tint or Shade giving you either a lighter or darker color. When looking at the color schemes above, keep in mind that using tints and shades add a world of variety to the basic schemes above. You can change the tint and/or shade of your colors and still follow either a primary, triadic or analogous scheme.

Color is an essential part of design so don’t forget to consider how you choose to use your color when creating a page. Good luck with this week’s challenge. I look forward to seeing your pages!

Ciao for now.

Thanks so much for all the well wishes and happy emails you sent me. I really appreciate it. I’m feeling much better and I’m ready to get back to business – although I’m pretty sure that something fishy happened to my typing skills while I was in the hospital. I know, it was only 2 days but MAN! TYPO CITY over here. I don’t even want to think about how long this post will take me to type out (ROFL…I swear you don’t even want to know how many times I’ve pressed BACKSPACE already).

OK! So I think I did it. I THINK I’ve finally finished going through all of last week’s DNTS entires. Holy Moly Batman. Some of the best pages I’ve ever seen. Honest.

If you’ve been paying attention to my layouts, you may have noticed that something is curiously absent from my pages about 80% of the time. Any guesses? I almost never journal. It’s not on purpose. I swear! It’s not like I don’t enjoy writing. In fact, I really LIKE to write. I guess I just get more wrapped up in making my page ‘pretty’ rather than particularly meaningful. And so my scrapper’s resolution is to include more journaling. Now don’t you go calling me on it in the galleries if a journalingless (yea, I know it’s not a word) layout slips by. It’s bound to happen! I said I’d TRY! LOL.

This page is my take on the first assignment for DNTS which was to scrap something that really irks you about someone in your home. LOL. As if you didn’t see THIS one coming. (See last Tuesday’s post for the full police report).

See CREDITS (and journaling) here.

I also have a few new items to share. A few went up last week but I forgot (read: didn’t feel like) posting so I’m doing it now. I’m loving the Rollie Ribbons. I can’t wait to dig into those babies.

I also added some premade birthday gift tags made from the Party Pants Coordinated Kit. All you have to do is add some text, or a photo or just your name and print them out! Of course if you want to get all fancy shmancy you can add eyelets and ribbons or round the corners etc. You can see by the photos that you can even hang them with twine or chain. Anything you can find. Check it out!

And before I go – it wouldn’t be Tuesday without YouTube Tuesday. Enjoy!

(Wait for the kid in the ORANGE shirt – FREAKY COOL)

Ok and this is just cute – a little kid with tennis in his future.

Don’t you HATE it went your binkie gets in the way of your tennis game?
That’s all for now folks! Have a happy scrappy day!!

Everyone Going Home Take One Step Forward – Not So Fast Miss Mint!

First let me start off by saying that I don’t know what the DNTS participants put in their coffee this week but holy smokes I had to scoop my mouth up off the floor when I browsed the Week 2 Gallery. I don’t know HOW I will possibly narrow down my choices. These are some of the most beautiful and heartfelt and CREATIVE layouts I’ve ever seen!

That being said, I deeply apologize for not leaving comments on your layouts until this evening. Unfortunately, I was unexpectedly put out of commission for a few miserable days.

Some little known information about me: I’ve been suffering from severe ulcerative colitis for the past 8 years. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this particularly lovely disease it is characterized as a chronic inflammation of the colon. What that really means is that your stomach always hurts and you wish that you had a port a potty permanently attached to your ass.

I went in for a routine colonoscopy on Thursday. You have to go on a clear liquid diet for two days before and drink a massive tub of laxative juice (yum!) to get you all cleared out for the test. Needless to say, the few days leading up to the test were pretty unpleasant. But I knew that it would all be over soon and tried to stay positive. In I went, They drug you up (extra drugs please!) and do the test. You sleep off the drugs for about a half hour and off you go!

Well not to so fast!

The doc tells me (while I’m all drugged and can’t put up a fight) that I’m not looking good and they want to admit me. Oh no, no, no! I’ve already got my Chinese Take Out menu stashed in my purse! I’ve been DREAMING about Won Tons and Lemon Chicken for two nights!!! I’m starving to death! For the love of Chicken in Black Bean Sauce let me out of here!!!

They wheel me up to a room and pump me full of meds and serve me a delicious meal of I don’t know what because I didn’t even lift up the lid. I sent Mr. Mint downstairs for a Booster Juice and some Manchu Wok. DELICIOUS!

Then the Dr. comes and delivers the bomb. They want to keep me until Monday.

“Monday? WHAT? You don’t understand sir! I’ve got orders to reset, gallery comments to leave, products to design…we are right in the middle of DNTS!”

Of course I kept these thoughts to myself – after all, I didn’t want to be sent to the mental ward – but I immediately start wondering how I would teach Mr. Mint how to run the whole operation over the phone. I started feverishly writing notes on all my login and password info and how to answer certain standard questions, how to leave a blog post…etc.

OH the HORROR!!!

I had to stay for two nights but managed to convince them to let me leave this morning…ahhh FREEDOM! So now I’m back and trying to catch up on things. Just wanted to let you know so that if it ever happens again and you see some bizarre cryptic message from Mr. Mint you’ll have some idea of what’s going on! LOL.

Anywho. The moral of the story is that I’m fine and happy to be home and really enjoyed looking at all the DNTS layouts and checking my email. I’ll be back tomorrow. Lots more to post about but I’m totally exhausted.

HUGS!