A MouseScrappers Challenge!

I am sooooo excited to be hosting my very first challenge at MouseScrappers! It's a scraplift challenge, so I made this layout for lifting:

The Test Track emblem on the layout is a FREEBIE that I'm giving to you all. You can download it here.

It completes the really cool participation prize that I made for everyone who participates in the challenge. Here's the prize:

So why not have some fun? Join me and all the other MouseScrappers for Scraplift Challenge #9. You'll have a great time. Now go scrap life, one dream at a time.

Project X

Dedicated Disney digiscrapper (wow, how's that for a tongue twister?!) that I am, of course I spend some time over at MouseScrappers. It turns out that they're starting a mysterious new project called Project X. The big reveal about what it is will happen tomorrow. Can't wait!!!

Join us at MouseScrappers to see what it's all about!

Yo ho, Yo ho

It's 3:30 AM on Thursday, March 16. Heaven only knows what I'm doing up, but I guess it doesn't really matter since I'm on spring break and can sleep late tomorrow. I'm in Disney World right now, staying at the Caribbean Beach resort in a pirate room. My son really wanted to stay here. I have to say, the room decor is really fun. It always amazes me how the Disney decorators can carry a theme right down to the most minute detail. Even the bathrooms here are pirate themed. The shower walls have a large carving of a pirate ship, and the shower curtain has a rope netting motif with pictures of pirate ships. And since I see the world through the eyes of a scrapper, I decided the minute I looked at the shower curtain that it would make a great digital paper. So I grabbed my camera (actually my iPhone), took a pic and played with it in Photoshop to make it look like distressed and aged wood. I used it to make a layout about our pirate room.

The kit I used is Buried Treasure by Valerie Randall. I supplemented with a flower action by Doreen Stolz, and then I found some Pirate Mickey clip art that I turned into a chipboard element. I am giving you, my friends, the background paper as a freebie for you to use in your pirate or nautical layouts. You can download it here. If you do use the paper in a layout that you post to a gallery, please leave me a message with a link so I can see it. I'd love to see what you do with it. I'm off to get some shuteye, so remember to keep scrapping life, one dream at a time!

I hate homework!

Seriously, I do! I couldn't stand doing it when I was a student and I hate battling with my son for him to get it done. The funny thing is that I'm a teacher. When I was a classroom teacher, though, I tried to assign homework that was meaningful and not necessarily tedious. Take, for example, spelling. What's the point of a student writing his spelling words each in a different color crayon? In fact, research shows that writing the words over and over isn't going to help a child learn them. It will go a long way in driving both the children and the parents insane, though. It's busy work. I think about some of the assignments I had when I was getting my Master's Degrees (yes, I have two). The ones that were just busy work were torture for me, even if they were easy. They were tedious and I saw no point because they were nothing but mind-numbing. The ones that were meaningful, even if difficult, were the ones I didn't mind doing because I got something out of them. Perhaps that's too much to ask of a seven-year-old though. I wonder if they can see the value in any homework assignments. Maybe if the assignment involved Wii, X-Box, DS, Beyblades, or Star Wars, he'd be OK with it. I just don't know, but I'm feeling inspired to do a layout all about homework. I'll try to do it and post tomorrow night... unless my dog eats it. Until then, keep scrapping life, one dream at a time!

Welcome to Dreamscrapper Designs!

This is something I have wanted to do for so long now, but I never knew where to begin. To be honest, having a blog scares me. I mean, what if I just have nothing to say? What if no one cares what I have to say? It's frightening to put yourself out there on the internet like this. But I thought I'd give it a try anyway.

I hope to make this a place to share bits of my life: my son, my passion for all things Disney, my love of reading and books, my scrapbook pages, and the bits of designing that I do ~ strictly as a hobby, of course. You never know when you might find a freebie or two here, so drop by from time to time. Read about the craziness that is my life, share my dreams, talk about scrapping and Disney (or scrapping about Disney) with me. To say thanks for visiting, here's my first freebie. I've created an alpha based on everyone's favorite mouse friend!

You can download it here. Thanks for stopping by, and remember to scrap your life, one dream at a time!