Not that happy with this one but think it is done anyways. papers by Jen Wilson and that great paint by Michelle at scrapartist.

Another Quick one :) Blur paper from Shabby Princess, and the paper and hearts by Heather Ann Designs. Font DSP Pollyanna - love it! and the paint by Michelle at scrapartist

OKay quick CT update and a layout. Okay so Clay restored my emails from the backup. They won't work in my mail for some reason ARGH so I have to just treat them like files and go one by one. I will be doing the first sort of all those files tonight and enlisting some help with them tonight. I cann't in any way guarantee I will choose by tomorrow but hopefully by Thursday. Once again I offer a layout as a peace offering. I just LOVE this boy.

Just a few minutes to stop and ramble a bit. SP I am taking control. OKay so trying to take control for the 100,000th time. Or maybe more appropriately put trying to relinquish control to God and in turn gain control over all this garbage in my life. So we have gotten lots done around the house today. I am sorting the children's toys. I am getting rid of at least half. If not more. Everything needs a contained and they will need permission to play with them. Enough of the chaos. Can you believe Gina actually has the children's movies organized? Umm I have to walk over a mountain of dirty laundry in the hallway. Though, I am off to sort that in a minute so maybe I can chip away at it tonight. I have got to get this life of mine in order. SO I will be gone most days. I might sit for a half an hour during the littles' quiet time, but aside from that I need to be spending time with them again all day. When they are not with me their behavior always starts to slip. Clay and I have made some big changes and today was the first day of the rest of our lives. Oh man I need to make my weekly menu! Forgot last night. Later I will post my weekly cleaning list. And my weekly menu. I will start posting that here for fun. I might make up a layout that I can print the new weekly menu on every week. Might go so far as going for a 2 week menu like I used to. Okay enough talk and more action. Um and Gina doll, if you get bored sorting children's movies in alphabetical order, you can come pass down a little of yhour OCD cleaning to me :) :) I am a slob at heart and it NEEDS to change. Now. And I mean NOW. Off to sort laundry.

Okay okay so I know I am supposed to announce my CT members today. Umm...*ducking*... it won't be today. I have spent every free moment until around 3 am every night finishing up the CDs, except those few horrible days where I scrapped a lot and totally couldn't think straight. But that said I did a first sort on the batch that was not in the back up. Clay will be restoring those tonight and will do the first sort of those tomorrow. Give me a few days and I will announce I promise! But I thought that maybe if I posted this cute layout I made with Gina Cabrera's new camo kit (umm thanks Gina Miller for putting them on your blog and of course I HAD to buy them). I LOVE this kit. I think in many ways my scrapping is changing. As a result the kind of stuff I want to design is changing. Expect some different things from me soon. Maybe a little less dirty and a little more well.. hard to explain. Shabby? Useable? all the words in between those. Hard to explain it. Thanks Ali Edwards for continually inspiring me to scrap differently, to not be afraid to have photos touch each other, and inspiring me to do a little journaling on every page.

OKay I will be posting this again, but the CDs ARE COMING!!!!!!!!!!!! We launch Saturday March 4th, at 10 PM EST!!!!!!!! yay!

OH and case you forgot Battlestar Gallactica is on tonight. The week I posted about it I laughed because that episode was the least like it is normally. This week's is gonna rock. We get to see into the cylons more. And Sharon and her struggle between being a cylon and what she feels. I am counting the minutes.

Wow well had a hard day yesterday so I scrapped a lot. Scrapping has been so much fun lately. When I was looking for pictures, saw these side by side in the browser and just stopped everything and scrapped them. Felt really good to be so inspired. I hope to learn to hear that voice of inspiration more instead of just scrapping. I am always amazed by scrappers like Ali Edwards or Rhonna Farrer that find so much inspiration and their work shows it. Love this red plate I made, will be in a kit coming soon (the Warm line needs some red). Papers both browns are Jen Wilsons, The Black from me in the new CDs, font: DSP Old General Store COmpass stamp from Jen too

OH this little girl. She can get so so sad. All papers, alpha and pin from the new CDS coming out of Mere and I. the stitching is Ronna Penners - I love Ronna's stitches. The most realistic out there. Heart tag and charm are from other kits of mine.

Did this one last night too. Had a really trying day yesterday and found myself scrapping more than anything else, which of course leaves me with a mess today to deal with. Children are so fickle aren't they. One minute laughing one crying. Man I need to stop with the Susie's hand font. I love it. I use it everywhere. Must... stop... Susie's... Hand

Clay wanted some more simple style ones to print out to take to work. He picked out this picture and asked me to scrap it for him. HOw sweet huh? He printed the one I just made for the BH sketch for CK and took it to work and showed everyone. What a sweetie pie. Everything from Mere and I's CDs coming out. Font is DSP Old General Store.

Okay quick update on my CT Call! Sorry I haven't posted about this before. I haven't even started sorting through the apps yet if you can believe it. A good 3/4 of my emails are still in a backup we had to do when we almost has a complete crash. Clay will be restoring and importing all those tonight for me. Wow guys I have gotten WAY more than I expected and really WAY more than I want to sort through LOL. Double edged sword I guess. So due to the high volume of emails I haven't yet sent out a "I got your app, etc." letter. BUT I will send out both acceptance and rejection letters so you won't have to sit around worrying whether you made it. Wow that will take hours. I haven't but opened a handful here and there and am AMAZED at the hugh quality of work here. You guys truly are great. So be patient with me. WHY I decided to do this right in the middle of having to finish up my and Mere's CDs who will know. I am so busy I stay up in bed thinking about it. I will post later - have a good day.

Well one last layout for a few days I'm sure. I need to work on ELEMENTS lol. I realized I haven't been doing credits on most of these. So light brown and pink paper, and clock by Jen Wilson, Dark Brown paper by ME, tear made from a bling by Holly McCaig and manipulated by me (is in one of my HOF layouts!) sating heart by Me, and stitching by Ronna Penner. Fonts DSP Old General Store, Susie's Hand, and Times New Roman (which I love for some reason). I LOVE this girl!!!!!!

OKay no more computer today ( well until late tonight). Scrapped another page. Off to clean!!!!!!!!

Due to the night I had last night I good friend has challenged me to list 5 nice things I did for my hubby today. This is the first one. I made him a desktop. Not much to say today. Here it is. Of course used Gina Miller's bulletin board kit. And used some Amy martin notebook paper as well. and a Jen Wilson photo turn.

WEll I was supposed to make elements last night but had truly one of the worst nights in at least a year. So I scrapped instead.

Well SAbrina got me all thinking I should whip up a page and submit it to the Simple Scrapbooks call that ends today. It was an inpiration layout where you made a layout inspired by a layout in the Jan/Feb/March Issues. So I do it. Then I realize it wasn't the recent issue but the Special Designing Scrapbooks Issue 2 I think it's called. So.. no submitting it to the call. LOL. Figures. But here;s the layout and I really love it. Simple, different for me and it just looks so paper to me like I could feel the punches. Love that.

Why do I care? Once again I found myself posting at peas about 200 vs 300 ppi. Argh. See just the other day I was talking to a popular designers about these types of controversial threads. And she said that the best bet is just to be friends with everyone and try not to piss people off. And I know this to be true. I mean this is a business after all. And if I make store owners mad that are doing all these great things and having these huge business opportunities chances are it will come back to bite me in the behind when I am not invited to join one of these opportunies. And I wish I could just let things go. But there are a few times that I have jumped into these kinds of conversations. Why do I care? Well because I just think it's wrong. I do. Of course there are all sorts of horrible injustices in the world and things like these don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Of course. But I must say I really love digiscrapping. I love it. It helped to save me at a time I thought I wouldn't ever care about anything again. At a time I didn't want to care about anything. And I found this passion. IN the midst of pain. It's like my baby. I am just so protective of it. So this lame 200 vs 300 ppi thing. You know why I think it bothers me so much? Because I was new once. So were you. And you went to websites trusting them to show you the ropes. You idolized some designers and scrappers and looked to them for the information to get you started. You know the first few pages I did, the first 5 I'd say were all in the PSP default of 72 ppi. I was SO sad when I realized they were pretty useless to me for printing. It broke my heart in a small way. And I think that teaching newbies to use 200 ppi does the same thing to new scrappers in 2 ways. First when they realize that most of the digital scrapbooking world does 300 they will feel that same feeling I had that their first few pages aren't as great anymore. And then there are those who use 300 but go to THE site that sells at 200, see NO posting anywhere at the store that their designs are 200 ( I sure hope this has changed since I was there a couple weeks ago. I will be VERY disappointed to find out that after having it mentioned that they are not being clear they do not desire to be so) and then the newbies BUY stuf with their hard earned money and have the SAME feeling of disappointment when they drop the 200 ppi papers and elements on a 300 canvas and they are tiny. It's these scrappers who have no idea how to blow things up with minimal loss of quality. I was surprised by the number of comments and personal emails I got from people who said they felt this way when they realized that the stuff they bought was 200. They felt cheated and duped. And I don't blame them. Okay so these kind of rants get me in trouble. I sure do wish I was able to seperate myself from the controversy. I wish I didn't care as much. But this is my baby and I will go down protecting her.

Sneak Peek of the upcoming BIG project! And remember you can click on it to make it full screen. :)

One quick thing before I clean - gotta get the kitchen cleaned, to the store and back for Gina's chat. Anyways. So.. my thoughts. Okay so I have started "trying" to look through the paper gallery at 2 peas. I am not nor will ever be a paper scrapper but every now and then I get shown an amazing paper scrapper that rocks my world to add to my BOS. So I was thinking maybe if I poke around the paper gallery I will get some different kinds of inspiration. But. You knew there was a but right? I just don't like it. I get like 3 pages in and just long to go back to the SBB or peas digital gallery. I find even amongst the new digital scrappers so much better design principles, just more eye appealing layouts. Is it because it's easier to see the design on the screen? Who knows. So a shout out to my digi gals cause I just love looking through the digi galleries. You guys blow my socks off. Now with no line breaks since I am in hello and don't know how, I was just reading Gina's blog post about SLEEP. Ahh sleep. Where did you go? Where did I lose you? They say you lose sleep but can I find it? I wish I could say I was turning into a 5 hour gal. I am a 7 hour gal and being that I stay up til like 2 AM every night/morning it is not serving me well. I will be trying still to scoot it back and the children too. I think that most designers that stay up late still have children that go to bed at a reasonable hour. I would get SO much more done if the little were in bed by 8! Oy. Oops. They're running amok in the other room and are supposed to be playing in here with me. Gotta run. OH quick, see what I got! Told ya I'd get those flowers. And well... the CD. Love ya Gina doll.

So like probably 100 others I shopped the Jen Wilson sale, which is still going on right now so if you haven't shopped do it. I bought mostly everything I didn't have. Would love a big jenwilsondesigns sale :) Also picked up a couple other things just to support some of my favorite gals. Bought this element pack from Gina Miller HERE :) mainly because I just LOVE LOVE LOVE that silk flower. Knocks my socks off. I was supposed to buy her sequined flowers but somehow screwed that up and now when I go in the store it still has all my Jen things in my cart. Hopefully when I get up they will have mysteriously disappeared and I can pick up those cute sequined flowers. Funny thing is I have NO idea when I would use them but they are so darn cute I want them, no long for them, every time I see them :) Oy And I bought some Atomic Cupcake actions just cause everyone else is doing it and I need to feel part of the "in" crowd. I still need to pick up one or two of Kathryn Balint's kits to make some baby gifts. I am gonna do some cute iron-ons from some onesies for my best friend who just had her 10th, yes 10th, baby last week. 8 boys 2 girls :) And ALL the boys have names that start with J. No more shopping for months though lol. I NEVER shop and have shopped at the Shabby Shoppe, SBB, and Atomic Cupcake. No more shopping! Though man I want to go to the LSS tomorrow and buy a couple Quote Unquote books. But I will talk myself out of it. Enough spending for now. Actually I am over my budget so NO more. At least I can justify my AC stuff since it's business related - sort of :)

and I got this amazing little kit by Dani B HERE :) I have been eyeing it since she made it I *think* for the digiconvention if I remember correctly. But the colors are just beautiful. Don't know what to scrap with it. Ever have papers so amazing that you are almost scared to try and use it? Or am I just neurotic? :) gorgeous Dani dear.

So I finally scrapped just for ME last night. I have been so busy I can hardly hear myself think sometimes. I had 16 element packs to make last night and well.... can you say FRIED? It was like 1:30 AM and should have gone to bed but decided to scrap instead. Before I knew it it was 3:30 AM and I had done two pages - well... and finished filling my JW wish list for the big sale. I love this picture of Frankie. I can see his little wheels turning. I am thinking that I might post a sneak peek of My and Mere's big project. What do you think? Let me go make one and I will post it later. I have decided I need to scrap more. I really love it. This is what got me started in the first place, my love for it. I think it's really sad how many designers start designing because of their love for scrapping and end up never scrapping. I am SO guilty of it. I love love love designing but don't want to leave my children just a bunch of designs to look at yunno? Maybe another layout or two this weekend.

I forgot to add that acting is amazing, the cast spectacular and writing outstanding. Uh.. can we tell what I am thinking about Friday morning?

It has come to my attention that there might actually be people out there that not only do not watch this show but have never seen it. Now I must admit that either of those scenarios is beyond my level of understanding. If you happen to be one of those poor souls who has never watched this show something must be done. Hands down I think this is the best show on television. Now I so have eclectic taste. I like Survivor, the West Wing, American Idol, Law and Order, Dancing with the Stars, ER, the OC, and Lost. Oh don;t forget Surface and Invasion. Of all these shows I just love love love Battlestar Gallactica is the only one I start longing to see the next episode the second it's over and pine away all week for Friday to return. It is smart and dark. It digs deeper into the characters than any show I have ever seen. On the surface it seems like a sci fi show and in some regards it is. Technically it is sci fi and when I explain the premise it will seem hokey. But don't be fooled. It is gritty and sometimes downright uncomfortable to watch it is so gritty and dark. For all of you I KNOW will be watching tomorrow since I am ordering you to I will give you the premise. Man makes robots, robots rebel and start a full scale war on humans blowing up their planet (which is not earth though earth exists in the show) A fleet of humans escape and are out in space. Okay seems scifi on the surface. The robots called Cylons come in all forms, some of which are human form. Many infiltrate the fleet and form relationships. The cylons can feel and love and some do. Okay so pretty scifi sounding. But the premise is just that a premise. This show dives deep into what real people would feel and how they would act if everything they knew was destroyed. Hate, alcoholism, etc. etc. I wish I could do this show justice. I wish I could. It's on tomorrow. If you want a new show to get hooked on, this is it. I am longing to watch it just talking about it.

Here is a fun new set. I have ideas for some other ones as well. These are a bunch of flowers shapes from classic to funky that you can use to make your own flowers, and papers. Use the square flowers to make great boy pages or the pointy ones for some truly unique funky flowers. Layer to make mod flowers in all colors! These will go in next week I think so I can have some ad space since it will all be filled with CT and kit ads. Oh I dunno when I think I will put it in. I just wanna put it in now. Ahh maybe I'll just go put it in now. Okay it's going in tonight LOL

CT call!!!!!!

The Ad is above since blogger is messing up.

Okay so I am finally doing this. I have put it off for so long. Of course now everyone and their brother and sister are on 100 teams so we'll see how it goes.

To look at all my designs you can go through my blog archives or look at my storefronts here:

My stuff at SBB

My stuff at ACherryonTop

I am looking for 8 CT members to showcase Kim Christensen Designs at both Scrapbook-Bytes and ACherryonTop. I am looking for a wide array of styles so one is surely YOURS! I am looking to display my designs in digital layouts, paper layouts, altered art, cards, whatever your creativity takes you!

To Apply:

-email me at frankcassiesmom@comcast.net with ( please put CT CALL in the subject header!):

-the link to one online gallery

- tell me why you think you would be a good asset to my team

- tell me a little about yourself

- I would like to gain some great friends in the process :) :)

Team Requirements:

1. You must create at least one layout per the number of kits I put up each month with a minimum of 2 layouts. Meaning if I put only one kit out that month, one layout with that kit and at least one with an older kit. You will get coupons for free kits with an email to the link to your LO.

2. Your projects can include digital layouts, paper layouts, cards or altered projects

3. I’d like you to try to showcase my kit to the best of your ability. That does not mean you need to use all the elements. While I am a big fan of graphic style layouts, I would prefer pages that also showcased some of my elements as well.

4. Members should share their layout at a minimum of 3 galleries and their blogs (if applicable)

Deadline for applications is Feb 20th! I will pick the team by the 27th though I am so excited that hopefully it will be earlier than that!

I am so excited!!! Apply apply!

Here are the Soft1 Elements. Due to a computer problem this one will be another day or so until it goes up, but I will be putting up the Warm #5 TODAY!! I will be taking a hiatus from putting stuff up after the Soft1 uploads so that I can finish up my big project!

300 vs 200 ppi

Okay so at a site :) someone started a thread asking why that a small portion of designers create their digital products at 200 ppi while the industry standard is 300 ppi. Honestly I don't get it. I admit it. I am stubborn. I create my layouts at 300 and always will. Unless they come out with new rockin printers in 10 years and maybe it will be higher lol. Anyways, so when I drop 200 ppi digi products on my layouts I need to upsize them because they are so small. So all this has been said at that site with the thread :) I don't know that I understand the concept myself that if 99% of the industry is created at 300 and new digiscrappers are being taught all over to create in 300 ppi why a designer or a site would just decide they should do it differently. Now I have my feeling as to why people decide that they know better than the 99% of everyone else but it might get me in hot water. But I guess I don't need to understand it as I will never design in 200 and to each their own I suppose. I do feel sorry for newbies that buy 200 ppi stuff and drop it on their 300 page and it is so small and they are confused. Or they upsize it without having to painstakingly go 5-10% at a time (um.. kind of a pain isn't it?) and end up with a poorer image. So I went through all the articles that are being used to support this and well.. here are some quotes from the same sources and some extras from reputable sources:

Scott Kelby:
"When the Feather Selection dialog box appears, enter 40 pixels (for high-resolution, 300-ppi images, *note from ME - note he calls high res images 300* try 150 pixels), and click on OK."

photoshopsupport.com
" When people use the term high-res, it's almost always referring to 300 ppi"

BY Kodak in their description of uploading digital pictures - from Yale.edu:
"When providing files for printing, we recommend 300 ppi resolution"

scantips.com:
"Graphic images (including images of text) need higher resolution than photo images, probably 300 dpi for commercial work, to maintain sharpness of the hard edges"

About.com
"Since writing this article photo printers have gotten much better--the dots are smaller and more compact--but still, you rarely need your image resolution to be higher than 240-300 ppi for inkjet printing."

Epson
"The ideal image resolution range is from 250 to 300 dpi for EPSON Photo printers."

vividlight.com:
"Since there are so many printers available, editors, writers, and digital printers needed a general "rule of thumb" number that would work for all printers when they were writing about digital printers. 300ppi provides enough density for the image that it will provide good results with any printer."
They did go on to say many printers don't print over 240 and 240 ppi is comparable to 300 when looked at with the human eye.

There are some things to note on these quotes. Firstly scantips says 300 is probably what should be used in commercial work and being in a commercial field...well.. Secondly the majority of them that don't say 300 everytime say 240-300. The question to me is why then are these digiproducts being produced at 240? Most of those articles said that the difference between 240 and 300 was minimal to the human eye. Not 200. My research indicates that there would be a noticeable difference between 200 and 300. These experts don't say there is no noticeable difference between 200 and 300. They say 240. So these 200 images are made to keep file size down but IMO there is a reason that printers, magazines and articles from experts all over the web recommend 240-300, many 300, and a lot saying 300 for commercial purposes such as printing. I myself will stick with what printers want. Maybe one day I will want to print these great digital papers :)

Oh oops that's not the 6th one but the 5th LOL. I still have to do the requested RED one. OKie - night.

Okay here are the Warm #5 elements. So here's the thing I realized today. I like to post my papers and elements here as I make them. But today reading Gina's blog I realized that most everyone else posts them like a day or so before they are going to put them in the stores as kind of advertising. Am I messing myself up by posting them a week in advance? I feel like I am. Or do I just need to relax because it makes no difference? It would SO be like me to care about things that are totally irrelevant. Well one more warm element pack and I will put the 2 kits in the store. And being that it is the 6th one, I will be packaging them in a collection (all 6 kits) for a reduced price.

Ahh another soft paper pack. Oy now I have 4 kits that need elements and a big secret project that needs lots of time between now and the end of Feb. SO much to do so little time.

A Cherry on Top has opened!!!! To celebrate the Grand Opening I have uploaded there two new kits: Spicy and Darling Dear. So cruise on over to A Cherry on Top ( www.acherryontop.com )