Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Hippin' & Hoppin'

Did you have fun ridding the Hippity Hop Blog Train? Did you get lots of goodies? If you haven't done so there's still time to climb on board! Here is a sampling of what a few of the designers have in store for you:

Hippity Hop


Bits'N'Bobs


The poser is from Outlaw by Design and is NOT a part of the train. That goes for all the tags. All the posers are from Outlaw. If you need some posers though, Made by Justin has a couple in her portion of the train, as do I.

Hippity Hop


Crazy Lady Scraps


The "Chicks" word art is from Hip Hop Holiday, my portion of the Hippity Hop Blog Train. Please scroll down to find the download link for the kit.

Hippity Hop


Creationz by Jo


This was a full sized mini-kit that I resized for tagging. The word are was created using the glitter tiles from Captivated Visions' portion of the train.

Hippity Hop


Rachel's Expressionz


Her papers are 3600x3600, but her elements are sized for tagging.

Hippity Hop


Gothic Inspirations


Yup. Some days I feel like I fell down the rabbit hole was well. The Gothic Eggs were not a part of the kit, but are available on Jessica's blog.

Hippity Hop


Simply Irresistible Scraps


Hippity Hop


Crazy Cakes Scraps


Don't you just love the easter basket background?

Hippity Hop


Baby Cakes Scraps


The butterflies are really beautiful!

Click HERE to go to the train station to climb aboard the train and have a good time scrappin' Don't forget to leave a "thank you" when you download. A little bit of gratitude goes a long way toward making these trains run!

Tomorrow another train runs through here. Be sure to stop by and pick up another taggers sized kit as we link up to The Goodie Train!

Monday, March 30, 2009

Hip Hop Blog Train!

Hip Hop Holiday photo DCD_HipHopHoliday_TS.png


Thanks for riding the Hippity Hop Bog Train into the Digicats (& Dogs) station!

My rather rude neighbor, Clarence, loves to play his Hip Hop music at full blast. I guess he thinks the whole neighborhood is into Hip Hop. In any case, don't you just love the adorable little gangsta bunnies in this kit?

Hip Hop Holiday comes with 15 papers and 84 elements to help you hip hop up those Easter time tags. You are getting 12 bows, 12 frames, 10 Flowers, 6 daisy chains, 6 lace, 6 string wraps, 6 word arts, 4 candy chicks, 3 bunny pops, 3 hoppity eggs, 3 lambykins, 3 tags, 2 butterflies, 2 chocolate bunnies, 2 easter baskets, 2 Hip Hop bunnies, 1 birdilicious, and 1 egg wreath.

300 DPI. Personal use only.

Please remember that by downloading this kit you agree to my terms of use which state, in part that that that you cannot redistribute, rebroadcast, resale, or claim my graphics as your own. That means placing this kit on 4Shared, RapidShare or any other file sharing site for any reason is a strict NO-NO! That constitutes redistribution.

If you know someone who is interested in this kit , please direct them to my blog where they can download their own copy. Free to use is NOT the same thing as free to share. My graphics are copyright protected.

Plus I already pay for premium download service so you don't have to wait for your freebies, and the links stay here FOREVER, so you don't have to put this kit anywhere else to share it, just link to this post.

To download from MediaFire, click HERE.
The password is "Thanks" - no quotes.

If you enjoyed this freebie, please take a moment to vote for Digi!

Over the Rainbow
Click on the blinkie to vote!


Your next stop on the train is Captivated Visions
Or
You can click the blinkie to return to the Hippity Hop Blog Train Station.
Hippity Hop Blog Train photo blogtrainblnk1.gif


Don't forget that you can keep up with all the latest Digicats news and freebies just by liking us on Facebook, or following us on Twitter!

Have fun and have a Happy HIP HOP HOLIDAY!


Spring Country - Dianna photo SpringCountry_02272011Dianna.png


Chili

I dug out Miss Diamond's Easter Village this weekend to take into work today. She was a little miffed that I was taking her "Eastern Village" to my "Day Hunting Place" but I'm afraid that If I set it up at home, Tristan would break it.

Miss Diamond's Eastern village


Miss Diamond's Eastern village


Miss Diamond's Eastern village


Miss Diamond's Eastern village


These are really cute pieces that I should really photograph - sans the easter grass - and tube so the rest of you can use them in your projects.

The Hippity Hop train is off although there are quite a bit of contributions which are not posted yet. Either that or the designers all jumped the track. I'm also ready for Wednesday's Goodie Train. If you check The Good Train Blog, you can see the kit previews from the designers that are in the train - mine included.

One of the other designers is Chili Designz, who I equate to great CU items. I just realized this weekend she does some really good scraps as well.

The following two tags were done using her contribution to the Spring Time blog Train, which you can download from her blog. The bunnies are from Outlaw by Design.

Spring Time


Spring Time


It's very much a mini-kit, but some of the items are really unique.

She also has a kit in the Groovylicious Syncho-Scrap at Exquisite Scraps:

Groovylicious


The poser is one of KairinaKat Kreations and is included with the kit. I think they were all scrambling for Hippy posers...LOL!

The word art in the background is from Bits'N'Bobs contribution to the Groovylicious Syncho-Scrap.

Groovylicious


I don't think any of the elements in the kit were very 60-ish, but they were quite unique and I managed this rather surrealistic piece, which I'm rather fond of.

The Hippy poser is (b) by Lacy Clagg. I was not hurting for hippies, as I have Lacy's Hippy 1 and Hippy 2 packages.

Now I'm going to have to look more seriously at Chili Designz kits as the little tastes I've gotten from her freebies have made me very curious.

Meanwhile, I looking at the DigiFree FAQs and noticed this line: "taggers at 72dpi are not really for proper digital scrapbooking..." Excuse me? Taggers are people too! Maybe we need a tagger free search engine?

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Eggbert

I've talked about Eggbert from Bits'N'Bobs a couple of time, so I thought I'd share a few tags with you featuring the darling little duck.

The Scraps are from BNB's Springtime blog train kit, which is fr33 (but only for a limited time).

Eggbert 1


I had to resize Eggbert down to 35% to use him for tags, so as I mentioned before, he's available as a full sized embellishment if you'd like to use him as such. That's the nice thing about Julie's posers...they're BIG.

The Bunny Bows were created using an action by Incognito. They're very cute.

Eggbert 2


That's what kind of miffs me...there's all sorts of fun things being created for Photoshop's Creative Suite, but it's just too expensive for me to consider. (Not to mention it probably won't run on my antiquated system.)

Eggbert 3


Learning to fly? I don't think those wings are going to hold him.

I like what Julie did with the Chocolate Bunny - turning him into a pin and a key chain. That never occurred to my unimaginative self!

Anyway, cute pastel fun.

Julie is participating in both The Goodie Train and the Hippity Hop Blog Train, so be sure to visit her blog tomorrow and Wednesday to pick up even more goodies! (After you've visited here, of course!)

Saturday, March 28, 2009

It's Groovy Baby!

As I mentioned in my last post, the theme for this week's Synchro-Scrap at Exquisite Scraps is "Groovylicious". There are six kits available for download and they are totally FREE - for this week. After that, they become PTU kits.

Just a Girl's Design, Bits'N'Bobs, Chili Designz, & Gemini Creations have taggers sized kits available, while Creative Intentionz, and Krissy's Scraps offer you a choice of taggers or full size.

Lots of fun elements and bright colors, plus some iconic symbols from the Sixties and the "Summer of Love".

You can snag the kits HERE.

Groovylicious


The Zeony poser is (c) by R.J. and is available (for free) in the Archive section of Poser Emporium. She's a bit on the weird side, and I get a kick out of her. I also get a kick out of the roach clip that JAG included in the kit.

Aside from the Lava Lamp, there's also a mood ring that didn't make it into either of the tags. But no pet rocks. :(

Groovylicious


Flower power and a little love bus, which reminds me quite a bit of Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine.

I think I might change up the layout on Tristan's blog and use this theme, it's just sooo much fun, and he's such a peace nick.

Groovylicious


Julie, from Bits'N'Bobs, included two specially made posers in her kit. While the Synchro-Scrap spawned several commercial use templates that are available at Exquisite, I can't help but feel the whole Synchro-Scrap idea would be served a little better if some the designers came up with add ons - such as a poser pack - that would be offered for sale in the store.

There is a Clip Art set available at Digiweb Studios. One of the clip art hippies is included in JAG's kit, and one of the other designers does use the clip art in their kit, but we'll get to that in due time.

Groovylicious


There's lots of word art in the Bits'N'Bobs kit. While I'm taking each kit as a stand alone, you could also combine them for a collab effort if you were so inclined.

I'll have more on these theme in a bit. I was doing alright until we got to Earth Hour, and then the lights out thing sort of knocked me out as well, and I think I'm headed to bed now.

Peace Out!

Rock Baby

The Syncho-Scrap for the week over at Exquisite Scraps is "Groovylicious". I should have figured that one out early from all the 60's themed CU products they were kicking out. There are currently seven kits available for FR33 - yes that's right ABSOLUTELY FR33 - so jump over to Exquisite Scraps and pick them up.

I'll do some tags with them this weekend. I tossed everything I'd done with the Spring Bears and restarted with a new color template yesterday and it's working out much better. The title of the kit is now going to be "Blooming Bears", and I should be done with it...soon.

For now, here's a few more Rock tags. These use the that I used in the previous set using the "Rock On" kit from Cinnamon Scraps.

(Rowena runs into my office with one of the pictures off her gradenza and says "Look, I have a skirt just like that! See?"

"It's probably not as short, though," I said.

"Well no."

"And doesn't that chick look like Joan Jett?"

"Yeah, she does, actually. I knew I'd seen her before.")


Rock Baby


That microphone might be a bit over sized. Then again, maybe she just likes big microphones. I couldn't decide.

The mask is from Cinnamon Scraps.

Rock Baby


This time the mask is from Wee Scots Lass. The guitar, drums, amp and yes, microphone, come with the kit. There wasn't a guitar stand, so I'm sort of pretending there's one there. Otherwise the guitar wouldn't be standing up.

Rock Baby


All the chrome work musical elements (and the CD) comes with the kit as well, as does the pick, which I used as a tag. I like the flairs she's got in there, but couldn't work them into the tags as much as I'd have liked as they'd have been redundant.

The Elvis Costello poster does not come in the kit. LOL!

Rock Baby


I manufactured the guitar strap and it didn't work out as well as I wanted. The silhouette behind the drums is one of Bits'N'Bobs Sexy Silhouettes, another element pack I got at US4T which is not available at Exquisite.

I dunno...do any of the girl bands actually have pink instruments? That would be fun to see!

On a side note I allegedly have a "new to me" car. At least, I've been told Jose has found one for me and is "patching it up", whatever that means. It's mid 90s, but only 55K miles on it, so that's not too bad. Supposedly a Chrysler Eagle of some sort.

Well, if it will get me around town without belching out tons of smoke, I'll be happy. The Caddy is about done for.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Bunny Hop

Are you excited about the Hippity Hop Blog Train? I am. It's my first time participating in a blog train!

A couple of designers have posted their portions earlier, so if you want to get a peek at what you'll be collecting aboard the train when it leaves the station on Monday, you can catch a sampling to play with this weekend.

Danielle at DMK Designs posted her portion Wednesday. This is a full sized mini-kit. I scripted it down to use for tagging.

Hippity Hop


"Eggbert" is by Untamed Angel. He's a bit on the smaller side, and is only suitable for tagging. Also, the only place I've seen him available for sale is Angelic Scraps, which is currently off-line.

If you're looking for an Eggbert to use as an embellishment in a full size page, check out Bits'N'Bobs variation, as Julie's files are substantially larger.

Hippity Hop


The bunny is just too cute!

Patz Scrapz has her portion up today. It's a taggers sized kit.

Over 75 designers are participating in this train, so I'm sure they'll be something to please all.

Twilight Vixen

I'd done these tags as couple of weeks ago, but never got around to posting them. I was playing with the "Twilight vixen" kit from Krissy's Scraps. My question had been whether this was a vampire inspired kit or not, and my conclusion is that it is not.

It does have a bit of an oriental flavor to it however.

I'm using the Bernice posers by R.J. which are available in the archive section of Poser Emporium.

Twilight Vixen


The stone bench in from Krissy's Stone Garden Accessories element pack. I just needed...something and that seemed to do the trick.

Twilight Vixen


The stone vase is from the above referenced Stone Garden Accessories pack, while the bush came from the Coleus Shrub Mix element pack.

I was re-thinking my take on the Garden Bears kit I was working on - I don't like the colors - so I think I'm going to go back and rework it. Maybe I'll put some of these elements in there.

Twilight Vixen


The background masks are - I think - from Wee Scots Lass, they're just not ones I usually use.

Twilight Vixen


The big heart is from one of Krissy's Sweetheart packs, while the Peacock fan is by Incognito.

Twilight Vixen is a very pretty kit, and it comes in full and taggers sizes at Exquisite Scraps and Simply Beautiful Scraps. I'm sure I'll do more with it sometime in the future.

At the Office

So, I'm at work yesterday morning and right around 9:30 A.M., all the power goes off. Of course, we fire off the standard joke of "Hey Joey! Did you forget to pay the power bill?" (Again.)

Joey actually did not pay a power bill and they turned the electric off in Tom's office. His excuse was he didn't recognize the account number and didn't know what it was for, so he didn't pay it.

Anyway, we're sitting in the near dark (I have candles!) in my office bullshitting, when Dolores came in and said "Don't tease Joey about not paying the power bill. He's very embarrased."

"He didn't," I said. He did. Or didn't as the case may be. This time his excuse was he didn't know it was past due. Riiiighhhhtttt....

So I live around the corner, I went home and did some PSPing while we were waiting for the power to be restored. (Dolores & Kathy went shopping and Rowena took the opportunity to go and work out.)

The posers in these four tags are from the "Winter Fun" poser pack from Bits'N'Bobs, which I got from US4T, and which doesn't appear to be available anymore. The scraps are from the "At the Office" taggers kit by Creative Intentionz. The stapled paper alpha is courtesy of Olga Mishyna (aka Jasmin-Olya).

At the office


When I lived over in Fort Laud, I was working for an insurance company. The main headquarters was in New York and the Florida operations were a branch office. As such we had an "Office Manager" who was actually a spy for the big boss over in New York.

When Frank would ask her do something that she didn't want to do, she'd reply "What do you think I am, your f***ing sexitary?" And of course, since she was a spy, she was untouchable. So she got way with doing very little beyond cleaning out the refrigerator once a week.

And the "secretary" jobs fell to the rest of us.

At the office


Office Fashion 101:

Rowena came in looking for safety pins, and I gave her a mini-binder clip instead. "Maybe this would work?" I suggest. She hummed, but went away with it. About half an hour later, I saw her. She'd used two mini-binder clips to attach her bra straps to her shirt so they'd stop sliding down.

At the office


Monday's Child is fair of face, Tuesday's Child is full of grace...and of course Saturday's Child works hard for a living. That's me. Saturday's child.

At the office


This morning Tom comes in and says "Isn't there a way to set up an alert in QuickBooks so that Joey will know when bills are due to be paid?" Sure and I can show him how to do that, but...he ignored the first bill, he ignored the second bill, and he ignored the cut off notice. What makes anyone think he's going to pay attention to a pop up notice?

Of course, Joey is Tom's son, so he too, is mostly untouchable. If it had been anyone else, they'd have been fired.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Rocket Warrior

Rocket Warrior is the Collab kit that was put together by Simply Beautiful Scraps and Exquisite Scraps to help pay for the cost of surgery and treatment for Kieryn, the 17 year old son of Krissy (a.k.a. Krissy's Scraps) who was recently diagnosed with a life threatening form of Cancer.

Krissy and family live in New Zealand, and much like Australia, the skin cancers tend to be prevalent as we've managed to cut a hole in the ozone layer. Kieryn's surgery was scheduled for Wednesday, 25 of the March. There's been no update on either Krissy or Sox's site. The kit is taggers sized and is available for $4 from either store.

It's also very nicely put together with all the papers in one part, the frames in another, the alphas and the word arts...basically what I do with a collab before I get ready to use it. Except that I didn't have to do all that much work and I didn't have to resize.

Posers were another problem. I think Angel of Angel's Free Tubes had once upon a time had several sets of "Sam" posers available, but no more. It's hard enough to come by tubes with men in them, boys are even harder. In the end I settled on the LD Aika Toon poser pack from Lisa's Design which are "toon" girls.

Rocket Warriors


You don't have to go with the basketball theme. There is enough urban grunge in the kit that you can completely ignore the hoops elements and still do some wonderful tags, but I sort of wanted to go with the sports theme for this set of tags.

Rocket Warriors


There are a set of basketball player silhouettes in the kit, so if you don't want to go the tube route, you can play with those.

Rocket Warriors


Rocket Warriors


Again, basketball is optional and it's a great kit for a the price. Especially if you like grunge of any type, but especially the urban variety. I might have to try this with a couple Corsentino's tubes. And since I didn't have to resize, I might even do a tute.

My best wishes to Krissy and her family as they go through this difficult time and here's hoping that Kieryn makes a complete recovery.

Martyrdom

Tom stops by my office and says "So did you get Lenore straightened out?"

I said "Yeah...I noticed she went to the same school of sainthood as my mother did."

Tom strikes a martyred pose in the doorway.

"Exactly. My mother has that picture hanging on her wall. I think it's one of the things that I always turned me off about the Catholic Religion. It's such a gruesome thing to subject a small child to."

That and the sacred heart picture my grandmother was fond of. I mean seriously, here's a guy with his chest ripped open and his heart showing.

And then they worry about the amount of violence shown on TV.

Southern Scraps has her Sunrise Service taggers kit available for fr33 at Paradise 4 Scrappers, and yes, it does have the obvious religious overtones for the holiday. I usually play those down, having traded in my cross for a pentagram years ago.

newwin


The "Bunny Baby" poser & basket is from Calypso Design and is a blog fr33bie. She's got a bunch of Easter themed fr33bies on her blog, so be sure to stop by and collect them all.

The "Bunny Babies" have been making the rounds. Outlaw by Design has some in her PTU tube area, and Gail at Aussie Scrap Design has a blog fr33bie set as well. As I told Gail, they're very cute, but if my parents had ever dressed me like that, I'd have to kill them.

The mask on this piece is from Cameron's Tags, the masks on the other two tags in this post are from Wee Scots Lass.

newwin


This "Bunny Baby" is from Bits'N'Bobs and is part of a 9-piece tube set, which also includes baskets and eggs besides the "Bunny Babies". The eggs and basket in this tag though came with the scrap kit.

Julie of Bits'N'Bobs also has her Spring Blog Train Kit available on her blog, which is fr33 for a limited time only, so be sure to snag it while the snagging is good.

newwin


This last pieces utilizes scraps from the kit, except for the Easter Grass, which is by Gemini Creationz. There's some religious word art in the kit as well, which I ignored.

For those of you, like my aunt, who wish to remind me that "Jesus is the reason for the season" I wish to point out that the Christian celebration of Easter was designed to replace Jewish Passover and the pagan celebration of Spring Equinox, and that the season was around many, many, many years ago B.C.

The modern English term Easter developed from the Old English word Eastre, which itself developed prior to AD 899. The name refers to the Eostur-month, a month of the Germanic calendar which may have been named for the goddess Eastre in Germanic paganism.

In all Romance languages the name of the Easter festival is derived from the Greek name, Pascha which is itself derived from Pesach, the Hebrew festival of Passover.

The ecclesiastical historian Socrates Scholasticus (b. 380) attributes the observance of Easter by the church to the perpetuation of local custom, "just as many other customs have been established," stating that neither Jesus nor his Apostles enjoined the keeping of this or any other festival.

We won't get into the heavy commercialism that we celebrate in society today.

As for my computer...I think I'm going to see about buying a new hard drive when I get paid next week, and then transferring everything over. This way I can get much more room (to store more scraps!) and I won't have to worry if the thing is going bad or not.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Blue Screen of Death

So, I had plugged in my memory stick this morning (a.k.a. the little chippy thing) to transfer the files I'd download yesterday when the whole computer shut it self down. Then it rebooted - to the blue screen of death.

Uh Oh.
So I went and found the Win CD, rebooted from the CD, and ran check disk. That seemed to fix whatever problem it was having...but I'm nervous now. I'm backing up the stuff that I hadn't put on disk before - Just In Case.

Jesus saves, but not as good as Memorex does.

Happily, I'd uploaded my Hippity Hop blog train contribution last night, so even if the computer does die on me, I'm ready to go. I'd even written and pre-posted the entry so it will go automatically on the 30th without any prompting from me.

Scar-ee stuff!

Although, given the shape that disk is in, it might be a blessing in disguise. I'd just hate to have to unzip reload all those scrap kits though.

Rock On

There's been a wave of Rock themed kits out recently. Bits'N'Bobs had released a pack of Rebel poser and while I'm reminded that I still have some tubes from Untamed Angel and Lacy Clagg in the same theme, it was sort of happy to have these.

Julie has since put out two more related packages, so this gives me lots of fodder to get through the various Rock themed kits I have on my (hopefully not defunct) hard drive.

The scraps for these four tags came from Cinnamon Scraps "Rock On" taggers kit, which is really a nice little kit for a buck!

Rock On 1


The guitar was made by Starfire Designs from a template by Scrappin Cop. I have that template, but I've not tried it yet. She did a great job on it! All of the masks on these tags are from Cinnamon Scraps as well, and you can download them from her blog.

Rock On 2


The band in the background is the Ramones. I was alternating between Bowie's "Rebel, Rebel", David Essex "Rock On" and Joan Jett's "I love Rock'N'Roll" while doing these tags. But I had a the Ramones picture saved on my hard drive from when I'd done the punk tags back in January, so that's why it got used.

Rock On 3


The boombox is from the "Rainy Dayz" element pack by Soxsational Scraps. I want to use that pack - among other things - to do a "girly" themed kit with. The CD is a CU product from DMK Designs.

Speaking of Danielle, BTW, she's posted her part of the Hippity Hop Blog Train early, so Hop on over to her blog and pick it up! The bunny is way cute!

Rock On 4


And do I want to include skulls or not? They seem a bit overused these days.

Anyway...

I need to go and put together a T-13 from tomorrow from our archives as the computer issues are going to postponed my completing a new one. Hopefully I've got 13 calicoes laying around.

Wish me luck!