New Release: Backyard Explorer

Some of you may remember the Backyard Explorer mini I made as part of the Designer Darling contest. It was one of my favorite kits ever, so I chose to expand it into a full size kit. It includes 20 papers, more than 35 elements, and 2 alphas!

You can buy the full kit in my store, or you can buy papers, elements, and alphas separately.

Here is a page I made with it. This little cutie is Jaxon, my friend Cindy's son:

I have a 25% off May Flowers sale going on right now, too! So its a great time to buy!

To celebrate the release of this new kit, I have created a quick page freebie for you!

You can download the freebie HERE.

And finally, I am still looking for additional CT members. If you are interested, please email me at callalunacreations@mail.com or message me through the Callaluna Creations Facebook page. I have very mellow requirements!

Retiring Freebies

The following freebies will be retiring tomorrow, so here is your last chance to grab them!

Rusted Out Alpha Sampler is HERE.

Duck, Duck, Bath mini is HERE! The add-on is HERE!

Derby Girl Wannabe mini is HERE!

A Case of the Sniffles, a CU-friendly extraction pack, is HERE!

Backyard Explorer mini is HERE! The add-on is HERE!

Monsters, Monsters, Everywhere mini is HERE! The coordinating overlays set is HERE!

Grab these all now, I'd hate for you to miss them! And look for many of these to appear in my shop, revamped and expanded, in the near future!

Designer Darling Freebies Links!

Hi! I apologize, but I am not going to manage the play along for Round 5 of Designer Darling. I just cannot seem to stay healthy for five minutes....

BUT, I wanted to share the links to everything I did in the contest, in case you had trouble registering at STS and were unable to download them. These are LIMITED TIME freebies, as I loved everything I did so much that I plan to clean it all up and expand it and pop it into my store at some point. Speaking of my store, did I mention I am Designer of the Month and have a 33% off sale during March to celebrate my daughter's third birthday?

For Round 1, I made Duck, Duck, Bath:

That can be downloaded HERE.

There was also an add on for Duck, Duck, Bath:

That is available HERE.

For Round 2, I made Derby Girl Wannabe:

You can get that HERE.

For Round 3, I did A Case of the Sniffles, which is CU-friendly:

Snag that HERE.

And last but not least, I submitted Backyard Explorer for Round 4:

That is available HERE.

I made an add-on for that one, too:

The add on is HERE.

I hope that helps those of you who had trouble registering! Remember, grab them now because I am going to remove the links eventually! Thanks again for all of the support I received while participating!

No Crown and Sash For Me!

Alas, I did not make the cut for Designer Darling and I will not be moving into the final round. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad and disappointed, but I am still very proud of what I did in the contest and how far I did make it. I thank you all for your support, and I thank the judges and fellow participants for teaching me so much!

If life permits, I plan to follow along and make a full kit for the final round, so keep an eye out here for more freebies in a couple weeks! Thanks again!

Backyard Explorer Add-On and DOTM!

First off, I wanted to let you know there is an add-on to my Backyard Explorer mini available on my Facebook page!

I made this to thank you all for your support! If you haven't gone to vote yet, please take a minute to do so! The voting thread is HERE!

I am also excited to announce that I am the Designer of the Month at Southern Comfort Scraps! My entire store will be 33% off during the month of March, in celebration of my darling daughter turning three on March 31st! Here are some of the items available in my shop:

Round 4 Voting Is Up!

The voting poll for Round 4 of Designer Darling is up! Please take a few minutes to register at the Stuff to Scrap forums if you haven't already (its SUCH a friendly forum!) and show your support for me in the voting polls! My entry is called "Callaluna Creations / Backyard Explorer." Please also vote for my friend Sarah of Sairi Designs!

Here is a reminder of what my Round 4 entry looks like:

Download links can be found in THIS THREAD, and the voting poll is in THIS THREAD.

I had hoped to have an add on up on my Facebook page tonight, but I am exhausted from burning the candle at both ends and I've decided it can wait until tomorrow! :) Keep an eye out for it!

Designer Darling Round 4

Wow, this was a tough round. I initially thought it would be easy for me, as the challenge this time was to make a kit completely from scratch. I consider myself a "from scratch" designer, as 95% of my elements start with a blank canvas and my imagination. But before this challenge, I never realized how important my extensive stash of styles, custom shapes, brushes, and overlays has become to me! Designing without them felt like designing with one hand tied behind my back! But what is a girl to do? I reset to defaults and I played with Photoshop and I learned about a billion new things! Everything in my kit is FROM SCRATCH (for real this time!), with the exception of the overlay from the CU kit we were given, which I used on one element. And I love it! I am so proud of this kit, and I can't wait to expand it into full size.... though I don't think I will stick to the "from scratch" rules with the expansion! I miss my styles!

This theme is a bit of a departure for me, as its sort of a boyish theme and I have a girl, and its filled with creepy crawly bugs and even a bird, and I hate bugs and birds! But I tried to keep the color palette neutral so it would work for boys and girls, and as it turns out, bugs are lots of fun to make! Presenting "Backyard Explorer":

The download link can be found in THIS THREAD. Please check back tomorrow for the voting poll, I would appreciate your continuing support. I've made it this far, I want to go all the way!

Round 4 and Winter Wonders

I am moving on to Round 4 of Designer Darling! There were no cuts after Round 3, but I am confident I would have made the cut if there had been, as my collection was very well received. I cannot believe I am in the second to last round! I never thought I would make it this far. This round is perfect for me: we aren't allowed to use any CU this round (with the exception of a few things they provided). I don't know if I have mentioned this here before or not, but I am primarily a "from scratch" designer. I use very little CU, and what I use is primarily overlays and a few of the "basics" (ribbons, buttons, flowers, etc.) that aren't that interesting for me to make. So this round should be perfect for me. I have chosen a theme and I am ready to go! Keep an eye out Wednesday for my submission!

The other reason for this post is that I have another beautiful layout from my CT Lórien to share with you! She made this with my kit Winter Wonders. Lórien is from Brazil, and she has never even seen snow! Check out her blog post to hear more about what winter is like in her part of the world! For her second layout, she chose to do a NON winter layout, which I think is fantastic! She's really demonstrating how versatile the kit is with this layout, don't you think?

Just a reminder, Winter Wonders and all of my other offerings are 50% off through the end of February to celebrate my grand opening! You have a couple more days to snag this at a HUGE discount!

Voting Reminder

For those of you that haven't gotten around to it, please drop by the voting forum and cast your vote for Callaluna Creations in Round 3 of Designer Darling!

Here's a reminder of what I did this week! If you haven't snagged it yet, the links are HERE. Thank you for all the support!

Time to Vote Again!

The voting poll is up for Round 3 of Designer Darling! Won't you take a minute to go and show your support for me? My submission is called "Callaluna Creations/ A Case of the Sniffles."

The voting poll is HERE. Please also consider using one of your 3 votes for my friend Sarah of Sairi Designs!

If you haven't downloaded yet, what are you waiting for? Most of the submissions this week (including mine) are CU friendly! The thread listing download links is HERE.

Thanks again for all of the support!

Designer Darling: Round 3

Our challenge this week was to make our own designer resources via extraction. This is MY week. I am confident in my extractions - its the very first thing I learned to do in Photoshop! But as I learned, there is more to extractions than, well, extracting. My big challenge this week was getting good quality photographs. But after a lot of fussing, I finally managed.

I chose to do a themed collection, and my theme stems from my young daughter who is sick WAY more often than she should be! Our house is awash in medical supplies, so I ran with that. I'm calling this CU-friendly collection of designer resources "A Case of the Sniffles." I'd love to see what you do with it!

The links to download this collection are located in THIS THREAD. Please keep an eye up for the voting thread, which will be up in the next couple of days, and place a vote for me! I really want to see how far I can go with this competition before my wild ride ends!

I made the cut!!!

I am so excited to announce I made the cut for Designer Darling and will be advancing to Round 3! I have no illusions that I am capable of winning this thing, but I want to stay in as long as possible so I can keep learning! Thank you all for the support, and keep an eye out for my round 3 freebie! Its due Wednesday! Round 1 and Round 2 freebies are still up, scroll down to my earlier posts to snag the links!

Layouts With Derby Girl Wannabe

Here are a few layouts I made with the mini I created for Round 2 of Designer Darling: Derby Girl Wannabe.

Download links are in THIS THREAD.

The voting poll is HERE, and I'd really appreciate your votes!

Duck...Duck...Bath Add On

At long last I have packaged up the Duck... Duck... Bath Add On for you! This kit was originally inspired by my extensive collection of crazy duckies, so I made some recolors that are reminiscent of some of the ducks in my collection! I also recolored the towel paper and made a few new patterns during the process. Enjoy!

You can download it HERE, and the original kit (pictured below) can be found HERE.

Do you like the add on? Are you grateful? Great! Then could you go and vote for me in the current round of Designer Darling? The voting thread is HERE and this is my submission, Derby Girl Wannabe:

The thread to download Derby Girl Wannabe is HERE.

Ready? Set? VOTE!

The voting poll is up for Round 2 of Designer Darling. There are cuts in this round, so please PLEASE go and vote! I need all the votes I can get! I am determined to make the cut!

You have to register in the forums to vote, but its a really great place to hang out and socialize with other scrappers! Please note that they are having issues with registration emails going through to hotmail and yahoo accounts. Gmail and mail.com accounts are working fine, so if you have trouble, try a different email address. The voting poll is HERE! My submission is "Callaluna Creations - Derby Girl Wannabe." And again, please consider tossing in a vote for my best bud Sarah - "Sairi Designs - With the Girls."

Here is a reminder of what my submission looks like. I will have a small add on coming soon!

Links to download all the free minis are in THIS THREAD.

Thank you for your continued support!!!

Designer Darling Round 2

I am astonished I was even able to finish my kit this round, as my daughter got REALLY sick the day this round started, and has gotten sicker each day. I designed most of this with her laying asleep on my lap! I don't think this is nearly as good as it could have been, but I am happy to have finished at all.

For this round, we were given two photographs and a little story to provide inspiration, and we had to choose our own theme and color palette. One of the photos was of a roller derby match! I realize roller derby was an obvious choice, which is kind of funny, because I feel like my greatest strength in designing is creativity. But I idolize derby girls, and a derby kit has been on my "to do" list for ages! I simply couldn't pass up the chance. Its also got a brighter color palette than most people like, but I was inspired by the derby matches I have seen and the crazy colors I saw there!

You can find the links to download Derby Girl Wannabe in this forum thread. I would appreciate it if you would take the time to go and vote for me while you are there! Enjoy!

Designer Darling Competition FREEBIES!!!!

You know how when you have people who really believe in you, you can sometimes get swept up in their enthusiasm and push yourself farther than you ever have before? That happened to me this week. I have two wonderful cheerleaders, my best friend Sarah (of Sairi Designs) and my friend Raquel (of Build a Memory), who believe in me and encouraged me to enter the Designer Darling Competition at Stuff to Scrap. I am terrified, because I feel like I am way out of my league (there are people in this contest I have BOUGHT things from before!!!). Furthermore, I am SLOW. I get a little better at designing every day, but I don't get much faster. I am slow and deliberate and NOT in the tortoise-winning-the-race sort of way!

But I've survived Round 1. No need to applaud, I haven't even heard from the judges yet. But there are no cuts in Round 1, so the fact that I managed to finish my kit means I get to advance. Woot! This is my submission. I call it Duck... Duck... BATH! It was inspired by my vast collection of rubber duckies.

You can find the links to download my mini and all of the other fantastic submissions HERE. Please PLEASE go and download it, and encourage your friends to do the same? I need all the cheerleaders I can get to carry me though this competition!

Here is a layout I made with it:

Furthermore, my lucky little readers... I have an add-on in the works! Keep an eye out here, I will post it in the next day or two!

Also, please head over to Sarah's blog to get a peek at her submission, as well!

Thank you to all of you for the support! Your comments and emails and messages have kept me motivated these past few months, and all of my improvements are thanks to you guys!!