Note: This is a muse I stole from my personal blog, Life Muses by Ro. You're welcome to swing by anytime you'd like!

Rozanne Paxman

He Is Soooo Guilty

I don't like it. In fact, I hate it. It wastes my time. It puts me at risk. It makes me roll my eyes up in my head. But he still keeps doing it, and because I love him so much, I haven't had the heart to tell him to stop it - until today.

What was he doing?

Forwarding junk email.

You know the kind, right? These are the annoying type of emails that are forwarded to you via someone you know that have been forwarded and forwarded and forwarded repeatedly from one hapless victim to another. These are the emails with the subject links that read...

Darwin Award
First Grade Drawing - PRICELESS!
The world is going to end tomorrow! Read why...
Kittens on parade

But when he started a conversation with, "Did you hear there's a bad computer virus going around?" I had to 'fess up that I hated when he did it.

"Uh... honey," I cautiously started, "will you stop forwarding me goofy emails?"

"Why?"

"Because they waste my time. They flood my email box, and I have to delete them."

"You delete them?"

I nodded. "Yes, I delete them because they are just the kind of email that might deliver viruses to my computer."

He grimaced. "Really?"

I nodded again.

"Okay," he said with a shrug. "I won't send them to you anymore."

"And don't open them anymore," I wisely advised. "Or your computer will get a cold."

"You're so smart," he said as he kissed me goodbye.

"Of course I am," I laughed. "But don't stop sending me truly interesting emails. If you don't forward me everything, I'll read what you send me."

"It's a deal," he grinned. "Better go now... I love you."

I watched him open and shut the door, and I realized that I missed him already.

Oh my word... to be in love with a man like this is a very good thing. Maybe I'll write a love sonnet and send it to him. And then maybe he'll like my poem enough that he'll forward it to all of his friends.

But then again... maybe I better just stick to love notes on real paper because all he can do with those is stick them in his sock drawer.

Muse: To be absorbed in one's thoughts; engage in meditation. Not intended to solve the world's problems, another person's problems, or to cover topics completely. One does not have to agree with musings to enjoy them, just as one does not have to be the same as someone else to appreciate who they are.

Would you like to earn a $20 Gift Certificate? Send your own muse to [email protected]. If it is selected for publication in the Scrap Girls newsletter, you'll get to have fun shopping!

SCRAP GIRLS CLUB

Join the Scrap Girls Monthly Club and you can have fun with the newest traditional digital and printable scrapbooking looks while saving! (A $27.94 value for $9.99 or less!)

The Scrap Girls Club contents are released on the 1st day of the month (or the closest business day to the 1st).

With the Scrap Girls Club, you will receive:

1 Collection Biggie
1 Paper Super Mini
1 8.5x11 Sheet of Word Art
1 Embellishment Set
1 Assemble Your Own Zoom Page Set
1 Designer's Choice Item

Layout by Elisha Barnett using January's Scrap Girls Club
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Created for you by Syndee Nuckles

If you prefer not to join a club, the Scrap Girls Club contents are available at regular prices in the Boutique. You can easily find them right now by checking the What's New? section of the Boutique.

Note: The Scrap Girls Club contents are always available for sale elsewhere in the Boutique at their regular prices once the associated club month is released. But all club contents are totally brand new, never-seen-before product releases for each month!

SCRAPSIMPLE CLUB

Join the ScrapSimple Monthly Club and you can enjoy the newest ScrapSimple looks while saving! (A $13.95 value for $6.99 or less!)

The new ScrapSimple Club contents are released on the 15th day of the month (or the closest business day to the 15th).

With the ScrapSimple Club, you will receive:

1 ScrapSimple Paper Template Set
1 ScrapSimple Embellishment Template
1 Brush Set
2 Designer's Choice Item

A commercially licensed version of the ScrapSimple Club is also available here.

Layout by Trish Yochum using December's ScrapSimple Club
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Created for you by Trish Yochum and Valerie Randall

If you prefer not to join a club, the ScrapSimple Club contents are available at regular prices in the Boutique. You can easily find them right now by checking the What's New? section of the Boutique.

Note: The ScrapSimple Club contents are always available for sale in the Boutique at regular prices once the associated club month is released. But all club contents are totally brand new, never-seen-before product releases for each month!

Embellishing Digital Photo Masks

Note: Tutorial created using Adobe Photoshop CS3 with Windows 7.

Instead of just using a photo mask as-is, why not embellish it and take your layouts to the next level? It's not as hard as it sounds.

First, open a new document and place a photo mask from ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: Artful Photo Masks 2. If you used the File> Place command, be sure to rasterize the photo mask layer by going to Layer> Rasterize> Layer before proceeding to the next steps. To better see the brushwork that we are about to do, you may also want to add a background paper and/or color your photo mask.

On a separate layer above the photo mask, stamp snowflake brushes on the edges of the mask. Brushing the snowflakes on its own layer gives you the flexibility of moving, resizing, or recoloring them independently of the photo mask. For now, I brushed with a pale red color to see them easily against the white background paper.

In this example, I used a brush from Dynamic Brush Set: Snow Dust. This set has a selection of snowflakes, snow dust, and sparkles which are perfect for that wintry look. And since it is a dynamic brush, stamping them gives you a nice random scatter of snowflakes in varying sizes. If you don't like the scatter that the dynamic brush generates, just hit Undo, and brush again until you get a pattern that you like. Alternatively, you can also use the PNG version of your brush and resize and arrange each snowflake.

Let's distress the photo mask for added visual interest. On a separate layer again, stamp a grunge brush of your choice. I used a brush from Brush Set: Grungelle, stamped in a white foreground color.

Now, clip your photo onto the photo mask layer by pressing Ctrl+Alt+G (or Ctrl+G for Photoshop Elements). You can then erase parts of your snowflake and grunge layers that may happen to cover the face of your subject.

At this point you can recolor your snowflake layer and consider your embellished photo mask done, but if you want to amp your layout a notch more, let's continue!

Apply a layer mask to your photo to hide everything in it except your subject. Doing so will reveal the color of the photo mask underneath. You can now also recolor your snowflake layer, strategically place larger snowflakes around your photo mask and perhaps place your title as well.

I hope this tutorial has inspired you to look at photo masks in a different way.

Layout by Armi Custodio
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Commercial license versions of ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: Artful Photo Masks 2, Dynamic Brush Set: Snow Dust, ScrapSimple Paper Templates: Fragmented, Brush Set: Grungelle and ScrapSimple Tools - Lightroom Presets: Classic Black and White 10301 are also available.

Tutorial written by Armi Custodio

FREE STARTER KIT

Free eBook "starter kit" turns your dreams of digital scrapbooking into reality today!

This dynamite eBook is 65 pages - packed full of the information, ideas, and help people need when they are about to dive into this great hobby. It answers all of the important questions new digital scrapbookers have. They are all here for you - in one easy to use eBook!

Bonus! Download the free "Warning" Label, too. It was created for you by Valerie Randall as a little bit of extra fun!

Would you like a chance to try digital scrapbooking yourself?

Scrap Girls' Refresh Collection Biggie offers you free samples of some of our most popular product types. Try making a layout, your own paper with a ScrapSimple Paper Template, a fast layout with a ScrapSimple Digital Layout Template, or experiment with a brush.

We know you'll love digital scrapbooking as much as we do, and we have thousands of products to feed your new addiction!

Ready to Take Off? In-depth Tutorials Help You Become a Great Digital Scrapbooker

Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed!

NEWLY UPDATED! Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed for Photoshop
NEWLY UPDATED! Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed for Photoshop Elements
Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed for Paint Shop Pro X (XI)

Find out what tens of thousands of people have already learned: Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed is the fastest way to learn how to create digital scrapbooking layouts. And because this series covers so many topics with one purchase, it is a bargain!

In the tutorials, you'll see Ro working on her computer and hear her talking about why she is doing what she is doing. It's like having Ro come to your home and give you private scrapbooking lessons. You can create digital scrapbooking layouts today!

Download and CD versions available.

Photoshop and Photoshop Elements users receive:

30-33 movie tutorials
Companion eBook(s)
Collections
Other supplies

Paint Shop Pro users receive 31 movie tutorials.

MORE Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed!

MORE Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed! for Adobe Photoshop
MORE Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed! for Adobe Photoshop Elements

Now that you've learned the basics of digital scrapbooking with Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, you are ready to learn advanced skills for having even more fun while you create digital scrapbooking layouts!

Get a big boost learning how to use ScrapSimple products to make your own backgrounds, embellishments, and alphas with the MORE Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed for Photoshop Elements movie tutorial series. You'll learn so much that your digital scrapbooking layouts will never be the same!

eBooks

Scrap Girls offers a large catalog of eBooks covering topics that will expand your digital scrapbooking abilities to new heights. Here are just a few samples:

Scrapbook Quotes: The right quote for your scrapbook layouts

Looking for scrapbooking quotes or quotes to use for greeting cards? Here's your solution. This packed eBook contains hundreds of quotes, collected over many years by Rozanne Paxman specifically for use on scrapbooking layouts.

Inspirations eBook

What happens when you move digital scrapbooking beyond the basic page? What happens when you allow the layout to blur the edges between keepsake and art? Find your answers and take the next step in Inspirations: Celebrating Life's Joys With Digital Scrapbooking eBook. This eBook is meant to highlight the hopes and loves, the faith and joys, the simple days and big events that give our lives meaning and inspire us - and the pages we create about them. There are different layouts in a wide range of styles and techniques to be found in the book, and there are a multitude of ideas to be culled from the pages.

Scrap Girls Tutorials & Way Cool Stuff eBook Set - 2010 1st Quarter

Subscribers to the Scrap Girls Newsletter have one thing in common: they love to learn new techniques! Each issue shares ideas, tutorials, and new ways to use Scrap Girls quality digital scrapbooking products. Now you can have all those past tutorials and Way Cool Stuff articles of the 1st Quarter of 2010 in one convenient PDF format. It's easy to find those helpful hints with just the click of your mouse. You get two eBooks for the price of one!

Mastering Brushes for Photoshop

Whether you are just finding out about brushes, or have been using them for a while, this eBook will help you see and understand the creative power that brushes contain and give you new ideas for using them in your digital scrapbooking layouts.

See more titles

Layout by Valerie Randall
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Designer Freebie by Valerie Randall coordinates with her Dynamic Brush Set: Zippy,
part of this month's ScrapSimple Club offering!

Commercial license versions of Dynamic Brush Set: Zippy, ScrapSimple Paper Templates: Threads, Dynamic Brush Set: Basic Stitching 4901 Biggie, ScrapSimple Tools - Shapes: Hearts 2101 Biggie, ScrapSimple Tools - Styles: Jelly 2101 and ScrapSimple Tools - Styles: Zippy 2101 are also available.

* There is a "free download" button on the details page for each gift. You don't need to put them in your shopping cart unless you are shopping for other items. Also note that if you are slow reading your newsletter, you may find this freebie has already been retired, as the freebies are only available as gifts for about two newsletter cycles.

CROPS AND CHATS

ScrapSimple - Use It! Chat
Friday, January 7th - 8:00AM MT

Strengthening your abilities in scrapbooking is essential to becoming a better scrapbooker and learning to utilize the ScrapSimple product line available here at Scrap Girls will give you so many more unique and fun options with your layouts! Join Angela (angelaNussbaum) and Elisha (elibar) for this monthly chat on Friday, January 7th at 8am MT as we focus on using one category of these versatile products!

What's New in the Scrap Girls Boutique Chat
Friday, January 7th - 9:00AM MT

Join April (April Showers) at 9am MT on Friday mornings to chat about all the cool new things in the Scrap Girls Boutique. What are your favorite new items? Is your shopping basket full? What did you kaboodle? Have you already done layouts or other projects with your new goodies? Come tell the designers how much you love their work. You never know who will show up. There's a thread every Thursday and now there's a chat too!

Back-Up Party and Chat - Early Edition
Friday, January 7th - 2:00PM MT

Need a little extra motivation to back-up your layouts and stash? Join April (April Showers) in the chat room at 2pm MT for the Early Edition of the Back-up Party and Chat. The goal of these chats is to make sure our back-ups are current. Come chat while you back up your files. We'll also go over several different ways to safeguard your files and even give you some tips on organizing your supplies. Grab some chocolate and we'll see you in the chat room!

Recipe Swap Chat
Saturday, January 8th - 7:00PM MT

Join April (April Showers) and Lei (Bride) at 7pm MT in the chat room for our Monthly Recipe Swap Chat. Please check the message board the Thursday before the chat for this month's theme and the swap details!

Quote Challenge Crop
Monday, January 10th - 7:00PM MT

Come join Pat (PBarnes) for the Quote Challenge Crop at 7pm MT. Including a quote on your layout can be a touching and meaningful addition, especially if you use the quote to create your own word art. Here's how it will work. On Monday, Pat will post a thread on the Chat section of the board giving you the quote that you will use to make your own word art. It's not hard, and she will have a layout with a Word Art example in the gallery. Then we'll meet in the chat room to have fun, chat, and create our Word Art layout! Everyone can participate and create a layout, even if you can't make the chat. Hope to see you there!

Journaling Chat
Monday, January 10th - 6:00PM MT

Join Angela (angelaNussbaum) and Lei (Bride) for a Journaling Chat at 6pm MT on the second Monday of each month. Struggle to find the right words for your layouts? Are your layouts more decorative than descriptive of the moments you're trying to capture? Then you won't want to miss this chat - we'll have a special challenge to encourage you to journal on your pages more! See you there!

New Member Chat
Tuesday, January 11th - 7:00PM MT

Join Pat (PBarnes)and Angela (angelaNussbaum) for the New Member Chat at 7pm MT in the Live Chat room lobby. This is a great place to ask questions about getting around the Scrap Girls site or about digital scrapbooking in general - and a great place to make some new friends. All are welcome, new and long time members included. You do need to have Java installed on your computer to access the Live Chat.

East Coast High Noon Crop
Wednesday, January 12th - 10:00AM MT

Join April (April Showers) each Wednesday at 12 Noon Eastern Time for the East Coast High Noon Crop. All coasts and time zones are welcome! These crops are designed to allow you to work on your own photos and themes simply giving participants a one hour goal and a fun, new challenge each week. On January 12th, we'll do an embellishment challenge! Create a layout using lots of embellishments - flowers, tags, frames, whatever you'd like! Make use of those fancy, fun embellishments! You'll be amazed what you can get done in just one hour, but there is no High Noon Sheriff timing you!

Baby Theme Crop & Chat
Wednesday, January 12th - 7:00PM MT

Join Carla (CRS) and Thersea (tiza126) for a new twist on the Baby Theme Crop! We're starting the New Year with a new challenge. This month, we'll work with ABC's. Include something in your layout that starts with an A, a B and a C! We'll see you in the chat room on Wednesday, January 12th at 7pm MT!

JANUARY EVENTS

January Message Board Game: Jumpstart January!

Join us on the Message Board this month for "Jumpstart January!" This is a Message Board game and challenge to start your year with fun and focus on taking time to scrapbook regularly despite the little speedbumps of life. When the month is over, you'll have completed several layouts and been challenged and treated to some fun along the way.

A member of the Welcoming Committee will post a mini-challenge/task every day from January 1-30 in the Games folder on the Message Board. Check out the game thread titled "January Jumpstart 2011" for complete details and rules.

Those who complete all tasks and submit or post required participation by 11:59pm MT on January 31st will be entered in a drawing to win one of three $10 Gift Certificates to the Scrap Girls Boutique! Those who complete just the layouts will be entered in a separate drawing to win one of three $5 gift certificates. (Those who complete all tasks will have their name entered in both drawings!) Winners will be announced in the newsletter on Saturday, February 5th.

For complete details, visit the Monthly Message Board Games folder on the Scrap Girls Message Board.

Layout Contests:

January Monthly Layout Contest: Now that the snow is flying in some parts of the world, we are focusing on staying warm! For the January Layout Contest, we'd love to see what you do to stay warm! Do you have a favorite blanket or sweater? Or is there a family favorite comfort food you turn to in the winter? Let's scrap the photos and stories that help keep us warm! Post your layouts in the January Gallery before Midnight MT on January 31st. Be sure to list your credits in the description or under the EXIF Properties. If your layout is one of the two chosen, you will win a $10 gift certificate to the Scrap Girls Boutique!

Club Concepts Layout Contest: Post your new layout using the current club selection (either the Scrap Girls Club or the ScrapSimple Club) in our Scrap Girls Club Members Gallery or the ScrapSimple Club Members' Gallery. Be sure to list all of the Scrap Girls products you used. If your layout is chosen, it will be showcased as a Club Concepts layout winner, and you will win a $5 Gift Certificate to the Scrap Girls Boutique!

Check our message board calendar if you have any questions about what is happening at Scrap Girls. All event times are given in Mountain Time Zone unless otherwise noted. Need help converting time zones? Check out the World Clock - Time Zone Converter. (Use 'USA-Utah-Salt Lake City' as the location for the Mountain time zone.)

Haven't received your prize as a contest winner? Please send an email to [email protected] and we'll get it out to you right away!