Blog | Plant Your Story

{fresh seeds} 8 July — Grow With Love

July 8, 2010 By Mrs. Gleason

Hope everyone is having a beautiful (not too hot!) day today! I’m basking the joy of a quiet house and some scrapping time while Bugga and my husband are out enjoying a daddy-daughter date day. And as you know (thanks to my continuous flow of excited rambly-ness), I’m really so thrilled to share today’s {fresh seeds} with you!

Here are the highlights of my gooped up on the gop-ness:

Grow with Love is a collaboration project with my very dear friend and the amazingly talented Crystal Livesay of Designs by Crystal Livesay.

We were inspired by deep reflection of our own loves and relationships to create a series of templates and journaling prompts that we hope will inspire you to share your own stories and create beautiful pages from the heart that you will love. But more than that, we hope, through the process of scrapping and reflecting and writing, the project will have a more tangible effect in our real lives.

You can also use the prompts and templates, alone or together, to simply scrap pages as you’re inspired. They don’t have to be about love and relationships, they don’t have to follow the prompts. They can be anything you want them to be.

But if you’d like to take a step into a fresh adventure in your scrapping, we invite you to join us as we do the “grow with love” project together.

Beginning on Monday, Crystal and I will be doing these prompts with you and expounding on them, diving in a little deeper, giving a few more examples on our blogs. We hope that you will feel inspired and we hope that we will be doing “more” than scrapping together…we hope that we will be growing together. And we can’t wait!

And now for a closer peek and some beautiful inspiration…

And a preview of a few of the prompts, to give you an idea of what those look like. Some will be fun and light and others a bit more weighty. But we hope all of them will have you feeling energized and inspired as you scrap.

And here is a bit (ok a lot) of beautiful and creative inspiration from our teams. I feel so inspired by their pages and I hope you will be too!

Grow With Love is available for 20% off through Friday 9 July! We so so hope you like them and feel inspired!

If you are a newsletter subscriber, you will have received special coupon for a bit of extra Grow With Love savings. If you aren’t, feel free to sign up so you can get extra little gifties too in the future. If you missed out this week, take heart because I just may share a coupon or two on Twitter or Facebook. Woot!

As always I looove to see your stories and art too, so please feel free to share with me anytime. Just shoot me a mail or share them on my facebook page.

And if you feel inspired to take a deeper dive into the prompts and “grow with love” with me and Crystal, be sure to swing by here on Monday when we get started with the project.

Until then, I hope you have a beautiful weekend!!!

grow with love {a winner}

July 8, 2010 By Mrs. Gleason

Good morning!!

Thank you so much to all who submitted entries for the Grow With Love giveaway. I loved reading about all the things you are loving right now!! I had a date over some frosted mini-wheats with random.org this morning to help me determine the lucky winner.

And without further ado, I am so happy to say a big “Congratulations!” to….

Congrats LaRissa!! Please shoot me an email at zinniasandswallowtails AT gmail DOT com at your convenience so I can get you set up with Grow With Love. Woot!

Again thank you ALL so much! If you didn’t win this time, don’t lose heart..I’ll be having new release giveaways pretty regularly and Crystal is having another Grow With Love giveaway today on her blog. So feel free to scoot over there for another chance to win. And we both rather like to share coupons from time to time on Twitter and Facebook, so keep your eyes peeled there too for more chances to save.

I’ll be back in a bit with a closer look at Grow With Love and some fabulous inspiration. I hope you all have a beautiful day!!!

{growing soon} and a giveaway

July 6, 2010 By Mrs. Gleason

I have probably teased and hinted at what’s coming this week 7,839 times now and I don’t mean to pull an annoying-Ryan-Seacrest-on-American-Idol-prolonging-the-results kind of thing or drive you completely batty. It’s just that we are really excited about this upcoming release and hope you will be too!

Because it’s not “just” a collaboration with my dear friend Crystal Livesay and it’s not “just” templates…we hope it can be something fresh and different; we hope it can be so much more..a kind of fresh adventure for those who want to take it. Crystal and I have had it on our hearts and minds for some time now, to think of something that not only helps us to create beautiful pages from the heart but that reach out beyond the page to have a tangible touch on our real lives too.

And so emerged Grow With Love, a series of 20 journaling prompts that we hope will encourage you to step out of your comfort zone a little bit, reflect on your relationships and loves, and love a little more deeply and truly. This is not only a scrap project. This is about changing yourself and your relationships for the better. Along with the prompts, we have set up 20 templates that you can use to document this process as we “grow with love” together. You can also use the prompts and templates, alone or together, to simply scrap pages as you’re inspired. But if you’d like to take a step into a fresh adventure in your scrapping, we invite you to join us as we do the “grow with love” project together. We will be blogging the 20 day process, beginning next week.

Here’s a peek at the preview and a taste of what Grow with Love is all about…

giveaway Grow With Love collection

No matter how you’d like to use them, I’m giving away the entire collection before it’s released. Simply leave a comment below and tell me about something you love right now before Thursday 8 July at 10am (CST). You can increase your chances at winning by posting about the giveaway on Twitter and Facebook. Be sure to come back here with a link in the comments. Good Luck!!

{free seeds} Fresh Cut: Fourth

July 1, 2010 By Mrs. Gleason

So it’s officially July. I can’t believe it’s already July! Can you believe it’s July? Yeah, it’s July. I hope that wherever this first day of July finds you, you are happy and healthy and having fun!

It’s a holiday weekend for many of us as our Canadian scrapper friends celebrate Canada Day today, and as we in the US celebrate Independence Day on the 4th of July! The fourth has always been one of my most favorite holidays and since falling in love with my husband (who is coming home just in time to celebrate with us — yay!!), it’s struck an even deeper chord upon the patriotic gong in my heart.

And so in honor of this festive and fun holiday I have created this fun little freebie for you! I so hope you like it!!

Fresh Cut: Fourth is a fun set of templates designed with the 4th of July in mind and in the spirit of my “fresh cut” series of templates: with restraint and cleaner page design as a compass, but which can be modified to suit whatever your scrapping style or needs. You can use them for your own Independence Day centered pages, or for any general purpose.

Here’s a peek a some inspiration from my girls. I really love how they showed of the versatility of these simple templates…they can be used for a fantastic 4th of July page or they can so beautifully be used for any story you’re inspired to capture.

You can download Fresh Cut: Fourth for free {HERE}.

I hope you do enjoy it! And to those who celebrate, I wish you a very Happy (and safe!) 4th of July!!

{zinnia and swallowtail CT girls}

May 29, 2010 By Mrs. Gleason

I feel all a bubbling with emotions…overwhelmed by all the support and all those who played along with my NSD freebie for a chance at a summer guest CT spot. SO grateful and humbled that such talented scrappers would want to work with me and the girls. SO excited and energized about those who will be joining us.

And also a little heavy-hearted for those who I can’t say “yes” to this time. As a scrapper-at-heart I know how hard it can be to put yourself out there and how deflating it can be to hear “not this time”. And now, as someone having to say it and not hear it, I just want everyone to know that hearing a “not this time” never, ever means that your pages aren’t amazing or important. Because they are. Sincerely, every page and every gallery I looked at was special and inspiring to me in some way. The talent in this digi scrapping community is mind boggling. So thank you for putting yourself out there. And no matter what “just keep swimming” and just keep scrapping.

ANYhoo…before I get too rambly I wanted to say again a HUGE thank you to everyone who played along!! I loooved seeing all the fabulous plays with the template! And I have to tell you there was no way I could keep it to just “3”..goodness if I could have taken everyone on I would have. Seriously. SO I picked a few more than that. And also a few for an autumn term too (September, October, and November). Woot!

I’d like to say a HUGE congratulations and welcome to the summer guest CT zinnia girls!!!

And the autumn guest CT swallowtail girls!!

YAY!!!! Thanks again to EVERYONE! Since this was centered around the blog and not email, I had to do things a little differently than I might otherwise, but hopefully everyone who played along should have received a message from me (at the location of the gallery they linked your page to me) and everyone should have received a little goodie too too. If you have not received a message and goodie please email me. Thank you.

I hope you all have a beautiful weekend! Keep your eyes peeled here for a special freebie later in the holiday weekend.

{free seeds and a contest} Happy iNSD!!!

May 1, 2010 By Mrs. Gleason

It’s an exciting day for us scrapbookers…everywhere you look there are sales and games and giveaways and challenges and chats and fun galore! And in honor of my debut, I wanted to get in on the fun and share with you a little freebie and a fun little scrapping challenge/contest (with a “she might have gone out of her gourd” kind of prize). This freebie complements an inspired-by-summer template series I am growing now (and the Summer Garden add-on which is available in the grab bag collab).

I so hope you like it!!

You can download by clicking the image or by following the link below.

And now for the fun challenge/contest part:

I would love to see how you make this template blossom for you (yes I *am* that cheesy)! I hope you have fun playing with it! Let your creativity guide you and make it your own to suit your scrapping style and the story you want to tell. Upload your page to your favorite gallery(ies). Then come back here to share a link to your page made with this freebie and you will be eligible to win BIG.

Everyone who scraps and shares will get an extra little something from me for playing along and ** two lucky scrappers will receive a summer guest spot on my creative team where you will be able to play with my products and have fun with us in The Garden for the entire months of June and July!! **

You have you have until 15 May to play along. Lots of luck and Happy Scrapping!!

Download Summer Garden Freebie HERE ♥

Also be sure to visit check out the happenings on the other After Five mixologists blogs (you can find them in the sidebar) for more fun and freebies!