Blog

{grow with love} day one

By

Welcome to the Grow With Love project!  Crystal and I are thrilled to dive into this adventure with you!  We’ve I’ve been jibbering jabbering excitedly about it for a few days now (Crystal has been much more calm and restrained and completely less goofy). But we’re both looking forward to challenging ourselves, getting reflective and having fun as we “grow with love” together.  Most of all we hope that, at the end of the project you will have a series of heartfelt pages you’re proud of and that this process reaches out beyond the pages a bit and into your lives in a real way.   We can’t wait to get started!

Whether you’ll be using the templates (you can snag them here and here) or not, we hope that you’ll be inspired to share your heart and stories and delve in to new creative territory along side us!

We will be posting each weekday for four weeks –covering all 20 prompts in our Grow with Love project.

Week One: Monday 12 July – Friday 16 July

Week Two: Monday 19 July – Friday 23 July

Week Three: Monday 26 July – Friday 30 July

Week Four: Monday 3 August – Friday 6 August

Each day we will post a prompt and delve into it a bit more, sharing our own inspirations and pages and hopefully giving you a bit of a creative push for your own pages.  You can follow along at your own pace, or if you’d like to participate for the prizes, post your pages by the project deadline, Friday 13 August, 2010, which is one full week after the project closes.

Either way, we encourage you to share your pages with us and hope you’ll have fun and feel inspired and challenged.

The prizes include one 20 page photo book for one lucky participant (who uses both the templates and the prompts) and gift certificates to zinnias and swallowtails and Designs by Crystal Livesay!!

So let’s dive into Day One, shall we?

Today’s prompt is:

When you’re thinking of your “one word” you want to really delve to the core of how you view your relationship now and your hopes for the future of your marriage.  Think of it as a kind of compass directing your steps each day, each week, each month, each year.  It can be a word that is a foundation you and your spouse hold together or one you hope to focus on for yourself.

This kind of foundation and compass is something that Crystal and I have discussed quite a lot.  And since we often share similar thoughts and beliefs it was no surprise that we were both drawn to the same “one word”.  Here is Crystal’s beautiful page:

And here is my page:

As you can see, we were both drawn to create photoless pages for this prompt, but you can easily incorporate any photo(s) that inspire you.

The most important thing as you select your word, which you can do on your own, or with your spouse, is to really reflect.  This will be a word that can be really powerful for you in your relationships.

For me, I felt pulled to “respect” as a word I hope to personally guide my own steps in my marriage.  One that is rooted in my faith and that symbolizes a foundation in faith for me and my husband.  It is meant to be a daily reminder to myself of what I hope to give my husband in my actions and words and thoughts.

We can’t wait to see what words you feel drawn to.  And we look forward to each new day!!

Remember to be eligible for the prizes, please be sure to share your own pages in the comments section of each day at any time before Friday 13 August, 2010. For example, link us to your Day One page in the comments of this Day One post.  Day Two, for Day Two, etc.  You can use both our templates and prompts, or just the prompts, or neither and just follow along in the spirit of the project (and we hope you do!) but in order to be eligible for the shutterfly album we ask that you use both the templates and prompts.  Everyone is eligible for the gift certificates.  Woot!

update: through the course of the project we realized that asking participants (who were joining along with the hope of winning the prizes) to use only our templates was a little limiting.  Creativity doesn’t always work that way and with such a personal process and personal prompts we really just want to encourage everyone to express and explore themselves in whatever way best suits them and their own story.  SOOOO…we made a change during the process to say: that anyone playing along for the prizes would be eligible..no matter if they used the templates or not.  We love to see pages with our templates, but the most important thing to us is the journey and the story.  Thanks for bearing with us..this is our first time doing something so huge and it’s a bit of a learning process for us too too.

We can’t wait to see your pages and we are looking forward to “growing with love” with you!  Crystal will be hosting Day Two tomorrow on her blog so be sure to hop on over there for a deeper look at prompt two.

Happy Scrapping and Happy Growing!

ooh p.s.  if you missed out on snagging the templates during Happy Hour at After Five Design this weekend or because of the downtime at Oscraps, Crystal has extended her sale and you can snag the templates at her shop for 20% today and tomorrow.

{fresh seeds} 8 July — Grow With Love

By

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…

Sgleasonclivesay_growwithlove_preview

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.

Prompt-preview
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!

Inspirationgwl1

Inspirationgwl2

Inspirationgwl3

Inspirationgwl4

Inspirationgwl5

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}

By

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….

 

Blogwinner

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

By

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…

Sgleasonclivesay_growwithlove_preview

Growwithlovewordcloud

 


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

By

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.

Inspirationfourth

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}

By

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!!!

Guest-CT-summer

And the autumn guest CT swallowtail girls!!

Guest-CT-autumn

 

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.

Sig

1 … 31 32 33 34