Design By Dani

Teacher Thank You

knlchevys — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:54:27 +0000

For those that know me, I’m am cheesy gift giver!! I feel that if you take a little time to add a little something extra, it makes a difference in the long run. Recently my mind has been racing, what can I give my kids teachers? I have a whole list that I love but saw this new idea this year!! A calculator with a cute saying.

First I made the tag for the back and had it printed. Then I gathered the supplies, a calculator, modge podge, and a brush. Next cut the tag to fit the back of the calculator. This one says “According to my calculations, you’re the best.” Place tag. You can coat it with another layer of Modge Podge or not. Then to finish it off, you have to bag it cute!!!

We Have A Birthday Boy In The House!

Lena — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:11:56 +0000

Hi everyone! Lena here, to talk about birthdays. I was chatting with my sister the other day about my intense love for birthday kits, and there’s a reason for it. They always come in handy! I have 3 kids, which means I’m scrapping 3 birthdays a year, minimum. (And that’s if I don’t scrap any neices, nephews, or my husband’s big day!)

My son Parker will be 4 years old on Friday and this weekend we are having a pirate-themed party for him. I decided to go through his photos and this is what I stumbled across. What is it about birthdays that makes us so nostalgic?

I’m nostalgic, and I’m sad that my littlest is growing up, but I’m excited to scrap his party this weekend. That got me to thinking about birthday kits, and in my opinion, Dani makes the BEST ones! Here are a few pages I found in the galleries using Hootenanny and Life Of The Party

I found this adorable page by SweetMelissa using Life Of The Party.

And I found this adorable page by nikkiARNGwife using Hootenanny!

Birthday scrapping can be some of the most emotional and the most rewarding. With these great kits, I’m sure you’ll make some great pages of your wee one! Now, I need to get back to the planning…our party is T minus 4 days, and counting!

Holiday Help – Alot Like Christmas

eranslow — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:23:15 +0000

Happy Monday Everyone! Erin here today with a new feature on the blog called Holiday Help. Our goal with this feature is to give you an incentive to scrap your pile of birthday, Christmas, Hallowee, Easter, etc. pictures that we accumulate every year. For this month I thought we would scrap some holiday photos. So I chose Alot Like Christmas!

Here are some beautiful examples from the creative team!

From Heather:

From me:

From Aly:

From Sara:

From Kendall:

From Becca:

I hope seeing these Christmas photos used with Alot like Christmas has motivated you to scrap your own Christmas photos. If you do – please link us up in the comments so we can see your beautiful creations!

Using Pinterest For Inspiration & a Freebie

heathergw — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:41:31 +0000

Hiya scrappers, Heather here and I’m still recovering from (i)NSD… are you too recovering from all the partying and challenges? I know after all the prepping the week before and then participating all weekend, I have totally lost my mojo. I have all these new goodies to play with but I’m not sure what to do with them. That’s when I head over to Pinterest and start browsing scrapbook pages that have been pinned by myself and by my friends. I find that it’s where I most like to go to just get my juices flowing and many times I’ll find a layout that I really like and I’ll start doing a lift. Usually my page ends up looking really different than the layout I was lifting because once I get going, my mojo tends to come back and then I’m on a roll. Here’s an example: I really liked this layout I had pinned, to my scrapping inspiration board… I really LOVED the banner and pennant pieces in it. It reminded me of the individual 4″ wide hybrid templates in Dani’s Scrapper’s Toolbox: For The Love Of Banners… which you can totally use for your layouts and not just for hybrid. I opened up Photoshop and just started with the one banner and my picture and started lifting this layout. I just loved Dani’s papers so much that I just couldn’t stop and as you can see in my final layout that while I was inspired by this layout, I made it my own and the end doesn’t really look anything like the layout I was inspired by…

and here’s the final layout using Dani’s Easter Best Complete Kit. As you can see I got started and then couldn’t stop adding more of Dani’s papers and elements and totally made it my own.

Did you know that Design by Dani has Pinterest boards? Are you following them? You can find them HERE! If so, you might find some inspiration from some of these boards, the creative team has been adding their layouts and hybrid projects to them. Do you have your own scrapping inspiration board? If so, I’d love to follow it. Link me up in the comments, I look forward to finding some more scrapping inspiration on Pinterest.

Thanks for stopping by and we hope you get spoiled this weekend if you are celebrating Mother’s Day. I have my fingers crossed for breakfast in bed this year and I’m always surprised with some handmade goodies. We have our own little gift for you – some word art also using Dani’s pretty florals from her Easter Best kit (Mother & Baby version of Mother & Child card also included) . Click here to download

Get To Know The Guest CT Members!

kendallt — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:58:43 +0000

This month, Dani welcomed four fabulous guest CT members, and today, we’re going to get to know two of them a bit better! First up is the uber-talented Crystal Livesay aka crystalbella77.

Tell us a little about yourself.
Hello all! My name is Crystal and I am a SAHM/WAHM mommy of three! I married my HS sweetheart, Garret, nearly 10 years ago and we have been blessed with 3 awesome kiddos. We have Gabriel who is 8, Ezra who is 6, and our baby girl Stella is 4 in April. We have added 2 cats and a dog in the last year and I quickly found that I am not a pet person as much as I want to be! The kids love them though and that’s what matters! We live in rural IN and my heart lives at the beach where one day I so hope we can be for good. Snow and ice and I are not friends!! The one good thing about here is that we are so close to almost all of our family which is so special for all of and for the kids especially.

How long have you been scrapping, and how did you you started?
I have been scrapbooking for 4.5 years or so. I got started when I was pregnant with Stella. I had a friend on my Mommy boards who did it and she told me I should give it a go and walked me through the steps and I have been an addict ever since!

What is your favorite scrapbooking trick or technique?
Don’t over think the memory keeping! Just do it! It’s a personal process and no one is there to judge, so nothing has to be perfect.

What is your favorite Dani product?
Soooo hard! I so love everything Dani makes!! I have a huge soft spot for owls though and her newer bday kit Hootenanny is too cute and perfect for both my boys and my girlie!

What is your favorite layout with Dani’s products?
It’s an oldie, but I still love it!!

Next up is the extraordinary Shannon Grover aka ShannonG.

Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Shannon Grover, I live in midwestern Illinois. I have a wonderful husband, Scott and three wonderfully imperfect sons. Zachary is 19, Connor is 18 and Landen is 7. I work in Special Education.

How long have you been scrapping, and how did you you started?
I started scrapping in April/May of 2007. I actually started as a tagger and made tags for my mommy board and then belonged to a few tagger groups on MSN forums…we started using scrapping supplies in our tags and I got hooked on the idea of actually scrapping pages using my family pictures.

What is your favorite scrapbooking trick or technique?
I really don’t have a trick or technique that I can think of right off the top of my head. I do however LOVE templates and use them whenever I can!

What is your favorite Dani product?
Man that is a hard question, Dani designs so well for boys and with a house full of boys it’s easy to see why I have been scrapping with her stuff since I started scrapping. My favorite recent product is Boy Crazy.

What is your favorite layout with Dani’s products?

Thanks so much, ladies, for sharing a part of yourselves with us! Be sure to visit these two amazing scrappers (layouts are linked) and leave them some love.

Congrats to Our iNSD Winners!!

dmogstad — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:51:27 +0000

I hope you guys all had a great iNSD and hopefully got some shopping and a little scrapbooking done too! I know we had a great time posting all these giveaways and challenges for you! I hope you had just as much fun commenting and participating in them! Now without further ado…. lets get to announcing the winners!

((DRUM ROLL PLEASE!))

Grand Prize Winner of $25 GC:

“On the Sunny Side” Giveaway Winner:

Our Two Lucky Smilebox.com Giveaway Winners:

Heather’s Store Preview Scraplift Challenge Winner:

iNSD Word Jumble Contest Winner:

Aly’s Recipe Challenge Winner:

Erin’s Template Challenge Winner:

Congrats to all our winners!! I will be in contact with you shortly for your prizes! Thank you everyone who participated and played along with us for iNSD!! Have a great day everyone!

iNSD Template Challenge

eranslow — Sun, 06 May 2012 04:38:07 +0000

Hi there everyone! I hope you are all enjoying a great weekend of shopping and scrapping! I’m here today to bring you one more chance to win a GC to Dani’s store. And it’s a easy one – a template challenge! Here are the details:

1. Download the template.

2. Decorate the template with Dani’s products.

3. Upload your layout to any open gallery of your choice

4. Come back here and post a link to your layout that you uploaded to the gallery of your choice

5. You have until Monday 5/7 at 11:59 pm CST to post your link, and I will use Random.org to pick a winner of a $10 GC to Dani’s store!

Here’s the template:

download here

Here’s a layout from me using the template (I flipped it). I used School Spirit and School Spirit: Add A Grad Mini Kit for my page.

I can’t wait to see the layouts you create! Happy scrapping and happy iNSD!!

iNSD Gift For You!

becca1976 — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:05:22 +0000

Happy iNSD Everyone!

If you are anything like me, your eyes might already be tired from sitting in front of the computer screen, scouring through stores and pinterest boards, posting all the fun stuff you hope to win! Well, I have a little something for you that doesn’t require anything but the click of a button. It is just a free gift to celebrate National Scrapbooking Day!

This month, Design by Dani’s featured kit is Gnome Sweet Gnome.

Be sure to snag it for the ridiculously low price of $1.99!

I’ve also made a set of clusters using this fabulous kit as my gift to you!

Just click the image to download!

If you haven’t seen all the other fun contests on Design by Dani’s blog, be sure to check out all the previous posts for a chance to win some fabulous gifts during the iNSD festivities!

DiNS Umblej Nuf! (iNSD Jumble Fun!)

bellbird — Sat, 05 May 2012 10:08:10 +0000

I’m a bit of a word game lover. I love a good game of Scrabble or Boggle and the page of the newspaper with crosswords and puzzles and such – although hubby usually gets to it first in our house…

Anyway, here’s another chance for you to win a gift certificate to the Design by Dani store without even opening Photoshop!

All ten jumbles are titles of products currently available in the Design by Dani store so browse through the categories and I’m sure you’ll be fine. You have until Sunday 6 May 11:59pm (New York time – which is Monday 7 May 1:59pm in NSW, Australia where I am) to email your answers to designbydanictblog at gmail.com - please use iNSD Jumble in your subject line to make sure I see it. Correct responses will go into the random draw and the winner announced here next week.

Here are your words (upper and lower case are not important here):

1. Lal Nearicam Mmsure

2. Storymtions

3. Skabet Lluf fo Nuf

4. Baybaskce

5. Napit dan Tcfar Laphetab

6. Punkimp Dipsce Eattl

7. Anyhootenn

8. Pans Phapy

9. Kate Em Yaaw

10. Dayplate

When You’re Smiling…

dmogstad — Sat, 05 May 2012 06:48:34 +0000

I hope everyone is having a great iNSD weekend! I am very excited to bring you another great giveaway, this time from www.Smilebox.com! Have you heard of Smilebox? They offer gorgeous online scrapbooks, slideshows, greetings and more, best of all its completely FREE to create, send and share your creations with your loved ones! What grandparent wouldn’t love a greeting like this? What a fun way to share photos on your blog, facebook, and they even have an i-phone app now for sharing photos on the go!

It even gets better! For just $39.99 a year you can join Club Smilebox and get unlimited access to a catalog of thousands of premium designs you can print and share! I love that they have announcements, invitations and photo collages. Its such a quick and easy way to add a personal touch! With a Club Smilebox subscription you can download and print full resolution 8×8 scrapbooks at home or at your favorite printer! Best of all Smilebox offers a free 14-day trial so you can see first hand what Club Smilebox has to offer!

I have had the pleasure of working with Smilebox for the past several years and I just love seeing the way their fun and interactive scrapbooks and slideshows bring my designs to life! There is a large catalog of your favorite Design by Dani designs just waiting for you! Just look at this adorable slideshow featuring my “Basket Full of Fun” kit!

This free digital slideshow created with Smilebox

As an iNSD special, Smilebox is offering a limited time FREE PREMIUM SCRAPBOOK! Check it out!

Now here is your chance to WIN!

The amazing people at Smilebox have given me two CLUB SMILEBOX SUBSCRIPTIONS to give away! This means you will get an entire year of creating, sharing, and printing beautiful greetings, scrapbooks and more!

To enter go checkout Smilebox.com and leave a comment here! If you create a Smilebox be sure to share it with us! Two lucky random commenters will be chosen to WIN! Good Luck everyone!