My Beautiful Nieces.

Here's a scrapbook page I made for my sweet niece. I took these photos on her birthday last year and I'm just getting around to scrapping them. I used a new set of elements by Vicki that go along with her Calendar Collection. These are the February Elements along with the Calendar Cardstocks and the Calendar Collection Alphas. It's a cool kit and by the end of the year it will be fun to collect all the parts :)

I also used the cardstocks and the Alphas to make cards for Brook and Briana's Birthdays. They fold so the top will be the back of the card and the bottom will be the front. I took their photos at Christmas.

Scrapbook Pages

I made a scrapbook page and a few cards over my winter break as well as shooting two weddings a family portrait, a newborn session, a hockey game and two football games. Ok it was a break from school but I was still busy. I love busy. Here is my page and the cards.

This is a page from the newest Scrap That Idea Collab Kit called Reflection. I took photos of the images in my in-laws wedding album using the macro setting and natural light since I didn't take a scanner with me to visit them and made a page. I like scrapping my families old photos these days, it makes me happy.

Then my sister in-law had a birthday so I took a photo of her from our Festivis Party and made her a card using another Scrap That Idea Collab Kit called Life of the Party. It's a really cute kit with bright colors just perfect for a card. Happy Birthday Holly!

My nephew Josh also had a birthday over the break so I made a card for him using Vicki's teenager dot com kit. I made a page with this kit earlier in December but I pulled it out again to make this card. Love you Josh!

Holiday Card Templates

It's the time of year again to make holiday cards. Red River Paper has contracted me again to make some fun templates for you to use to easily make your own custom Christmas Cards. I've created three designs for 2010 and I love them all. They are bright fun colors and easy to slip you own photos into an customize the text. If you've always wanted to make you own holiday cards and have them look professional...here's an easy way to do it. Just go to Red River Paper's site buy a template and some of their amazing cardstock which is pre-scored so it folds nice and neat, pop your photos into the template in photoshop, print and voila! Custom Holiday Cards. Here are the designs I created with some photos from my recent sessions in them. It took me longer to pick out which photos I wanted to put on teh cards than it did to actually create them from the template.

Holiday Blue with photos of Isla. She'll be about 8 weeks old on Christmas, a perfect Holiday gift. If she were mine. I would customize this card with her date of birth and weight in the empty white square and make it a combination birth announcement/holiday card. It's a portrait orientation card that when folded her feet would be on the back and the family photo would be on the front. Too Cute!

Holiday Red with photos of Roman, Lydia and Brian that I shot this evening. Roman is a cutie and I love photographing him. Lydia is amazing and already had her house totally decorated with real presents under the tree. I am such a slacker. All I've done it take other people's holiday photos and create three card designs ;) This one is a landscape oriented card and when you make it you have to put the photos on the back in upside down but I've taken it apart here and put the font on the top for you and the back on the bottom. I don;t want you to have to turn your computer upside down to see the back. lol.

Holiday Green with a photo of my sweet nieces I took on Thanksgiving. This is also a portrait orientation card so the photo will be on the front and the date will be on the back when it's folded.

Try them out. Each design comes in four different sizes so you can print different sized cards for everyone on your list.

Invitations

Are you looking for custom invitations for a party? I can do that :) I've actually been designing card templates for Red River Paper for a while and I also create completely custom cards for my clients all the time. Last week I photographed the lovely Miss Lauren at one-year-old and created a few custom birthday party invitations. I made two different versions and I'd love to know which one you like so at the top of my profile is a vote box. Cast your ballots!

Back of the orange and blue card

Inside of the orange and blue card

Now for the totally girly pastel card

Front of the pink card

Back of the pink card

Inside of the pink card

Don't forget to vote :)

Website Update

I spent the afternoon going through all of the family portraits and newborn photos I took the last three months and I updated all my slideshows on the website :)

If you are interested you can follow the links and see some beautiful babies, kids and families. If I took your family's photo last year you might just be in the shows!

See the new babies show

View the cute kids

Look at all the wonderful families

Did you just get engaged?

Need a baby announcement or save the date? Check out the customized cards

If you need a photographer contact me...personalized slideshows like these included with every session so you can easily share your photos with your family and friends.

Valentine's Cards

I've been doing a little graphic design work lately and my first set of cards is in the store. So excited! I was contact by Red River Paper to create some custom photoshop and photoshop elements templates for their customers who by their amazing inkjet greeting card paper.

If you print at home and you haven't tried Red River paper yet...I use it at school and it's great! The 12x12 scrapbook paper is perfect for the custom scrapbook pages I make and the card paper is scored in the center to fold smoothly.

Here are a few of the templates I created and you can see the rest in the gallery at redriverpaper.com. All the templates are created with a front and a back so they fold down the middle. They might look strange here but you have to imagine them folded like a card. If you are used to using photoshop you can see how they will work. You open the template and then copy and paste your photo into the template. Drag your photo layer over the grey rectangle "photo" layer in the Layers Panel and then create a clipping mask and your photo magically takes the shape of the photo box in the template. You might have to resize it using the transform command after that but it is so easy to create your own personal cards using the templates. With the cost of greeting cards at the store, I really like making my own cards. These cards are a great deal. When you buy a card design you get 4 different card sizes in your download. If you like them you should but some and make your own cards. Very easy and a nice personal gift for your loved ones.

Candy Hearts - The card design from the Conversation Hearts photo shoot a few weeks ago. Seriously, I had to pick through the bag of hearts to find the few that had readable words on them. You would be shocked at how few of the hearts even had words on them.

Brown Polka Dots - I think this was my third design and I wanted to make one that wasn;t completely typical "Valentine" red and pink. Pink and brown is really trendy right now and I think this could be used not just for Valentine's day but for any kind of I Love You or Thinking of You or Anniversary kind of card.

Red Love - This was the second card I designed and I really like it. OK..I love it.

Candy Hearts

I am working on some cards designs for Red River Paper for Valentine's Day and I purchased a bag of conversation hearts to photograph for an idea I have. So...those candy hearts are not exactly as I remember them as a kid. First of all, the little sayings aren't on every heart, and most of the hearts that have writing on them can barely be read. So disappointing. On the bright side there were some fun new sayings on the hearts like "Text Me" and "UR Hot" so that made me laugh. Here are a few of my candy hearts photos.

Hugs and Kisses!

Tweet me!

Seriously...if you want to follow me on twitter I am ellmanphoto.

I may not end up using the candy hearts in my card designs after all but I still like the photos, and if you are interested in making your own Valentine's Day cards the templates should be posted on the Red River site sometime next week.

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas Eve so I thought I would finally post this year's Christmas Card. It was a challenge to get this photo of Annie. Mom was here and she helped out by holding the treats but Annie did not like sitting in front of the light on that fabric. Something about the sound it made when she walked on it totally put her off :) But I was persistent and she finally cooperated. I think I spent an hour trying to get her to sit still and look just the right way.

Cute, don't you think? I found the big bling "E" in the stocking section at Target. It's supposed to be a stocking monogram but I just used it to pin two ends of red ribbon together as a holiday collar. The background is just a photo of the fabric I used for the background of the photo and the letters and string are from my scrapbooking stash. Happy Holidays!

Holiday Cards

I've been busy making lots of holiday cards. Here are a few of my latest creations.

This is one of the two cards I created for Miss Stacy. Now, I'm not posting the one she likes the best because I don't want to ruin the surprise for all her friends and family who will be getting a card in the mail...but I will say both cards were really cute.This one's very traditional colors and the other one has more sparkle :) I'll post it after the holidays for you.

This one was from a photo given to me and they wanted a custom card...yes I can do that for you. I decided it would be nice to make the background match the ribbon in the photo.

There's still time to get holiday cards created. If you order from my store they are delivered in 3 to 5 days. Contact me for more information.

Holiday Cards

Last weekend I photographed my friend Jessica's family for their Christmas card. Now if you were at the Gardens you would remember us...we had the two crying children but that's OK we got some good photos anyway and I made the cutest card based on the song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

But first, the photos...

I love this part of the park. The natural frame and the little hill make for a pretty picture.

This is Sam and his dad. Aren't they fun!

This is Landon. He has some fabulous eyes.

What a beautiful family.

This is a sweet moment.

And now for the card. Jess loves the photos of her sons looking over their shoulder and running and crying with the pop tart, so I turned them into a cute little card. Kids are kids and you have to laugh at life sometimes, right?

Sometimes things don't work out perfectly at a photo shoot but I had enough photos to work with and I was able to make two completely different cards. The second one is a nice combo of two separate photos of the boys that I think turned out pretty nice. They are such serious little guys!

There's still time to get your photos taken and made into cards for Christmas. Contact me to set up a session.

The Stuard Family

Saturday was a really busy day and I am working backwards getting my fun photos from the day posted. My second family of the day was the Stuard's we've take photos together before so I wanted to do something different for them. Melissa's kids and their cousin Dakota are great and so very cooperative so we got some cute stuff. I really love these photos in black and white with the little pop of red.

Dakota is such a fun kid.

Sweet too.

We took some traditional photos outside in the trees first, but then we pulled out the backdrop, the santa hats and the letters and had some fun. This photo puts me in the Christmas spirit.

Here's a sample card I created from the photos we took. Fun, don't you think?

I know you want some customized cards. Contact me for details!

Holiday Cards

Are you tired of the same holiday card templates that you find at photo retailers? Do you hate that you choose a template pop your photos in it, then you find out that your friends chose the same one? It's like wearing the same dress to the big holiday party. Well I have a solution for you. Order customized holiday card from me! I can make cards from photos I take or from photos you take. Here are a few of the sample designs I've made this year.

You can buy 5x7 folded cards and envelopes or 4x8 flat cards with envelopes in my store. If you want a custom designed holiday card, contact me, there's still time to get photos taken and cards designed.

Holiday Cards

Are you tired of the pre-made templates that you find at most photo printed for your holiday cards? I can never find one that's perfect for me so I crete my own cards. Do you want a customized holiday card? Last night I photographed the Brown family and this morning I created a Christmas Card they can get printed if they want.

If you want me to create a card from your photos contact me.

Arlington Scrapbook Show

I've blogged about Red River Paper before but I thought I'd talk about them again because I just saw their booth at the Scrapbook Show at the Arlington Convention Center. Drew Hendrix had contacted me about printing some of my pages on his paper to display in the Red River booth at the show and of course I'm always up for seeing my work displayed so I sent him some files and I went out to the show this afternoon and...WOW! It was so cool to see my scrapbook pages printed on his fantastic paper. The Red River Ultra Pro Satin and Premium Matte paper made my pages look fabulous. If you print any of your own photos on an inkjet printer at home you should check out Red River paper the quality is fantastic and the price is amazing.

They also sell paper to make your own greeting cards, it is precut for popular card sizes and is pre-scored so that when you fold it, the fold is perfectly straight and in the exact middle of the card. It costs less than $1 in paper, ink and envelope to make your own customized greeting cards. That's pretty amazing. I came home and I was looking for some cards I had created to print on the card paper and I found my Christmas card from last year. I thought I would share it with you. I really love it. Here's what I did to make the card. First I went to Michael's looking for an ornament to hang on my tree to put a picture into and photograph but

 that's now what I ended up doing. I bought the 2008 frame ornament but it was square and did not fit the picture I wanted to use on my card. That's not going to stop me! I scanned the frame on my flatbed scanner, cut it in half and added a few inches to the sides to make it a rectangle. Then I had to place my photo in the frame and add some text and a little sparkle on the 2008. I think it turned out well. I like making cards they are like mini scrapbook pages.

Speaking of scrapbook pages, after I made the card I wanted to use the frame again so I created the first page of my 2008 scrapbook with it. The pages are like little puzzles and I have so much fun figuring out where to put all my photos and embellishments sometimes I move things

 around quite a bit before I come up with the finished page. That's one of the reason's I like digital scrapbooking. I can change it as many times as I want and nothing gets torn or messed up. In traditional scrapbooking once you glue it down or cut your photo or your paper...it's done there's no going back. In digital I can undo as much as I like.

Then other thing I like about digital scrapbooking is the cost. If I use Drew's Red River Paper to print my pages it costs me about $1.50. The page about cost me a grand total of $1.50. Yes I did buy a bow for $.99 and the frame for $3.99 but those weren't really bought for the page they were bought for the card :) Even if I say I bought them for the page my total cost is $7.50 and I have an ornament to hang on my Christmas tree next year.

If I were to create this page the traditional scrapbook way I would have to start with a piece of white card stock which would run me about $1, then I would need shiny red card stock to create my frame: another $1 or so, a piece of red satin ribbon about a buck, a package of rhinestones to make the 2008 would probably run me about $5, and a piece of silver paper to put behind the 2008 and red frame to make it look like the real frame is another buck. You are up to $8 already and you haven't printed your photos yet. This page was a 12x12 so the big picture would have to be printed on 8x10 paper and the smaller photo on 4x6 paper. If you print them at a store you are looking at about $10 or so. Then you need the fancy archival pen to write the words, oops, two of them because most of the words are grey but a few are red, and you will need the glue or other adhesive to attach all the parts my guess would be about $10 more. So...grand total $28. It's quite a difference. As much as I scrapbook, digital make cents (pun intended) for me!

Birth Announcements

Do you remember the photos I took about 6 weeks ago for my friend who had a baby? Well I've been playing around with designing an announcement from the photos. I thought I would share it with you because I'm proud of it and I'd like to design more cards for people so I need some examples to show. I've done quite a few Christmas Cards but this is my first attempt at a birth announcement. I think it's really sweet. I changed my photo to black and white and popped the contrast a little then I used the may challenge freebie kit from Piggy Scraps Designs for the background paper and the frame. I also used a ribbon created by Vicki Parker from her Pink Coffee Cream kit. The Font I used is Geneva. I created several different cards but I'll save the others to post anther day. Enjoy!