A New Palette

The process of moving overseas certainly throws a life in the air, redefining comfort zones in ways that sometime feel like being dropped without a parachute and hoping that somehow the landing will be soft! Thankfully, we have now recovered from the bruises our landing delivered, and are starting to unwrap this wonderful new life experience.

While still in Australia, I imagined that these months would be a time of doing new things. I didn't want to repeat anything I had previously done. But it hasn't worked out like that. The things that resonate and pull on my heart remain constant. So, it looks like some familiar colours will remain in the new palette after all.

One of those is the decision to rejuvenate my interest in digital scrapbooking. To that end, I joined the Creative Team at Janet Scott Design!  My first layout for JSD is featured here using the beautiful kit On The Beach, which was a shoo in to feature the story of an unexpected whale sighting during our 'bon voyage' family getaway in early July.

While in transit to our new home, I then discovered that Simple Scrapper was offering a free sampling of some of their membership benefits. This template in the sampler caught my eye. I immediately visualized Janet's papers, the photos, and the story exactly as you see it here. That was the easy part.

To use it, though, I first had to learn how to work in Photoshop! I am so grateful for the many tutorials that can be sourced online, but mostly for a helpful personal tutorial over the phone from a good friend who provided my 'aha' moment. As a first time user of scrapbook templates in Photoshop, the 'aha' was understanding the jargon - namely 'clipping masks'.

Generally, I am not a fan of templates, as I prefer creating my own layouts, but this made using Photoshop so much easier that I am now looking forward to working with more of them.

So, in between the varied demands of settling into our new home away from home and the challenges of using new software and computer systems (I am now working on a Mac), this new palette is already adding freshness to some of my favourite colours. What will be next?