Barefoot in the Grass

Prima News, Gift Card Winners, and a Freebie coming soon!!

Hello all!!  I hope you have had a wonderful January so far, things have been busy here as always.  I  have been designing like mad and I am so excited to show you my new kits and I think you will LOVE them!  I am so happy with the way they are turning out!  They will be done by the end of this month as Prima (if you haven't heard the news, check out our W&W blog!) is having a Grand Opening on the 30th!  So look for lots of fun new things and sales that weekend!  You won't want to miss it!!  :)

I do want to say this about Prima:  For those of you that are not into hybrid, never fear!  Prima Hybrid is opening a new market to paper scrappers that are looking into the digital aspect, and is gearing a lot of their tutorials and physical products towards them.  For those of you that are strictly digital, we are doing the same fun digital kits and products as before.  The only difference is some of our products will be sold at two different stores.  ALL our products will be shown at our W&W store, but some will have a link to the Prima store.  This is because we have agreed to design some products exclusively for Prima, and can therefore only be purchased there.  The other designers at Prima are very talented also, we are thrilled to be a part of their team.  So, it should be a fun, good change!!!

And now to announce the winners of the Gift Card blog challenge!  I have held off giving these out for 2 reasons:  1) I wanted to wait until the Prima store opened so winners would have the choice of getting products there, and 2) I have lots of fun new products coming out by the end of this month!  Winners will have their choice of receiving Gift Cards at either Prima or W&W, or a combination of both!  I also decided to pick SIX winners, instead of THREE like I said.. so...  drum roll please!  The winners were picked by random numbers by my hubby.. and they are............

Teresa (fergta97), Jan (jbullington), Janet (mjmcbride), Cher (cmoynihan), Liz (mybandito), and Brooke (stransurf)!  So congrats ladies, you will have received your emails by now, so have fun with your moolah!!

There will be lots more opportunities for more Gift Certificates and challenges at the end of this month around Prima's Grand Opening, so check back often!

I also have a really fun freebie I am working on for you to thank you all for your support and kindness.  You all have been so wonderful - I have enjoyed your comments and thoughts.  Thanks for your emails and words of encouragement.  It is so rewarding to design for such a lovely group of ladies!!

I am off to make pancakes (I promised the boys I would today!) I hope you all have a wonderful Saturday!!

Project 365

Welcome to my Project 365 page!  If you are wondering why I am doing this, or what it's all for, click on this link. If you would like to do this also, or, if you are already doing Project 365, leave me a link in the comments so I can check out your pics too!!  :-D

I now have a gallery for my Project 365 so go check it out HERE!!

New Years Resolutions, & a gift card giveaway!!

Hello ladies!  As I have laid sick in bed these last couple days, (with not much to do but stare at the ceiling, lol) I have been thinking of all the things I would like to do better this year.  I am not really one for making "formal" New Years Resolutions, per se, but I love the opportunity to start over fresh and new and try a little harder at some things.  I love making lists, and I have a list of goals I am going to really work on. 

One of those is pacing myself at designing so I spend more time with my boys.  I LOVE designing, it is such a passion to me, and has brought about many opportunities in my life I would have never imagined.  I have turned down a few of those opportunities mainly because I know I can't do the time commitments, with four little guys to raise at the same time.  It has been such a hard thing for me to turn down such amazing opportunities - and has left me with so many mixed emotions.  Once I set out to do something, I put my ALL into it.  And it is so easy to get caught up in the big digital rat race and want to keep up with everyone and everything.  I now realize I need to take a little step back and pace myself better.  I love designing, and do it because it is an amazing creative outlet for me, and I need to keep it at that.  It is so easy to get carried away in deadlines, the excitement of progressing in this business, and all the busy things associated with a competitive career.

I do this because it brings me joy and makes me happy, and I love seeing what I create with my hands and heart.  I also love seeing the amazing layouts and creations you all make with my designs.  I want to keep this something I enjoy and love.  And I feel that is best accomplished by finding balance between work and family, and so that is my main goal for me this year.  These little guys will not stay small for long, and I don't want to miss any of it!  So, with more balance, I hope to have the best of both worlds!!   :) 

Sorry about the novel, but it is something I have been thinking about and am excited for the new year to start fresh and new with my goals!  I have so many ideas bursting from my head for kits and other things, and have so many fun things ready to share with you all soon!!  Our new venture is going to be great, but again, I have got to pace myself!  I want to do so much, I could seriously design 24-7, but I ALSO want to go on nature walks, read books, and play games with these little guys before they grow up and leave home and go on with their own busy lives.

Just to celebrate the new year, and the fun new things we will be releasing soon, I am going to randomly pick THREE commenters to this post who tell me one of their goals for the New Year (or if you prefer, a New Year resolution) to give out $10 gift certificates to!  I will leave this blog challenge up until the evening of the 1st, when our store goes off sale, and then 3 lucky winners will have a little fun money to buy the NEW stuff we put out soon!!!

I hope you all have a wonderfully fun and safe New Year, and I can't wait to hear your comments! hugs!

Wishing You a Happy Holiday!

Ok, I haven't posted in a while because I really, really wanted to have a fun freebie for you all, and so I finally had two seconds to whip one out.  It was actually a request from a wonderful person that needed a bell for a layout about her precious daughter.  So I was happy to do that for her.  I figured I would offer it to everyone as a gift, as well as a "happy holidays" wire word art!  I am giving this as a freebie challenge so all you have to do this time to get the freebie is comment and tell me something you cherish or love in your life, since this bell was made in memory of a cherished daughter. Could be a grandchild, a favorite food, anything.  Just tell me something you cherish in your life in the comments below, then download away!!

 

After you do the challenge, download HERE!  :)

So I have been sooooooooo busy, as I am sure you all are during this time of year!!  I have been designing a kit for a magazine, which I will let you know more about that later, and also a collab with ???!!! coming very soon too!!  So I have been in my designing cave, and thought I would come out for a breath of fresh air!  :)

I am DONE with most of my Christmas shopping, only a few stocking stuffers to go!  It is a lot of work shopping for 4 boys! sheesh!  And I think we did good this year to not just get a lot of junk toys.  We thought out and planned hard and I think it is going to be fun for them.  I am printing out my Christmas cards today, I love how they turned out!  We are going to get them out a little late this year, but better late then never, right?  This is one thing I cherish sooo much - these boys are the best boys in the world (yes, I am biased!) They are such good kids, I love them so much.  I love designing and creating, but they are my #1 love, (next to my dear hubby of course lol) and I am so grateful for them.  And I LOVE how their Christmas photo turned out!!

Anyways, lots to do today, going to run errands and try and get the rest of my Christmasy stuff done!  I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season, and not letting the business and noise of life get in the way of cherishing those things you love most!  Have a wonderful day!!!  HUGS!

And The Winner Is....!

Hello all! I hope you had a lovely Saturday, mine was full and busy!  I was able to do a little Christmas shopping and got a few things checked off my list, so that was nice!!  Shopping for four little boys is quite the chore!  We are trying to keep it simple this year - I am SO sick of all their toys!  And I really want to help them think of others, and not just "me me me..."  Not sure how I am going to do that yet, any ideas??  I know they are little and need a few fun things, but I hope this year we can do something to focus more on the giving side of things more than the getting.

Anyways, without further ado, what I am grateful for!!  I had been thinking today of several things, but then tonight my sweet hubby came in and asked me if he could paint my fingernails and toenails for me! lol!  So he sat on the floor, while I designed, no less, and painted my toenails and fingernails!  They had been bugging me for a while, with their chipped paint, etc, and now I have pretty sparkly red nails!  I know it is a small thing, but what a thoughtful thing to do when I am sure he had other things he would rather do.  So I am grateful tonight for a kind husband and his sweet act of service.  :)

Speaking of my husband, on to the contest winner!  Earlier this evening I asked him completely off topic to pick a number between 1 and 66 without telling him why - and he said...............................  #3!!!!  So my 3rd commenter on the previous post, LynnZ, is the winner of my "Playing With Wire - Winter" set! Funny when she said "I'm sure he won't be picking number "3" but that's okay."  Kinda funny, huh!  So I guess you just never know!  ;)  So, Lynn, I will be emailing you a coupon for that kit asap!  Thank you all for your comments, you all are so kind, and I love hearing from you!  That was so fun, I think I will be giving away more gifts and coupons randomly, so stay posted for more!! 

Well, I am off to bed, I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday!  HUGS!!

Thanksgiving, a Big Sale at W&W, and a little give-away! ;)

Hello everyone!  I am sorry I have neglected this poor little blog, but life has been CRAZY!!!!  We have been so swamped with designing it isn't even funny.  I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, however, now that our new holiday kit is done!  I have another major project (will share more about that later!!) due on Nov. 30th, then I will be able to breathe a little bit! 

Other than that, life is good!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, it was just Greg and I and our little guys.  He was on-call so we could not go anywhere to visit, so we had our own little family holiday here at home.  I was so bummed at first that we couldn't go visit family, but it turned out to be a very special day. It was my first turkey (Every year we go elsewhere, and I have never had to do it!) and it turned out fabulous!  My kids helped so much too - not to mention Greg who did all the dishes afterwards!  My oldest had a great time setting our table with our "fine china" lol!  We played games, watched Christmas movies, and had it felt good to just be together.  The only thing we didn't get to do is ride the horses because it was just toooo cold to do that, but we are doing to try again this weekend. 

The whole day just made me really, really grateful for my blessings, and I was glad for that reminder. It is SO healthy for me to remember what I am thankful for.  I remembered this blog and the challenge I posted at the very first, and how wonderful it was to hear the things you all were thankful for.  And I thought that I would try to get on this blog EVERY day and if nothing else, post something I am grateful for in my life. So even if it is one sentence, I will post that.  There is nothing that brings happiness more, in my opinion, than to be mindful of your blessings, and to have gratitude in your heart. 

So today, I am grateful for my cute boys and helpful husband - that I was able to spend time with them watching the Christmas light parade tonight, and that we had our warm coats and mittens to keep us warm.  And I am thankful for my oldest son, Owen's soft heart.  They were throwing candy and those light-up neon bracelet thingys off of floats, and he took one to a little girl near us that didn't get anything in the scramble of kids.  It warmed my heart so much to see that.  What a good kid!

Well, so you probably have noticed on our W&W blog that we have a great big sale this weekend! It has been extremely busy - Heidi has been going through hundreds of sales to make sure everyone has gotten their downloads and that all is running smoothly.  Thanks for all your hard work Heidi!!

I have loved how our holiday kit turned out!  I wanted some pink in there, but having all boys, it was important to me to have some grungy boyish papers with traditional Christmas colors - yet at the same time keep it soft and pretty.. wow... so it was a challenge!!  I think it turned out great though.  And Heidi finished her metal snowflake ornaments - and they are SO cool!  For my featured CT layout today I wanted to show you one by Catherine (Chud23) using our new holiday kit - it is just amazing!!!

I love how she colored all the presents to create such an amazing display, love the composition, and that is just such a striking photo too!  Handsome kid, Catherine!!  :)

Ok, so I JUST finished my "Playing With Wire - Winter" set:

As we approach this holiday season, I am feeling in a very giving mood!  :)  So tomorrow evening I am going to have my husband pick a number between one and whatever number of comments to this post, and the lucky commenter will receive this Winter Wire element pack as a gift from me to kick off the season of giving!!  So leave a little hello, and you may be the lucky recipient of this fun wire set!!  :D  How fun is that?  hehe...

Ok, well, off to bed!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!! 

hugs!

Some Exciting New Changes at W&W!!

Heidi, Pat and I have some news about something we have been thinking about for a little while. And please keep in mind, we have thought long and hard and this has been a very difficult decision.

Things have been wonderful at ScrapArtist and we have loved working with everyone there. However, our W&W store has been growing rapidly and has been very time consuming and busy. We have three wonderful new creative teams, an amazing site CT, our new challenge blog, the many issues that come with running our own site and a busy store, so many of you wonderful customers to keep in touch with, and all the while still trying to design at the same time! It has been a challenge trying to give 100% to both the W&W and SA stores.

So, we have been toying with the idea of selling from our W&W store only.  There are lots of things happening in the digital world right now, and we feel that now is a good time to turn our energies to our store and help W&W grow in new and different ways.

In addition to all of this, a wonderful and exciting opportunity has come up just very recently (funny how that timing is!) that has turned us in a bit of a new direction and solidified our decision to move on. So we are going to try it and see where this new adventure leads!

We can't say what this new opportunity is, (JUST yet!!) but know that it is REALLY exciting. It is something NEW and Different, very progressive and cutting edge.  We feel it is an interesting opportunity, and a great move for W&W, and are excited and thrilled to be a part of it. We will keep you posted and let you know more as things progress!

As of today, Saturday, Nov. 10, all our products will be found ONLY at the W&W store until further notice. When the new changes occur, we will explain all about it at that time (or as soon as we can)!   ;)

We have loved being at ScrapArtist, and have been SO grateful that Nancie asked us to be a part of the SA team, and we will miss it greatly.  We are brokenhearted to leave Nancie and the wonderful designers there.  Change is not always easy, and we know that what lies ahead is the direction we must take, and it will be wonderful in so many ways for all of us!!!

We would love to hear your thoughts, and know again that we so appreciate each and every one of you and are grateful for the most wonderful customers ever!!  Watch very soon for some fun and exciting new releases to come soon as well!!  Now that we have a little bit more time, we will be flooding our store with new products that you are just going to LOVE!!!!!
hugs!!
Gina (Heidi, & Pat)

"Playing With Wire - Autumn" for Sale now!!

Hello all of you!!  Thank you so much for your kind words and comments - I have loved reading them, and I hope you know how grateful I am for all of you!!  I had over 4100 views on my freebie, it was amazing!  And I think that is a major reason so many had a hard time downloading it - the poor server was on major overload!  Wonderful Grace Bennett helped me open up a Freebie section in our W&W store, so in the future it will not be so much of a problem to handle the numbers of people downloading!!!!  I am putting it back in the store for sale now HERE for those of you who missed it while it was a freebie.  For those that got it, I hope you have fun and remember it as my gift of thanks for all your support and for being such wonderful ladies!!!

hugs to you all!!!

I am back, and a big THANK YOU to you all!

Hello all you wonderful ladies, I hope you have had a wonderful October - I can't believe it is November already!!!!  Wow!  I found October to be WAY too busy, I have never been so swamped and had so many things going on.  Things are slowing down a tiny bit now, and I have a little breathing room!!  We had a wonderful time at Disneyland, it was a lot of work, but the boys had a lot of fun!  I took a TON of pictures of course, and even got to scrapbook (yeah - can you believe it??) a couple pictures from the trip with one if my new kits:

It felt so good to do a layout, I am going to do that more often!!!  I am going to do a Little Seeds kit next, which centers around a layout that I scrapbook - a mini kit that I create for a special photo.  I am thinking of a really fun and creative challenge that I am going to do along those lines too, so watch for that soon!!

Well, November is the time of year for those of us living in the U.S. when we think of Thanksgiving and gratitude and all that we have been so blessed with in our lives.  I am going to focus on gratitude this month with my freebie challenges, and have some fun gifts for you!!  This last weekend we had such a great sale, and lots of fun activities going on for Digital Scrapbooking Day, and I was so impressed by the work by our wonderful new site CT, and my new awesome personal creative team.  We gave our Site CT some gift certificates to go out and spread around and they came up with the most wonderful fun games, challenges and threads, and even just RAK's as well.  I want to thank them for their efforts and hard work this weekend, they are so wonderful!!

I was also completely blown away by the responses in those threads at DST and MSA from hundreds of you wonderful ladies that took the time to reply and participate in those threads.  I am so grateful for you all and was touched by your kind words and support.  I was trying to think how I could show my appreciation for you all, and as it is not possible right now for me to email 300+ of you with a thankyou gift, I am going to post it here on my blog for a day or two.  I hope you like it - it is one of my Playing With Wire kits - a new holiday series I am putting out.  This one happens to be "PWW - Autumn," and probably the last fall themed thing I am going to do before moving on to more wintery holiday type kits.  So, I hope you like it and know how thankful I am for you and your support.  It is amazing to do something I love so much and at the same time work with such amazing ladies as you all!!

So here it is, and have fun!!!

I am now putting a link here to the freebie in our STORE, so go grab it there!  And hurry, I am leaving it up for free for only a few more hours!!

Update on my CT CALL, & Second Spring at FPD!

Hey girls!!!  Just in to give you a little update on my CT call!  This call came at such a hard time for me as I am leaving town tomorrow for the week, although the call was necessary and got such a GREAT response!! Thank you all so much for applying, I can NOT believe the number of you out there that are so supportive and willing to work with my designs!!  WOW!  You all are so kind and wonderful, I have read each and every one of your emails and want to thank you for your sweet comments.

I hope you will forgive me, but unfortunately, I wanted to get more done than was humanly possible before I left. I have worked my tail off going through all of your galleries and making the decisions I thought best and wanted to announce and have emails off to you all before I left.  But that just isn't going to happen, and I am going to have to put everything on hold until this Saturday!  **ACK** I know..! (ducking from the flying rotten fruit - lolol).  But I have a very special gift to send to those that did not make it at this time, and I want  you to know that I am keeping your names in a folder to pick guests every month.  So I hope to be able to work with each and every one of you some day!!  So please bear with me, and I am sorry I have not emailed you all yet, the sheer volume of responses made it impossible for me to get back to you at this time!

Before I go, however, I wanted to share a new kit that is out today --  The collab that I have been talking about with Funky Playground Designs!!  It is finally done, and up HERE in the FPD store today!  It is also 20% off right now as well!!  And it is HUGE and just turned out really amazing!  Here are the previews of just the stuff I did for the collab:

It is such a fun and pretty kit, but go check it out, cause there is soo much more in this kit from the talented Funky Playground girls too!! 

Ok, well, I am off!!  If any of you have any questions, comments or concerns, please email our wonderful CT coordinator, Chere (chere.kaye at gmail dot com) and she will help you!! And Heidi and Pat will be posting their new CT's on the W&W blog VERY soon, so watch for that!!! Have a wonderful week, and I will talk to you when I get back!! HUGS!!!  Gina Marie