SDBT: Younger than Springtime

"Younger than Springtime are you
Softer than starlight are you
Warmer than winds of June
Are the gentle lips you gave me..."

I. Love. Spring.

I love the flowers - both popping up from the ground and budding out from the trees.
I love the warmer temperatures.
I love the fresh air.
I love the promise of new birth.

So whether you like to listen to birds singing to like to get your hands in the dirt of a flower pot or garden, I tried to have something for you this month for the Scrap Designers Blog Train.

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As usual, our designers have a great collection for you going along with this theme, and we've added some new people this month, so be sure to check in with everyone!

Joy’s Creations 

Miggins 

Rush Ranch 

Promethean Concepts 

Made by Angelhaze 

Skinni’z Statz, 

Scrapz and Stuff 

KJDdesigns 

Kolor'Scapez! 

Kreated 

Becky’s Creations 

DigiJen Scraps <-- You are here!

AnnieC Digitals 

Moore Blessings Digital Design

Thanks for dropping by! Be sure to keep scrolling and pick up my word art that I FINALLY finished to go along with the March blog train with the theme "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!" (Be ready for some sass...I'm not a morning person. LOL!) And I'll see you back here next month.

SDBT: Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!

Confession Time:

I. Hate. Mornings.

I am a night owl by nature. When I let my body decide its own clock, I'll go to bed around 2:00 to 3:00 a.m. and sleep until 9:00 or 10:00.  To do otherwise is to sentence myself to hours of laying in bed, wide awake, thinking. Then I get frustrated that I'm not going to sleep, but I'm not getting anything done, either.

So, in spite of the fact that I absolutely love the musical "Oklahoma!'...it was the first musical our high school ever presented, and I got to play Ado Annie... and it was a launching point for my favorite actor when Hugh Jackman got to play Curly in a West End production......

Yeah. I still hate mornings.

So you'll find a bit of sass in this word art collection, which was designed to coordinate with the March 2019 Scrap Designers Blog Train (but which I had to skip because work was C R A Z Y that month).

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See you back here next weekend for the May blog train - "Younger than Springtime"!

SDBT - The Rainbow Connection

Welcome to the April Edition of the Scrap Designers Blog Train!!!!

I hate that I missed March, but my job tends to be a feast-or-famine kind of thing, and March was definitely a feasting month. So when the work comes, you have to take care of it. But for those of you who regularly stop here, I almost have a word art set ready based on the March theme of "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!" It will be posted (she says with her fingers crossed) within the next week, so be sure to keep checking for it.

Now, as to this month's theme of "The Rainbow Connection".....

First, I love rainbows. I love all the colors. A friend of mine once had her house decorated with a rainbow theme in every room and I thought it was the happiest house I'd ever been in.

Second, I love The Muppets. Even as far back as high school (and that's been awhile), I had a button that proclaimed "Kermit for President" and I did my persuasive speech on that subject in my senior speech class. (It was the 1980 election season.) Animal was always my favorite, though - maybe because I've always had a soft spot for drummers.

So I absolutely couldn't miss this month's blog train and the chance to play with all the colors.

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User's note: The song quote ("Someday we'll find it, the Rainbow Connection...the lovers, the dreamers, and ME") is actually a 12x12 file designed to border the top and bottom of your layout page.

And the other stops on the blog train are:
Songbird Scraps Designs

Rush Ranch 

KJDdesigns 

Skinni’z Statz, Scrapz and Stuff 

DigiJen Scraps 

Becky’s Creations 

Miggins 

Made by Angelhaze

Promethean Concepts 

Lady DG Scrap 

AnnieC Digitals 

Moore Blessings Digital Design

Be sure to get connected with my Facebook page so you'll know when I finally have the March word art ready at DigiJen Scraps Word Art. 

See you back here soon!

SDBT: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

The anthem of young women for 30 years.

This is going to be a musical year for the Scrap Designers Blog Train. Each month, we're building our kits around a chosen song. This month is the Cyndi Lauper anthem, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. (If you're one of the three people in the world who haven't heard this song ever, click the link and listen right now! It'll give you a bounce for the rest of your day.) Of course, "fun" may be different for different people. Thankfully, our designers realize that, so there's a wide variety of fun ideas represented in this month's train.

You can visit our designers and pick up their goodies at their blogs:

KJDdesigns
Songbird Scrap Designs
Rush Ranch
Miggins
DigiJen Scraps  <-- You Are Here
Promethean Concepts
Joy’s Creations
Made by Angelhaze
Skinni’z Statz, Scrapz and Stuff
Scrapbookcrazy Creations by Robyn
Lady DG Scrap
AnnieC Digitals
Moore Blessings Digital Design

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Hopefully you'll find something here to give a kick to some of your "girls night out" layouts. Have fun (but not too much fun!) and we'll see you back here next month!

DigiJen: AnXiEtY

Anxiety.

Right now, it's taking over family life.

I know there are many different kinds of mental/emotional struggles that people deal with. As a member of a couple blog trains, I've designed kits about various kinds of mental illnesses.

But right now, our family is living with anxiety.

My 12-year-old grandson has struggled at school for awhile, mostly in math. He knows the material, but isn't able to process it and get it from his brain back onto the paper for his homework and tests. Then he started to get overwhelmed with time pressure (i.e. during tests) and would simply freeze up, unable to do even the work that he knew.

Then he started worrying about things that might (but probably won't) happen - having everyone leave while he's asleep in the middle of the night, or having his loved ones be in a wreck if he isn't with them, or people breaking into the house and kidnapping him at night.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I had to be out of town for several days for a funeral. With us gone, his anxiety spiked and went into full-blown panic attacks that were so bad he missed a couple days of school and his mama missed a couple days of work to stay home with him.

Since then, we've all been learning coping skills to help him fight back when his anxiety starts to take hold. His mama deals with anxiety as well, so she is the perfect person to walk him through this new journey. The same for his teacher at school - she also lives with anxiety, so she understands and knows how to help. He has a solid therapist ("solid" meaning she's really good, he just doesn't like going) and a psych nurse who prescribes his meds. And his grandpa and I are learning more about anxiety every day so we can help him, too.

One of the things I've learned is that people who deal with anxiety can't always find the words to express to others what it is they're experiencing. I've created this set of word art in the hopes that it can help someone find their voice and use their artistic talents to chronicle their journey. I've also intentionally NOT included a lot of graphics so the focus can be on the words.

BTW, I know it's hard to read here, but the text block above - the conversation between a person and his brain - is the way my grandson found to explain to his friends at school what anxiety is like.

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Besides my word art, the layout above includes:
Template: "Love Birds" by MDD Designs (available Feb. 8th)

Kit: "Boys Rule" by Magical Scraps Galore

If you deal with anxiety, my love and prayers are yours. If you have any coping strategies to share, I'd love to hear them. We are definitely in a brainstorming mode right now, trying to give our grandson an arsenal of weapons to fight back with when anxiety starts to take hold.

See you back here in a few days with the Scrap Designers Blog Train!

SDBT: All through the Year (Jan-June)

First of all...HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Second...welcome to 2019!!!

I'm going to make this short and sweet because I'm already a little bit late getting my part posted --

The ladies of the Scrap Designers Blog Train are starting off the year with a H U G E calendar kit for you! Each designer chose a specific month, created their own palette, and put their own ideas together. Unfortunately, that leaves someone like me - who does what I call the "pop" pieces, or the little bits that add just a "pop" of interest to a layout - kind of wondering what to do.

Well, I finally figured it out, but it was pushing deadline, and of course I couldn't come up with a little idea. 😃 So you're going to end up getting half of it now, and the other half when I get it finished. (But since I leave my links active indefinitely, even if you miss the debut of Part 2, it'll still be here when you come back next month.)

Let me give you the links to all the incredible work done by my train partners:

Nellie Bell
Rush Ranch
AnnieC Digitals
Songbird Scrap Designs
Miggins
Promethean Concepts
Skinni’z Statz, Scrapz and Stuff
Joy’s Creations
Lady DG Scrap
DigiJen Scraps  <-- You Are Here
Made by Angelhaze
Moore Blessings Digital Design

Now for the goodies you can pick up here!

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There are two files for each month, January through June. It's pretty easy to figure out that January is about new beginnings, April includes Easter, May is for Mother's Day and June celebrates Father's Day. 

What might not be so obvious (so I feel the need to explain a bit) is that February's typical "love" theme focuses here on loving yourself, because if we don't love ourselves, it's pretty hard to love others. And while it's easy to see that March has something for St. Patrick's Day, the other March quote relates to International Women's Day (March 8th). Ever since the wave of Time's Up and #MeToo that hit the US last year, I've grown in my conviction that we as women need to support other women, that we need to bond together rather than tearing each other down.

So, I hope you're able to use not only my words, but the designs of our other contributors, whether it's in making calendars or simply to have a great stash of month-and-holiday-themed bits to create layouts all year long.

Have a great month! For those in the north, stay warm! For those in the south, stay cool! And I'll see you back here soon.

DBTL: Endometriosis Awareness

If you're like me, this is the busiest, craziest month of the year. Families are getting together. Offices are having staff parties. The kids have programs and concerts at school. There's shopping to do and presents to make.

I speak from experience when I say that endometriosis can make any of these things nearly impossible to do. It's the "private pain" that some women have to deal with every few weeks, and in order to get any relief at all, some have to take enough painkillers that THAT makes it hard to function.

That's why it was so important to me to participate in this month's Digi Blog Train List theme of Endometriosis Awareness. Actually, when I was finally able to find a gynecologist who would convince my insurance to let me have a hysterectomy, it was discovered that I had adenomyosis - or as I call it, endo's uglier, nastier big sister.

If you have painful periods, please educate yourself about endometriosis and adenomyosis. You may not need to live with the pain every month.

Several of our DBTL designers decided to sit out
this month because of hectic holiday schedules, but we still have a great collection of goodies for you. Stop by the following (and be sure to leave a little extra love when you pick up your freebies):

Nellie Bell Sunique Boutique
Dea’s Design
Dreamn4Ever Designs
DigiJen Scraps <-- You are here
Shuckclod’s Stuff
DBTL FB Page (click picture, SHOP NOW) 







And here's my part. A lot of these can be used for general encouragement layouts.

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Have a great holiday season. Hug the ones you love. Enjoy the season. And I'll see you back here next time.