Month: September 2011

Freebie Friday: September

Published by Sula H.

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another template. This one is based on my page “September Highlights.” Link is fixed now. Sorry for the delay. Also, Lynette (aka Nettio) has a fantastic free template on her blog, featuring a USA map. She is an awesome scrapper, and usually sells her templates, so if you haven’t grabbed it yet, be sure to stop by her blog to pick up this fabulous two-page template for free. And having said this, all I’m left to do is wish you a happy Friday as always! Note: Please do not re-distribute this template in any way (you may share the link to this post), and when you use this template, please make sure to credit it to Misty Hilltops Designs.

Fun with Chinglish: No Jumping the Queue

Published by Sula H.

Another sign to help organizing people who are standing in line. This one reads: “Be patient. And no jumping the qeue!” Note: When posting anything in the Fun with Chinglish section, I don’t mean to show disrespect towards anything or anyone in any way. I’m simply sharing the fun we get to have with all those great signs & documents!

Hybrid Hub: Friends

Published by Sula H.

Last week I told you that I had done another hybrid layout, so here it is: Over at the Pencil Lines blog, I’d found a pretty page that I felt would be great for scraplifting (esp. with the limited supplies I have here in China): I loved the composition, and the embellies it required wouldn’t make the cutting process too arduous. Also, I wanted to create a page that was meaningful for me, so I decided to scrap about some of my friends from a long time ago. Basically, I created the layout on my computer, then resized and transferred everything to several sheets of A4 size paper, printed, cut, and assembled it. I also thought about creating some paper crafted flowers to add, but then decided to stick with the printed flowers, because the page will turn out flat, which will make storing it in a folder a lot easier. (I don’t have access to a scrapbook album here.) And the flowers that came with this kit still look pretty, even when printed. Let’s …

September Thoughts

Published by Sula H.

This is September. Ok. Granted. The end of it. But still September. And we should be walking around in t-shirt, enjoying blue skies (one of the few times a year we get it blue), and be happy that the summer heat has finally cooled down and reached comfortable, enjoyable temperatures. Instead, it’s been raining almost all September and I’ve already begun pulling out my winter sweaters. And I heard the farmers are worried because it’s been so wet that they can’t bring in their corn crops. So, we all must hope for October, and that with it the better weather will return!

Enable Me: The Scrappin Cop

Published by Sula H.

The last Enable Me post has been quite a while ago, so it’s about time that I’d share something fun with you again. I found this blog just recently, and they offer tons of free stuff related to scrapbooking – overlays, textures, elements, and tons and tons of fun doodles. You should check it out, because they might have just the little something extra that you’ve been looking for – for free! (Just be careful when it says CU ok. For CU purposes, whatever is offered on that blog is not for free! Check out their TOU to be on the save side!)

Food Corner: A Piece of Cake

Published by Sula H.

While sweets and treats in China often are quite different from what we are used to in the West, some of the goodies you can get here can make quite some delicacies. There are lots of bakeries here that sell all sorts of little snacks – from cakes and pies to cookies, to various other sweet treats. Today, I allowed myself a special treat and went to a bakery around the corner to get this piece of cake for my afternoon snack, and though it didn’t taste exactly he way I wanted it to (after eating half of it, I felt I had enough), I’m still glad that certain things we do not have to give up when living in China!

Behind the Scenes: Making Fonts Look Real

Published by Sula H.

I’m excited, because today I’m going to show you one of my favorite techniques in digi-scrapping. I use it on almost every single page I create, and even though the title says that it’s related to fonts, you really can use it for everything – photos, brushes, stamps, rub-ons; everything that you put directly on a textured paper and want the texture to show through. The Example Let me give you an example: You’re writing something on a paper background, but that background has wrinkles and folds. Simply placing your text on top of that will make your journaling look unnatural, and as if the font is kind of floating. That’s what you do not want to happen! Take a look at this page that I created back in April: It has some journaling on some pretty wrinkled/folded paper. Now, let’s take a closer look at the journaling: This is what the journaling would look like, if I don’t make any adjustments to the text. The letters simply ignore the folds, which makes everything …

Learning About Web Traffic

Published by Sula H.

Well, I’ve had my blog for almost a year now, so you might think I should know about web traffic and the likes. Wrong! Today, I’ve had quite the revelatory chat with my sister who got me all started on this blogging business, and I learned that MistyHilltops.com is experiencing quite some web traffic recently. So much so, in fact, that she had to shift things around to give me more allowance for web traffic. I guess that’s good news and bad news, but I sure learned today, that I should better do my homework first and know what I’m doing before embarking on an adventure like this. But as it is, I’m enjoying the ride with you all, and I hope that MistyHilltops.com will be able to stick around for quite some time to come still!

Monday Highlight: Paper Pack 3

Published by Sula H.

Well, I meant to highlight another product today, but it’s kind of really late today (got stuck talking to a dear friend on the phone that I haven’t talked to in years), so I’ll just share my latest paper pack with you and call it a day. Like with the other two packs, these solids coordinate perfectly with the newest SSD Quarterly Assortment (2011, Vol. 3). I just realized that I saved the preview in full jpeg quality. If you don’t want it to waste so much of your disk space, you can save the preview image from here, and replace the one that’s in the folder. The download links to my freebies will be up only temporarily, so make sure you grab them before they’re gone. Note: Please do not re-distribute these papers in any way (you may share the link to this post), and when you use these papers, please make sure to credit them to Misty Hilltops Designs.

Sleep Well!

Published by Sula H.

So, for about three weeks I’ve been fighting this ugly cough that just won’t leave me alone. I’ve given up trying to see the doctor (at least for something so minor as this), because what usually happens is that they love to give you IVs, which in other places in the world are only given when you are seriously sick. I prefer the No-IV-route, so I had a friend of mine go and get me some medicine back when I was so sick a couple weeks ago. (Funny how without showing up with the patient here, they’ll give your friends plenty of medicine that will take care of whatever is bugging you.) Well, I started taking the pills my friend got me when I was still in bed all the time, and all they do is put you to sleep. So when I started feeling like getting up again, I stopped taking this medicine, because I didn’t want to sleep all day. I wanted to be up and able to get active again. But I …