A few weeks ago I wrote a post about a class I was taking through Scrapaneers called Design Star.  It was an intense 8 week class taught by designer Traci Reed and covered everything from colour theory and typography to repeating patterns and extractions.  The end result was supposed to be a mini digital kit, but I was learning so much I couldn’t stop creating papers, tags, buttons, and word art!

Everything in this kit was designed by me and no commercial use products were used along the way.  All patterns, textures, and embellishements were scanned, photographed or created in Photoshop.

One of my favorite papers was the woodgrain paper (on the left). It was created from a photo I took of the walls of one of the buildings at Fort Edmonton Park.  I have always loved the texture of the wood and had to include it in a kit about history!

The feather was found in our backyard and the kids insisted I include it, so I photographed and extracted it.  I ended up playing with the filters and turned the feather into a brush that was used on the some of the embellishments.

When I inherited my mom’s button collection I wondered for years what I would do with all the buttons from her sewing days.  Well, two of them ended up in the digital kit!  I had hundreds to choose from and found the perfect ones to go with the theme of family history.

The rest of the buttons and all the flower stickers were created from scratch in Photoshop.  This was my favorite part of the process and I am very thankful that Traci taught us how to use the pen tool to draw our own shapes.

Taking this class was a life changing experience for me.  I loved every aspect of designing this kit and I want to learn more even more!  When I came to the fork in the road last December about quitting my job to pursue this dream or not, I can definitely say this was the best decision!  I am so excited to start working on the next kit and see where this design road will take me.

Leah