Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Upcoming Book News

As you all know, I'm getting ready to release my third book, The Renegades. I just got my final cover art back today, and I'm doing my last read-through. I'm never satisfied!

I will post a big giveaway on December 3rd, so make sure you check back then for ebooks and paperback copies of all three of my novels as well as some other vampire novels. I will also have a promo spot over at Bit'N Books, and later, reviews on their site. Please check out their page if you're an author or book reviewer. Here's a bit about them.

Bit'N Book Promoters are a team of passionate, friendly and feisty individuals who are here to help you get your books out there. We're all authors and know how hard it is to get books noticed, so we want to give a helping hand to others like ourselves.
We provide book promotions, reviews, author interviews and kindle freebies. Our blog mainly focuses on reviews and author interviews and detailed book promotions. Both our Twitter and Facebook pages provide book promos, updates and links to what we're doing on our blog. We also regularly post kindle freebies only available on our Facebook page, along with pretty book & film quote boxes, which we design ourselves.
If you'd like our help, you can find us here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BitnBookPromote
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BITNBOOKPROM...
Blog: http://bitnbookpromoters.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Scrappy Sunday: Nearly Naked December Daily, Part 1

This is the first year I've decided to participate in the December Daily project that Ali Edwards (and many others) does every year. I don't do mini albums very well, and I love adding lots of pictures, so I went with 8.5x11, which is about as close to mini as I get.



First page and ATC by Paper Studio, holly sticker by ?
Unfortunately, I'm very slow and unorganized about scrapping, so it took me 6 hours yesterday just to get all my Christmas stuff together, decide what order it went in, make sure I had pages for each day, cut them to size and bind them all.

It was also the first time I used my bind-it-all machine, and as you can see, I am still learning it! I punched a bunch of extra holes, messed up on some of them, etc. I think I had it down by the end, but I already had made my album look all sloppy. But I forged ahead anyway, since I didn't have more chipboard for the covers and I wanted to stick with the paper I'd chosen. So it's going to be a messy project! I wasn't very picky about my paper selection, as you can see. I cut some envelopes in half so they'd fit, but most of the pages are full sized layouts and mats that I bound in for extra photos. I probably should have made sure all the tones matched, but I threw a few extras in there that didn't match very well. I have a lot of family birthdays in December, and I didn't want my paper to be too 'Christmas-y' on those days. So there's some pink pastel pages in there as well as more traditional Christmas paper and distressed looking pages.

Added half a silver envelope by DCWV.
I've noticed that most of the December Daily albums I've looked at only go through Christmas, but that's not really daily for all of December, so I continued until New Year's Eve. I will probably leave that page how it is, because I love that paper, and put my pics on the inside of the back cover. If I need more photo space, I can always paste in more envelopes or a waterfall somewhere.
 I haven't done the embellishing yet, so this is probably going to be a 2 or 3 part post. I will post later once I've embellished.














 
Happy scrapping!

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Renegades Release Party Invite

My latest novel, The Renegades, is coming to the major internet retailers on December 3rd. The paper copy will be available in early 2014, but you can win an advance copy at the release party. You can also win ebooks and swag, as well as paper copies of the first two books in The Superiors series.

I'm excited about this! Doing a bit of last-minute editing and then it's good to go.

Please stop by in a few weeks for the release day!

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Scrappy Sunday: Challenge overload! (Don't Fall)


This one is going to have a lot of links…

 
 
This was a challenge for Scrap Our Stash this month. The challenge was to use only 6x6 paper pads for the patterned paper (except for the background, of course), and to use at least 6 of one type of embellishment. I used two 6x6 pads and 7 leaves, which I have had in my stash for about 5 years, and I’ve only used maybe 1 or 2 in all that time. I was tempted to throw the whole lot on there, but I stuck to just 7.
 
I also looked around for a good sketch and found the perfect one at Chic Tags (above)!

  
I also combined with several other challenges…



All boy challenge
Share & Win Challenge

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Scrappy Sunday: Exploding Box Project

I have wanted to make one of these since I first saw it months ago. So, I made the cardstock box, but I never did anything with it. I wanted to save it to make for my husband for our anniversary. I saw it on Pinterest, but you really need to check out the tutorial on this website. It is AMAZING, so easy and simple. I followed the directions exactly and it turned out great on the first try.


I finally had to stop procrastinating and make it a couple days before our anniversary. I used a line of 7 gypsies paper, I think it was called Lille? Anyway, I've had it for a while and I love it so much I don't want to used it, if that makes sense! But once I made the box, it was so gorgeous I didn't want to put pictures on it! I also used 7 gypsies ink for the edges of the patterned paper squares. I just used scissors to round all the corners. I will say, if you make this, be prepared to spend a lot of time on it. It takes just about forever to cut out all the paper to decorate it. I loved it so much I took about a million pictures!

I used a nut I found on the ground one day for the lid pull. It gave it a masculine feel. Even though all the boxes I've seen used a ribbon around the lid, I skipped that, as I wanted it to be masculine. I did use heavy duty glue on the lid to hold it together. Enjoy. And go make one!