It seems like just yesterday I was chatting in a temporary forum with a bunch of friends from a recently closed store. It was all of our vision that we’d create a new home for ourselves and others who were looking for a fun loving site, with lots of challenges, and good designers. I’m so proud of our site and our team!  We’ve got a wonderfully friendly board with the most awesome challenges.  I must say I think our designers ROCK! I’m so grateful to run such a great site and to have such a wonderful management team.

We are going to kick off our month-long Birthday Bash with a Progressive Blog Hop Challenge. Here is how it works:

* follow our Progressive Blog Hop, picking up each mini along the way.
* Create a layout using at least one piece from each mini (more if you wish)
* Upload your LO to our Birthday Bash gallery, and link it back to the Progressive Blog Hop Challenge thread.

PRIZE: When you complete this challenge, you will receive a loot bag that coordinates with the blog hop minis.

But don’t stop there! We will be hosting challenges and events all month long. You can pick up several more loot bags, and have a huge celebration themed mega kit when the month is done. We will be posting new challenges all month, so keep your eyes on the Birthday Bash forum.

Keep an eye on the store for some rocking sales; We will have a new sale each week, starting with a Toonie sale. (If you aren’t Canadian and haven’t heard of the Toonie, it is $2); I’m not spilling about what the future week’s sales will be, but they are going to be awesome!

Now that the business is out of the way, let the fun begin! Here is my mini:

You can download this by clicking —>RIGHT HERE<—

And here are the rest of the participants. You will be visiting designers and other site team members. Remember to snag all the pieces, and check into this thread with your layout.

Digi Scraps Drive In <———–you are here
Mad Genius Designs
Red Genius Enterprises
Jen C Designs
Melly Scraps
Gail’s Moments In Time
DaphadillyArt
Bonnie Blue Designs
Kerry Scraps
Graphics Illusions
Charlize Creations

Have fun, and I’ll see you in the forums!

I’m posting a day early with the new releases so we can dedicate our blog space to our fabulous Birthday Bash starting tomorrow.  You must check back for all the fun things that are going on all month long!  We have three new items in the store this week and they are all from Jen C. Designs and they are all commercial use! And they are all on sale as part of Jen’s End of Summer Sale but today is the last day – hurry over and pick them up!  First up is a set of templates – Essentials Vol. 1.  These templates are so great – I love the horizontal strips of paper in two of them!  Get it for just $2.00 today.

Next Jen has these great overlays called Painted Textures.  I love the painted look and can’t wait to get my hands on these!  And only $3.00 today only.

Next are her Just Squotty layered papers – like dotty with squares!  I can totally see that and I think the papers are as cool as their name.  Also just $3.00 today!

Have you missed one of the Daily Downloads? You are in luck!
To earn a coupon for a Daily Download missed you will need to do is participate in one of our challenges and post here your link to the challenge you completed.
Rules:
1. You can earn up to 2 coupons per month.2. You must choose one of our Make the Scene challenges.3. You must complete the challenge between now and Aug 30.4. You must follow the rules of the challenge completely, including linkingback to the challenge thread.5. You must post here with the following information:
* Day Missing* Link to your completed challenge
Once you have posted you will be PM’d a coupon and URL link to the missing day you need.

I found this great layout in the gallery this week.  It was made by Danny2010 using Daphadilly Art’s Daphne Age One.  I love the simplicity of the layout and all the journaling, even though I don’t know what it says!! 

Make sure to go leave her some love and stay tuned for our awesome birthday bash coming up in September!

I found a cute little template to make a mini take-away box.  This is the ideal size for a little thank-you gift to hold one or two chocolates, or a few after dinner mints at a dinner party, or even as a gift box for a piece of jewellery.

You can download the template from Mirkwood Designs.  There are instructions* provided on how to fold and glue the box with the template.

Now if you feel like you are a  bit intimidated about printing out and using a template, you can purchase white take-out containers from your favourite crafting store and cover them with your papers

Firstly, you are going to need to resize that template to fit your printer.  I have an A4 printer so I created an A4 sized transparent blank file, dragged and resized that template to fit. I also centred the template to the page.

Next you will need to choose two papers, one for the inside lining and one for the outside.  I went for a pattern for the outside and an almost solid for the lining.  The lining can be optional, but I think the finished product is so much nicer with a coloured paper rather than plain old white.

I chose to use In the Kitchen Basics which was DSDI’s July Daily Download.

Drag and drop your papers on and resize if you need to, ensuring that they are centred too.  Use the lasso tool to roughly draw around the outside of the template.  Inverse the selection, select a paper layer and use that to trim away the excess paper.  No need to waste ink!!!

Do it again for the other paper layer.  You should have three layers, with the paper layers trimmed to roughly the shape of the template.

Time to print I prefer to use a heavy paper about 100 to 120 gsm.  Print out the template in draft mode, you are going to be also printing on the back of this so mark the top right corner with a small dot.  This way you know that when your paper goes back into the paper feeder the dot will be under left corner. 

Print out the outside paper onto the back of the template.

Print out the lining paper.

I also printed out some strips of coordinating paper and resized elements to match.

Time to cut   A little trick that I learnt through my decoupage  days is to use a pair of curved nail scissors when cutting out wavy/curvy shapes.  You cut with the curve facing away from the object being cut.  What this does is makes the cut edge curve down rather than up and you don’t see the core of the paper as much.

Firstly cut around the template and also down the slots on the flaps.  You will then need to prepare the folds.  I used a butter knife and a ruler on a cutting board to score along the folds.  If I could find my stylus I would of used that Fold the box as per the instructions* from the template but do not glue the gussets.

Next you will need to glue your lining onto the template, making sure that you glue ALL of the template to the paper and that the paper covers the template.  Put aside to allow the glue to set.

While you are waiting you can prepare your trims and ellies.  I used a deckle template to make a scalloped trim with one of the papers.  I also hand painted some commercial plain white paper flowers using an almost dry brush and water paints to match the papers. 

Once the glue has dried, cut around the edges carefully and also down the slots on the flaps.  Very carefully re-fold the box and glue down the gussets as per the template instructions*

Decorate your box.  I used coordinating strips of paper and cut out ellies, but you could use ribbons, braid, ric-rac, beading, lace etc etc.

I topped my box with my flowers, but if you do that make sure the contents are inside before you glue the flowers down!

I hope you have fun and enjoy yourself when you make your take-away box.  I’d love to see what you all do!  Post your hybrid creation in the DSDI gallery and link me up in the comments section below.

Happy scrapp’n

*Template Instructions

1. Print and enlarge or decrease the template to suit your needs. The template used as-is requires a piece of card stock that is approximately 8 x 8.
2. Cut on solid lines, score on dotted lines. Note the cutting line marked with an “A” on two of the flaps, (these will be used as the closure).
3. Decorate the box using stamps of your choice.
4. Fold along all of the dotted lines. Fold and glue the gussets (marked as “C”) on the outside of sides “B.”
5. Link the half ovals to close the box. (You can link them so that the oval is either in front or behind—try it both ways to see what you like.)

Not too many new items this week but the ones we do have are awesome!  First up, Daphadilly Art has a new addition to her Color by Numbers sets – Green Papers.  The others in the series are Blue Papers and Blue Alpha, and Pink Papers and Pink Alpha and they are all fab!

She also has this rockin’ set of Crazy Textures – so cool and unique.  Commercial use too!

And C.W. Picket & Co. has this fabulous new Commercial Use set of Office Supply templates.  These are so neat – and just perfect for me since I spend so much time at my desk!

And get set for September – we have tons of things planned because DSDI is turning one!  Hooray – come celebrate with us.

Here is day 7 of August’s daily download.

You will find this in the store, for 0.00, no coupon required. It will be available until midnight server time, after which point it won’t be free anymore – so grab it quick!

http://digiscrapsdrivein.com/store/S…oad-Day-7.html

Check out this layout created by our own Paper Shaker MnMommy2

Have you missed one of the Daily Downloads? You are in luck!

You can earn a coupon for a Daily Download missed.  All you will need to do is participate in one of our challenges and post a link in this forum to the challenge you completed.

Rules:

1. You can earn up to 2 coupons per month.
2. You must choose one of our Make the Scene challenges.
3. You must complete the challenge between now and Aug 30.
4. You must follow the rules of the challenge completely, including linking
back to the challenge thread.
5. You must post in the August Daily Download missed a day thread with the following information:

* Day Missing
* Link to your completed challenge

Once you have posted you will be PM’d a coupon and URL link to the missing day you need.

Look at this layout created by Kerry t, one of our Paper Shakers, using the August Daily Download.

Get Day 5 of the Download now!

You will find this in the store, for 0.00, no coupon required. It will be available until midnight server time, after which point it won’t be free anymore – so grab it quick!