Please use this thread for any comments, questions, thanks, etc you have for our designers participating in the blog train. To see the blog train list, visit this post.
Please remember that the blog train does not go live until January 1, so the actual freebie on the blog may not yet be posted.
Love what you did Marisa! Look forward to downloading it!
@Liza - Cute!
Thank you so much Jessica. Yours is especially pretty.
Fabulous work Jennifer Morgan.
(i can't see a link for your blog)
Thank you Liza.
Blog is out of order at the moment. I'm trying to get just a quick free wordpress going again but if I don't get it going by the first of January, I'll just link them to the download on media fire and hopefully have a new blog up and running by February.
Everything looks great, can't wait to start downloading! Thanks everybody for all the great shares, very much appreciated!
Fantastic contributions this month. Thank you for sharing your beautiful kits ladies.
Sherry, your origami animals are SO cute! Thanks a bunch!!
Erin I can't seem to find your on your blog! I really love it and would like to be able to download it. Am I looking in the wrong spot?
I didn't find it either Erin!
Anita! I just noticed that my automated blog post FAILED to post for some reason! I apologize! I have fixed it now!
Thank you so much, ladies, for all the contributions to the train. Each piece is great! This is probably my favorite part of the DigitalScrapbook.com Community!!
I updated mine with the direct link to my blog post with my download link. There were a few comments on my preview blog post that said they couldn't find my download link, so it's been updated it now. Sorry I'm a day late.
Thanks so much for your generosity, love all of the creations!
I have been trying to leave thank-you comments on your blogs but could not ...just like last December... so I am a bit clueless here.... This is just to say thank you so much for all your absolutely amazing freebies...
Some of you warned me that Dropbox didn't allow them to download my portion, due to too much traffic and disabled the download option.
Sorry! Apparently there is a maximum limit for downloading that I wasn't aware of, until now.
I will try and fix this, by uploading my part somewhere else too.
As soon as I've done that, I'll let you know by leaving a message here. I hope I'll be able to fix it tonight, but maybe it will be a bit later.
Thanks, Katherine & Erin!
Everyone did such a great job. I never leave comments on individual blogs ( I tend to forget-oops) So I wanted to let everyone know here. I loved the colors this month and I think everyone did awesome, especially with it being right after the holiday season. I'm so excited to get crafting now!
once again I am totally blown away by all the fabulously talented people here.thank you all so much for your generosity xxx
Fun Train, Thank you very much!
Katherine, I highly recommend Google Drive or Copy.com for a second link if you're using a free Dropbox account--the Dropbox bandwidth limit is ridiculously easy to hit in the first day a blog train goes live. Google Drive doesn't seem to have a bandwidth limit, just a 15GB free storage limit, which will cover a LOT of blog trains!
@Holly: Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.
BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL ALL YOU LADIES THE KITS ARE SO BEAUTIFUL AN CREATIVE . THANK YOU FOR SHARING AND A LOVELY GREATIVE 2016 TO U ALL HENDRIEN
I've just got myself a Google Drive account and hopefully this will do. So if you are interested in my part, head over to the final list part and check out the alternative download links!
I don't have a blog or anything like a lot of you seem to have (it might seem weird for a digital scrapper, but I'm really not too fond of computers nor do I know a lot about it...). Just thinking about making one gets me nervous... I really don't know where to start and know nothing about it. Is it worth the hassle? Since I would probably only use it for sharing blog train kits.
Is it easier to share stuff like this? Is it expensive to make and keep up a website or blog? How about downloading limits than?
Oh and... I don't have a store like some of you've asked before, so that is also no alternative (That question really made me laugh at first since I was (and probably still am after just a few blog trains) exploring the world of designing scrapping stuff myself. After that I realized it implies a great compliment, so thanks to those who asked... But the answer is no, nor do I have any intend on going professional on this, although I enjoy designing more than I could have imagined! It is really fun to learn new stuff! Also thanks to all for your kind comments on previous blog trains. I hope to see somewhere how you've used it in your own designs and layouts... (really curious!)
I was where you are now a year or so ago, Katherine, though I had a blog for my photography that I'd had up for a couple of years. But I hadn't done much designing and wasn't planning on having a shop... That changed when I was approached last summer about designing for a store, and though that deal fell through, it inspired me to set up a small shop for myself.
Setting up a blog is fairly simple, but you need to make a couple of decisions first, as not doing so can mean you find yourself limited in your choices later. Would you ever CONSIDER potentially wanting to have your own shop, regardless of whether you were designing for a store? If so, would you want that shop hosted on your own webspace, or would you be content with an Etsy shop?
If you'd be okay with an Etsy shop, then you can set up a free blog on wordpress.com or blogspot.com. The Etsy shop can be set up whenever you decide to, also for free. Free blogs often have bandwidth limits, so you'd need to post links in your blog posts to places like Dropbox or Google Drive files like you've done this month to avoid that problem. You're also limited to the themes your free blog host allows; while there will still be customizable themes available, a lot of the really neat ones that you'd have no problem having on a self-hosted site might not be available on a free blog host.
If you might want to host a store on your own webspace, you should start your blog on your own webspace, as migration can be quite a bit of hassle. To do that, you'll probably need to make a bit of an investment, though it's not a really huge one. A domain name (like KatherineRose.com or whatever) will cost you around $10 a year, and .net domains are often a bit cheaper. Then you'll need a web hosting provider, which can usually be found for around $5/month for a cheaper host. (I recommend getting your domain name from the same company you'll be using for web hosting.) Most hosts these days offer a WordPress installer free in their control panel, so it's fairly simple to set up, almost as easy as on wordpress.com. Some hosts have bandwidth limitations, while others offer unlimited bandwidth transfer. If you've got limited bandwidth, then host your downloads elsewhere; if not, hosting them on your webspace and just keeping a backup of it at something like Google Drive (without the sharing functions turned on) is a reasonable solution.
Whichever way you choose, you can be set up fairly quickly and then poke around changing themes in the customizer for a bit--all told, you can have a basic blog using a free theme set up in a couple of hours. I'd recommend choosing one that can support WooCommerce if you're considering having a shop, so you won't have to change themes later on. If you're self-hosting a WordPress-based blog, you can add the free WooCommerce plugin to it when you're ready to add a shop.
It was definitely somewhat confusing the first time I set up a blog, and took me a week or so before I had it the way I wanted it. In contrast, the new site I put up for my scrapbooking shop went together in a couple of days, even with installing and learning WooCommerce and getting my SSL certificate set up. A little experience helps a lot there! I know I've mentioned WordPress a lot, but that's because it's what I know--perhaps someone who hosts on Blogspot or something like that can comment about the ease of setup over there?
I want to thank everyone who posted all these wonderful kits! There's a lot of creativity and hard work there. Thank you!
I just had it brought to my attention that one of my journal cards was missing the JPG file on my zip folder! Oops! I have fixed the link now but if you'd like to download the entire zip again, click here.
If you'd like just the missing jpg, click HERE.
Designers!!! What file sharing sites do you use? I see that there are a lot of sites that cause a lot of heartache in many ways out there. Files are too big, bandwith too much, etc...... Now, I have used many many file sharing sites but recently have come across Sellfy.com. I can upload as much as I want there. There has not been any problems with any downloads. HOWEVER, To GIVE a freebie away on their site the consumer has to share my product on their social media pages and provide their e-mail address which as far as i can tell so Sellfy.com can send an e-mail with a download link. I am getting MANY MANY complaints since I started using this site this month. One message I received here, "I'm going to pass on downloading your part of the DigitalScrapbook.com Jan. blog train. I never heard of what you are asking with your selfie account and I don't like to be forced to advertise for you." As far as I can see there does not seem to be any perfect file sharing site out there. At Sellfy.com there is no extra fee for Free items. And no limitations. Ideas? Insights?
I just use Google Drive. I pay $10 a month for 1 TB of storage. I've never had a problem with bandwidth, etc. I like Google Drive downloads because there isn't a bunch of garbage on the download screen and it never gives pop ups, etc. You can also use it with a free Google Drive account, you just get much less storage, 15GB.
The thing I don't like about Sellfy for free items is that it forces people to give me their email address. The reason it does this is so that you can send email updates and newsletters to your past customers who have downloaded from you. Even if you don't use that feature of Sellfy, it is there and that's why it makes everyone give an email or share on social media (which also gives your Sellfy account an email address so that you can contact that customer in the future). Also, believe it or not, there are people out there who choose not to participate in social media. I often pass on freebies and other things that require me to use Facebook or Twitter to "thank" the person offering the freebie. I have business accounts on Facebook and Twitter but thanking people for things I download for personal use would look awkward and out of place. I choose not to have personal accounts on social media for personal reasons and sometimes that means I miss out on freebies.
Nothing is perfect that's for sure. Personally, I like mediafire. I will admit, the ads on the download pages of free accounts can be a bit scary. I plan to upgrade to a paid account when I can. It will remove the ads from the download pages and give me more space than I can ever use for blog trains.
That said, I do have a Sellfy account. I just don't use it for freebies. I put freebies on mediafire.
Jennifer, I had never heard of Sellfy. I just went and checked it out. What do you use it for?
I had an account with Sellfy when I was going to school for computer programming for selling little apps and such that I wrote.
I just re-openned an account with them because I'm really limited on funds at the moment and you can't set up a store (at least not the way I like to do them) on a free wordpress site but you can link to one lol. So it's a "free" alternative to a store front for now until I can get my self-hosted blog back running again and have things the way I like to have them set up. I considered doing an Etsy store front but I know Sellfy already so it's not that hard for me to get it up and running again.
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