Happy Easter





Exciting News!

I am honored to announce that I have joined the Soul Team over at Soul Scrappers http://soul-scrappers.ning.com/.   This is a wonderful community of creative people.  There are scrapbookers, card makers, mixed media and hybrid artists.

They have challenges to help inspire as well as tutorials and specialty classes.  I've taken Stampbooking which shows you creative ways to include stamping on your scrapbook pages and a journaling course.  One of the current challenges is a quote challenge.  I decided to do an art journal page in place of a regular LO.

I had the hardest time creating the background.  I started with a real pretty blue, but as the page developed there was too much pretty blue.  I tried several other pages and just wasn't happy with the color.  So I went back to the original paper and then blended in several different gesso backgrounds.  This helped to balance the background without losing too much of the color.

There are way to many digi credits to caption under the photo so here they are:
Studio Tangie@scrapbookgraphics.com- Mad Hatter Font, Momerath Font, Journal Anthology 7, Quickity Split Borders, Being Me collab with Rosey Posey, Art Journal Carvan 2012 Parcel#5; Rosey Posey@scrapbookgraphics.com-Synopsis;   Jacque Larson @The Lily Pad-Here to There collab with Emily Merrit.  Whew!  I think that's everyone!

All I can say is thank goodness for ACDSee or I'd never find my digi elements!  LOL.

I hope you can stop by and visit us over at Soul Scrappers.  I'll have my first Negative Sketch Challenge go live on April 9, 2012.. Woohoo!  Hope to see you there!  Until then Happy Craftin'!

Why Do Challenges?

Credits-Apologies to the designers, I lost the file

A lot of us get into scrapbooking initially because we want to document special events or family history.  But that can be done with a regular photo album and some note cards. What is that hook that gets us scrapbooking?  I believe it's because we want to add our own touch of creativity, whether through journaling or decorating the page with embellishments.

Challenges are a great way to spark your creativity or encourage yourself to try something new/different.  These two LOs I made while doing challenges over at my favorite place, Soul Scrappers.

"Going for the Score!" was a color challenge to use black, white and blue.

"The Big Game" was a negative space sketch challenge.

Neither of these LOs would have been created without the inspiration of the challenges.
And the best part is most everyone shares their LOs for even more inspiration.  I love looking at other  LOs to see different interpretations of the challenges.  The galleries are a great source for inspiration.

So how about?  Are you up for a challenge? Head on over to http://soul-scrappers.ning.com/ and check it out.

Thanks for stopping by!

Clouds + Song Lyric Challenge = Joy!

Digi Credits: My Little Scraps- Another Graphy Alpha

Anna Aspnes-Old Film No1

You know I love Clouds and you know I love the Song Lyric Challenges over at Souls Scrappers.  Well this month the SLC is "Blue Skies" by Willie Nelson.  Pure Joy!  I mean really, could it get any better?  I sing that song all the time, probably has something to do with the appreciation I have for clouds.                                         

Friday, I was stopped at a red light waiting to get onto the Interstate.  There were some interesting clouds over to the East and since I was stopped I grabbed my camera. :-)  While I was waiting for it to complete it's start up process I heard loud engines.  I looked up and there these guys were. <CLICK> .   I was jazzed when I got home and saw that I had captured the biplanes.

I used the photo as the background and then duplicated it to created the beveled photo in the center.  I kept it real simple because I wanted this page to be all about the biplanes.

Have you ever had one of ther serendipitous moments?

From Screen 2 Scrap March Inspiration

Stampin Up! Vintage Overlays
Viva Artistry Silver Bells;
Anna Aspnes White Paint 1
12x12 Clipping Masks

This month over at  http://screen2scrap.blogspot.com/ the Movie Poster inspiration is "The Day After Tomorrow".  The bonus criteria is a white title, one photo only, white monochromatic LO with a touch of blue.  The Statue of Liberty's arm reminded me of the photo I took at Christmas of my sister holding the phone up for everyone to yell "Merry Christmas" when my nephew from overseas called.   If you've never tried FS2S Movie Poster Challenge, give this month a try.  I know you'll have fun!

When You Change Up Your Journaling

Souls Scrappers had this interesting sketch challenge-design by Karen Findlay.  When I saw the line of punched shapes I thought of a tree branch which led me to scrap about Scott's terrarium.

At first I journaled the who, what, where:
Scott's new hobby is making terrariums.  He collected materials from our yard and the lake front.  When he was done he showed Jacob. Scott plans to create several more terrariums this spring.  We will have our own Father Nature in residence.

Digi Elements:
Natural History Museum Collab
by Dawn Inskip, MLE Card

Then I paused and thought about why I took those pictures.  I took those pictures because I loved seeing Scott and Jacob spending time together. Scott sharing what he was doing and Jacob paying attention (that's asking a lot of a teenager!)

So I changed the journaling to read:
Scott and Jacob sharing some time together.  Scott showed Jacob his latest passion: Terrariums.  It was wonderful seeing them spend time together. We all look forward to seeing what grows from this project.





Changing the journaling made the LO more meaningful, more personal.  I'm glad I did it.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a Happy Craft Day!

I Made a Drop Shadow!

Digi Credits: Studio Tangie-Ethereal Flowers,
Gesso 2, HearfirstGraffiti;
Studio Flergs-Heartfirst;
Fiddlette Designs-Caliope Catches the Moon;
Charlize Creations-You are Loved; Darcy Baldwin- DigiTara font

My newest LO for the AJC 2012.  I played around with different blending modes .  I even made my own drop shadows for the dancers.  I created a shape using the shape tool and filled it with a medium gray.  Then I used the blur tool to smudge the edges and voila! customized shadowing. 

I also used the pen tool to hand draw the pathway.  I tried to handwrite the journaling, but I will need a lot more practice before I can do that!  In the meantime I keep plugging along in PSE.  The more I learn the more I realize this is one awesome program!  I don't think I'll ever learn it all.

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Scrappin'