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Color Inspiration #50

Here's another color inspiration challenge from Kristina at www.kwernerdesign.com. This time she's giving away prizes, so I'm excited! I decided to do a digital page for the challenge. It was fun!


I'm thinking I need a pin cushion! Ha! I actually do need one.

I love when pages just come together, because it's not very often that everything just falls into place. I started this page yesterday. When I was looking through the pictures and saw this one, right away I knew what I wanted to journal. Then ideas just started flooding into my mind and it was exciting! I love when that happens!!

I used a few products that I bought today from Little Dreamer Designs. They are having their birthday sale. I had been eyeing a few things, so what a perfect time to purchase.

The background paper is from the paper set called Cupid's Mark.
'Road' is an alpha brush stamp called Free Spirit.
The date stamp is called Messy Date Stamps.
The red block thing that the date is stamped on is called Floral Date Block Brushes.

Organic Orange

Isn't that such a cool name for a color? Maybe Stampin' Up! will come out with a new orange color and name it that. That would be COOL! My dad updated his blog today with these pictures of the bike he custom-built for me and I giggled at how cool it looks. He's doing an incredible job! Check out his blog for more pictures. What color would you pick for your own custom-made bike?

Spring!

These are a couple of pages I made last week. I don't have much to say today. I'm kind of in a funky mood. I'm trying to take things one moment at a time...just stuff going on.

It's like that book...

Remember that book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" Each character sees a different character 'looking at me'.

What do you see? When you look at a picture or a set of pictures you want to scrap, what do you see? Is it a feeling? A color? A smile?

Something I read in Ali Edwards blog this morning got my attention. She said, "So much of creativity is about how you see things."

She also talked about how we often just pass by things, never giving it a second glance. I looked it as how I pass up creative inspiration because I don't really look or give things a second glance. In other words, I'm not stopping to smell the roses. Or I find myself thinking that a creation absolutely needs to look one way when if I would just stop and look, I would see that it's actually supposed to look different.

Let me give you an example. I've been scrapbooking some of our Alaskan vacation pictures from last year. When I look at those pictures, I see the vibrance and light in the pictures. I want to capture that. I want the pictures to be the main focus. I don't feel that way about pictures of my cats, of normal day activities, and so on. And sometimes I'll try to cram the vacation pictures into a page I would normally create for a picture of my cats, us, etc. And it doesn't work! When I do that I'm not creating as I see it. Sometimes I'll be inspired by someone's work, but when I try to imitate that, it doesn't work. It's like taking someone elses creativity and trying to shove it through tunnels of my own creativity. And things get stuck! Ha! As soon as I notice that I pretty much stop what I'm doing and I'll either save or delete my work (if I'm working in Photoshop).

I also notice that I work totally differently when I'm doing digital and traditional. With digital I feel more flexible. I can work on something and if I don't like it I just hit the delete key. But with traditional I can't hit delete. Instead I just look at a pile of things I just wasted. I've learned my lesson in that area and now I absolutely know that I have to have something that I 'see' before I plunge into a traditional page project. Like last week's page with the sewn butterflies...that was something I saw. I had been inspired by something earlier that week. I realize that I cannot just make it happen with traditional. I suppose it's that way with digital too, but I feel like I have more freedom with digital.

What do you see? What inspires you? Are you passing creativity by? Maybe you are too focused on your page looking like the next person's page. Maybe you are being too hard on yourself. Maybe you think you should have more time to create, so you become discouraged and don't do anything with the time you do have. Maybe you just need to sit back and enjoy those moments with your children, your spouse, your pet, instead of scrapping them right now--those moments are so inspirational! (you could just journal about those moments instead of scrapping them right now) What's important to you? Do you feel like you are scrapbooking just to scrapbook?

I'm a rebel

It feels kinda weird holding stamps that belong to another company when I'm a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. I can hear ya'll shouting out, "TRAITOR!" Haha! Anyway, these are some stamp sets I purchased that came in the mail today. Papertrey Ink has amazing service! I'm SO thankful they ship Priority to Alaska (I won't even start whining about that again--promise). By the way, I think Creating Keepsakes returned all of my money for that incident that happened, so I'm thankful! Go CK! So back to what I'm trying to say here: the stamps were wrapped in tissue paper, almost like they were sending these to me as a gift. Well, not that wrapped, but I could tell whoever packaged it up took their time. It was wonderful! I felt special! Ha!


The packaging alone makes me think I should just keep them in the loft for decoration. (Don't worry, I'll open them)

Each set comes with a CD case and stickers to put on the case so you know what each stamp says. I'm new to stamping with acrylic/clear stamps, so I'm still trying to figure all of this out. Anyone know how to clean these stamps? I think I remember hearing something about soap and water. But seriously, I'm clueless! And what about inks? I'm thinking that SU craft inks will work better than the classic. Oh, and I got some cardstock too, but I haven't opened it yet. It looks THICK! I can't wait to play!

And this who I found sleeping in the loft when I went up there to take pictures. Makes me want to snuggle with him. Awww, kitty!

Family pages

This page was so much fun! I wanted to sew fabric butterflies that I cut out with my Big Shot onto fabric and use it for a page. The butterflies are made out of some fabric by Amy Butler. When I saw this picture of me as a baby with my grandpa I thought it would be perfect for what I wanted to do for this page. It's a soft picture. The quality isn't the greatest, but it works for me.

I actually used the sewing machine for fabric! Whoohoo! I had the speed set at the lowest turtle and I slowly sewed around these butterflies.

And I was SO excited to see that rub-ons will stick to the fabric. *cheering* 'Grandpa' is some rub-ons from a Making Memories (I think) pack of rub-ons I recently purchased from our local scrapbook store. They were too cute to pass up! They have bunnies, chicks, and spring colors! I think I'll have to do an Easter page with childhood pictures soon.

This was the page I mentioned before that I had ready for pictures, but I hadn't found the perfect pictures for it yet. This was another page inspired by Elizabeth Kartchner, but again, it doesn't look anything like it. Sometimes I just have to have an idea to spark creativity. Those felt letters gave me a hard time again, but I really do like them! The 'M' is distorted a bit. Oops!

Frame

I enjoy changing the decoration in this frame each season. I'm not sure what I'll do with the recent decorations I've had in them, but maybe they'll end up in a scrapbook page. This time I decided to do butterflies since that seems to be a trend for me right now. I'm really enjoying that Stampin' Up! butterfly die for the Big Shot. The brads are from Basic Grey's Urban Prairie set.

Birthday girl!

This picture makes me laugh. It was taken today on behalf of Shadow's 5th birthday! Doesn't she look happy? She looks like she wants to sing that song that goes, "It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to." Or maybe it would be, "It's my party, and I'll be mad if I want to." She does NOT like the camera. She would probably say she hates it. Poor kitty! I have purple plans for this picture. *wink*

Thank you

This was another page inspired by Elizabeth Kartchner. I think I'm drawn to the colors she uses on her pages. There is always yellow, pink, turquoise, and other yummy colors. The page that inspired me is found on page 99 of the May 2009 Creating Keepsakes magazine.

There's journaling on this page, but it was too personal to share on the web.

This page was actually a bit frustrating. I realize that I'm not the greatest sewer/seamstress (whatever they are called) in the world, but wow...you want to see a girl get frustrated? Just come over and watch me sew! Hahaha! The fabric was bunching up on me and it wasn't looking pretty. So I had to change things up a bit and use more paper to sew than fabric.

Speaking of which...I saw this idea for a wall hanging quilt that I'm tempted to make that I found in a Creating Keepsakes magazine. It wasn't the topic of the article or the picture that I saw, but I noticed it. Ha! It's one of those quilts that doesn't look perfect. It's rather sloppy looking (ok, not 'sloppy', but like the pieces aren't 'perfect'--you know what I mean?) Maybe I will talk more on that later...

Fantastic Three--Thursday Page 1

I printed these pictures with another page I had in mind. See, I have this other page I have prepared and ready to put some pictures on, but I haven't found the right pictures for it yet. These pictures were hard because of the stripes on the shirts (for some reason it was a challenge), so I decided to invite more stripes to the page and really make things complicated. Ha! I think it worked out well. I'm trying to use up some of my favorite traditional paper so I can make room for some more I just purchased.


The word 'fantastic' is a rub-on, as well as a bunch of the flowers. They are from a rub-on booklet by Basic Grey called Offbeat. I love this cheerful and colorful set! I have the buttons and some of the paper, too. In fact, the striped paper right behind the pictures is one of the Offbeat papers. I never know what to put for titles, so when I saw the 'fantastic' in the booklet I thought, "Hmmm, fantastic three!" I know that it's usually 'fantastic four', but why not? Ha! And I really liked having my own handwriting on this page. I can do that on digital pages too, but I just have to practice my handwriting a bit more. Oh, see that orange paper? I think I bought like 6 sheets of that altogether--it's still a favorite!

I love the felt letters for the 'Three', but they don't like to lay right, so I had to make them behave. Ha!

Thursday Page 2

I thought I would do some traditional scrapbooking today. I've been meaning to. I know for some people when the sun comes out they want to go outside and play in a garden or something...but when the sun comes out I like to create (plus I have no interest in gardening). Sure I spend time outside...and I have plans for that today, too! But in the meantime, this is what I did...


This page was inspired by a page Elizabeth Kartchner created. It's in an older Creating Keepsakes magazine (2008) and I'm way too lazy to go look it up right now. My page doesn't look anything like it, except for the blue and the 'makes me happy'. The orange letters are from Yellow Bicycle, and I believe they are supposed to be 'Halloween', but they don't look like Halloween letters except that they are orange.

Oops...I was going to post another page here, but the wrong pics came up and I already did all of that journaling above, so I'll just post it above.

There's a Tigger in the loft!

Every once in awhile Tigger comes to visit me in the loft when I'm working. Tonight he decided to lay on the table next to my sewing machine.


"I hear you."

"Yes? What do you want? Can't you see I'm trying to sleep?"

"I hear something!"

"Hello!"

Cards

I've been wanting to post pictures of these cards, but I kept on forgetting. Oops!


This was a card we made at the stamping workshop this last weekend. I'm still amazed that purple is coming back into my life. Ha!

This was the other card we made. I guess I was also in a butterfly mood. Both cards are using the new Great Friends set from the mini catalog. It's becoming one of my favorite sets.

Each month for my club members I give them a color challenge and technique. This was the color combination for this month. The technique was masking, which I did with the leaves behind the butterfly.

Tangle Lakes

I'm having so much fun scrapbooking our Alaskan vacation from last year! I'm really enjoying the pictures. Today I was thinking about how beautiful it was on our trip. We had gorgeous weather! Sure, it wasn't 80 degrees or anything like that, but it was sunny most of the time. I am SO thankful for the bright orange tents we both had. I know this might sound funny, but sometimes we pick clothes (colors)just so they will be fun for me to scrapbook. Quent bought a new rain jacket last year and he picked a bright green one with my scrapbooking in mind. What a guy! We don't always wear certain colors with scrapbooking in mind, but it's neat when it does happen that way. We just laugh about it now.

The 'tangle' letters are from a FREE digital kit by Shabby Princess. Check it out!

Rainbows

I was inspired by this page Ali Edwards created. It's a simple design. I like how the pictures get the spotlight. I liked the clear pocket Ali had on her page. When I saw it I thought, "I can make that!" So I made it digitally. How fun!

For the pocket I created a square shape using my marquee tool. I created a new layer and then filled it with white. Then I lowered the opacity. I'm not sure what percentage it went to, but maybe like at least 20%. Then I used a stitching brush and made the stitches around the 3 sides of my pocket. I put the tag and journaling behind the pocket.

Sharing

Tonight when I was searching on the internet, I found a website and book that excited me. In this blog I have talked about being 'true to your style' and BEing yourself. I see so many women who don't like themselves because they don't feel good enough. I see so many comparing themselves with others. I'm guilty of that, too. One area I see others (and myself) struggle with is with body image. We were all created with different body types and sizes, but we are constantly bombarded with images that *could* make us feel bad about ourselves or thinking we have to look a certain way.

I wanted to share what I found with you tonight. It has nothing really to do with scrapbooking or stamping, but encouragement to BE yourself and to BE thankful for who God has made you to be...no matter your size/weight/etc. Oh, and I have to add that the website design is pretty cool...so maybe that fits in with the scrapbooking/stamping. Ha!

Wonderfully Made
Heal book
Heal Journey

Friday Pages

This was a page I created digitally that was inspired by the page below, which is in the May 2009 Creating Keepsakes magazine. It was created by Elizabeth Kartchner. I really like these colors together. It was fun creating it digitally, but I think I like the page so much that I might have to purchase the supplies for it and create it again traditionally.

I had fun with this page! It's busy, but I like it!

Thursday pages

I was stuck on this page for awhile, so I just left it and came back to it later. Originally the photos were in their color version on this page, but once I changed the background paper from yellow to teal, I decided they would look better black and white. The flowers are called foxgloves, which I got for free a long time ago from a Scrap Girls newsletter. I thought it was cool because we have a lot of foxgloves in Alaska, so it was perfect for an Alaskan page! I love how all of the colors go together on this page. Oh, and the font for 'Wonder Lake' is called Oklahoma. I was watching the movie 'Oklahoma' a few days ago and I thought the font for the movie title was really cool, so I searched for it online. I think I got it from http://www.dafont.com/, which has free fonts.

This was another page I started and took a break from. I think it was during the creative drought. I had the brown wood paper and the picture, and then I stopped. I LOVE how this page came together! I turned the vibrance up to 100% for the picture. I think it looked that cool (and even better) in real life!!