So true! And I am torn between the decision to go or stay home and be productive. The beach I would go to now isn’t a crowded place so I’m sure there would not be a problem with social distancing. The beach I spent my high school years at was a different story. Spring Break in Ft. Lauderdale in the sixties was crowded during the day and boomed with music and dancing at night. Which brings me to the sharing of a scrapbook page I did for Sketches in Thyme blog. My photos are from 2014, therefore not so crowded.
Spatters, a big title cut from Cricut, and pretty Graphic 45 paper are my choice for these pictures. Photos are matted with a dark blue and a strip of light blue tulle added underneath. I added the fussy cut turtle and child, plus a few of the elements from the sticker sheet and found this bright fish from my sticker bin to add to the orange pop. Even the spatters have a pop of the orange.
This was a challenge for me. I struggle with titles anyway and to make such a large one nudged me out of my comfort zone. But, isn’t that what challenges do? I thank you for stopping by, and if you need a nudge to create some layouts for your photos I invite you to check out the Sketches in Thyme blog and find a sketch to try.
Task: Focus on my creative goals so I can appreciate my personal creative activities.
When I feel burn-out I will do something else and not stop being creative. If I’m not feeling another scrapbook page, perhaps I will make a card. Tired of paper, go sew something.
Task: Express my creative energy every day to find the joy in making art.
Sitting and wishing for something amazing to inspire me is futile. I make amazing happen! Not liking a result? Quickly survey the project and come up with one thing I could have done differently and jump back on the next project. Remember that practice changes everything; just don’t strive for perfection in art, doing art is the goal.
Task: Analyze why I am feeling this way about my particular art by looking below the surface and identify the reason.
Is it because my page doesn’t look like other peoples pages? The obvious answer is that mine doesn’t look like another person’s page is because every creative person is different. My page shouldn’t look like another page or it is just a copy and not mine. I have struggled with that, finding my style. It is fine to admire the work of another. I will keep ding that. Now, though, I will analyze the parts to see what I want to incorporate in my own work. I want to do more layers and clusters, so I will look at what others do to accomplish that to my liking.
We scrapbookers are coming off a major event and I wonder if this has contributed to my slump. Since iNSD I have made 17 layout pages. Those were done in one week. I’ve made only two pages since.
One is for Sketches in Thyme blog, as a DT, and that page I will show when it goes live.
The other is for a challenge at A Cherry On Top to use certain cuts, and only those cuts, of patterned papers. Unfortunately, I was not feeling embellishments, but I may add some before putting the page into the album.
Yesterday I started working in a book by Dana Fox. “Watercolor With Me In The Ocean”. I forced myself to start it and once I did I was so happy! I have so wanted to work with watercoloring. I’ve only dabbled it and would like to get better. This has been a delightful step to sparking my joy of art again.
Thanks for stopping in, hope you enjoy my little task list. Won’t you share with me and the rest of the viewers your ideas on this subject of not letting our love of art fall into a clump?
First off I played with watercolors for the background. I used a good quality paper, but it isn’t watercolor paper, and it held up to the water well. It is Tin Pail, a very light gray, from Fun Stampers Journey. There is more creative ‘play’ I did on this page for the Sketches in Thyme challenge sketch.
It was fun to find shapes using my various dies for the embellishments. The flowers and leaves are rubber stamps by Stampin’ Up!. I used Lumiere acrylic paint. With the stamp on my Stamping Platform I brushed the paint on the stamps and got this interesting result. When dry I used dies to cut them out. I feel it added to the lively and happy times that are reflected in these photos.
The sketch challenge is still going on, so hop on over and join us at Sketches in Thyme blog.
When I spotted this sketch at Sketch-N-Scrap blog I was off on a hunt for a background and found this one that my DD had pulled from a gelli print and didn’t want to use.
I do love flowers and hexagons. I used an Altenew image with Nuvo gold detail embossing powder.
A couple days ago I mailed out 4 and today my DD and I decided to spend our day making more cards to send.
I am particularly pleased with how my card turned out using this sketch challenge from Sketch-N-Scrap
Although I moved my sentiment down a bit from the Sketch-N-Scrap original, I have kept the main idea. The bottom panel is done with a tutorial from Splitcoast Tissue Paper Watercolor Technique. Papers on top are from sheets of vellum I made myself quite a while back. Later wishing I had also die cut the top, but didn’t, I added dots to look like piercing with a gold gel pen. Main image I colored with watercolor pencils. After stamping the sentiment and cutting out the flag I edged it with Stampendous Fran-Tage powder.
Here are the other two I finished today.
You might notice the theme is flowers. Left is a Heartfelt Creations flower preciously made. I placed it on a Spellbinders die and added some sprigs die cut from some purple Bazzill cs. The one on the right is a product of white heat embossing with pearls in the center.
Hope you are finding creative activities as you stay in and wait this virus out. I appreciate you stopping by.
Documenting our visit to Sanrio Puroland in Japan. Awesome place. Shots of this family of mine walking in. Leia is holding up her ticket for me to photograph.
Sketch #414 at Sketches in Thyme Blog
This is a great sketch. Really liked working with it for my March DT layout. Having all the prompts for placing my embellishments was fun, especially since I really enjoy arrows and chevrons. The Hello Kitty embellishments were cut on my Cricut from the Hello Kitty cartridge. Although it didn’t turn out like I had hoped, I applied light texture paste over a stencil. Really not noticeable, need to work on my texture pasting and make sure it will show up as planned. The kangi stamp is an old one from Stampin’ Up!. I used 3 chipboard arrows, a chevron die, and the black arrow I cut when I cut the title letters on Cricut. Added some punched stars to the cluster, added some sequins here and there, and called it done.
Thanks for popping in. Hope you are getting some inspiration to go make your own memory pages sometime. Do pop in at Sketches in Thyme and play along with one of the sketches yourself.
These are photos of my DD when she visited the kids last February. She had cut vinyl for this t-shirt for our precious Leia.
I knew I wanted to use lavender and I actually had this piece of violet Bazzill paper in my stack on my work table from a previous page. I backed it with a piece of Heartfelt Creations soft lavender, liked it better against the busy script, The script is in gold foil. I used from a pad of DCWV for everything else. My clusters are kind of crazy, but they all use some very old stash of brads, ribbons and washi. Even some left over hearts that were cut and not used.
Yesterday my DD sorted all our little extra die cuts that we had made but didn’t end up using into little cases, that she labeled. So easy to just pull out the “hearts” case. I went on a treasure hunt and added a few little hearts, since it was a heart on the focal shirt it needed some hearts, not to overpower since I ended up with a rather busy page.
I made one more face mask yesterday, and one the day before. I’ve enjoyed good responses to my masks. I do have one more to make for a friend who works at an auto supply shop and is out and about a lot still for his job.
Still with pockets, Dragonfly is hand embroidered for a friend who loves dragonflies. My DD likes skulls and it is lined with red T-shirt material. Both have pockets and nose wires. I find this to be the most comfortable of the two styles I see offered as a pattern. Mine is very comfortable to me and I wear it when I go to the post office or the store – which is very rare.
I’m staying home for the most part. Trying to craft more. My daughter is a real gem, she gets into the organizational mode a lot lately. Tomorrow she wants to tackle the garage – oh my!
The other day my daughter saw face masks made at home with cotton. She asked me to make her one since I have PLENTY of fabric to use. She picked out a skull print (not shown here) and so I made it. A friend of hers saw it and asked if I would make some she could send to her sister. So I did.
After a few hours reading blogs, etc. online, I decided it would be nice to make them with a pocket. The medical personnel can add inserts of non woven material that can add to their protection. That, of course, doesn’t make these anywhere near virus proof! But, when their hospital is in very sort supply of masks at all, these will help.
They can be washed and used again the next day, too. The elastic is left unsecured so the nurse who will get one can adjust to their face size then tie and rotate down into the casing.
Not all of these prints are “baby”. That was what we were going for as our friend’s sister worked with the newborn department. T were made as my samples. Once I got the pattern and sewing process down, I could cut and sew the 3 child-friendly fabrics. If the nurses are good with these, I hope to make more to send
I am pleased with how this layout turned out today. The old photo, approximately 28 years old, caught my eye as I searched for an old photo of me. This would be much sweeter to turn into a scrapbook page.
My late-in-the-day photo isn’t the best, but it is what I made today and I had to share. Those triangular pieces were hand cut after I made a template for size. A few different papers were pulled. After each was cut I inked the edges with some violet archival ink. I cut the strips of the lavender card stock into strips slightly wider than the middle of the patterned piece. Not much embellishments since the vertical design was rather bold. The Prima flowers with the other elements seemed welcomed. The piece of vellum was torn to give it interest before sticking it under the photo.
Hope you found some inspiration today for your own crafting.
Are you stuck about being stuck? Check my 7 steps and get your “crafty” on.
1. Better self-discipline –
Living a life of pleasure is simple.* Everyone can “Netflix and chill” * or “catch the latest crafty Youtube”. But those easy things will not give you inner satisfaction. The reason that we don’t do anything useful with our crafty supplies isn’t about time, it is our lack of self-discipline.
2. Recognize Procrastination-
The poison of falling into procrastinating on a regular basis zaps your creative endeavors long term. When your scrapbook pages or greeting cards never get finished, or even started, they become an unwelcomed reminder of failure, which makes us feel bad about ourselves. Not having all the time we want, or think we need, to craft turns into simple procrastination as we wait for a better time that is sure to come in the future – someday. Do not think you will be given the perfect time for any crafty project – we must make it happen or fall victim to procrastination.
3. Know Your Why-
Are you overwhelmed by the idea of starting your project? Many of us are pulled in lots of directions daily. There is, after all, more to life, more to staying one step ahead of all the demands in our daily life that we must attend to. But our creative desire calls to us anyway. Do we get lost in our unorganized crafty world? It becomes quite the chore to find just the right photos, papers, etc., when the opportunity shows up to start a scrapbook layout, so we lose interest and find something else to do instead. Are we so unsure of our outcome that we hesitate to start, fearing it won’t be good enough by other’s standards?
4. Step by Step-
Come up with your first step. Perhaps the first step is to think. We are all living with different reasons why we aren’t fulfilling our crafty dream. Some of the firsts might be to ask yourself what you really want and why you want that particular activity in your day. Write down your purpose, and propose a plan to get started. For me, I want to get the many photos documented on pages for my kids to view in the future. I don’t want them in boxes, void of my personal touch. I believe my pages will be viewed with love and that makes me happy. Add all your secondary reasons as well.
5. Make an Appointment forYour Creativity-
A daily habit can be formed by scheduling time every day. Know how much time you can manage and still meet all your other requirements. Be flexible but be strict. If you know you can set aside a half hour every day, make sure you follow through with that half hour – everyday. If you know you can set aside 2 hours a week, then that is your goal. Usually when we schedule an appointment we have a better chance of doing that activity. To repeat: be flexible – move your times around, but meet the equivalent; be strict – letting your allotted time slide is not wise to achieve your desired goals. I must note that unforeseen problems can, and often do, show up, like a friend who fell and broke both her wrists!
6. Just Do Something –
The blank page is staring at you from your table. You have no idea what to do first. This is an excellent opportunity for you to “Just do something”. Refuse to be stuck. While waiting for the perfect spark, pick up something from your supplies that appeals to you and think about how it could be used. Do this “pick up something” for as many times as it takes to begin your page or card. As you continue to work on your daily habit of crafting you will likely develop a pattern for starting a page or card. I often start with a sketch or other challenge for a layout. For a card I start with an image I want for the occasion, like a bird or flower stamp. Most of all don’t give up.
7. Gather your Ideas-
“Inspiration is all around us”, don’t you hear that often? I do, but where? It can be tricky or time consuming to just look for inspiration. Here are some suggestions to get you started. Right now with the world situation I recommend Online groups (ask me about my favorites (wink!). Look at magazines online and sites like Pinterest. Type something in your Browser and see what you get. But, be forewarned, internet sites will eat up your productive time! The time spent doing this should be greatly limited and is not to be part of your allotted crafty time where you should actually be making something. Perhaps you can find an online crafting class to take that will develop your habit.
Note: My opening was inspired by an article published September 30, 2018, by Darius Foroux.
My layout inspired by a FB online Crop
This challenge, and it was a challenge for me, was to use 7 – 10 die cuts. I also used a sketch challenge for my base design.
Please let me know if I can help with any of the information I have provided. Also, I’d love for you to leave me a link to your scrapbook pages and cards so I can see what you are currently doing. I’m sure to find inspiration from you!
