Adding Color

My mother is not the type of person who would understand the phrase "less is more".  Her home is the craziest on the block during the winter holidays.  People drive by slowly to look at everything in the yard.  She has the same zest with her landscaping in the Summer.

Mom loves these little figurines.  There are boys fishing, kids cuddling, and animals lounging throughout the yard.  She certainly doesn't need more.  Yet, my mother can't avoid buying them.  I think part of the appeal is that she has turned this yard decoration into a craft project.  We all know how therapeutic it feels to paint something pretty.  Many people like the "stone" appearance.  My mother prefers to add color.  The results compliment the varied hues throughout the garden.  If you've had one of these around for years, consider giving it new life with paint.  You may need to touch up the colors eventually.  Perform a makeover every few years.  Give your girl a new hair color and a brighter dress.  If you see a woman in the lawn section of the store with a cart full of these, she is probably my mother.

Mixing Patterns

One of the things Crafty Girl and I admire most about our friends over at Captured Moments, is that they are not afraid to mix patterns and colors.

During our scrapbooking retreat each year, we generally sign up for their make-n-take class, because they are so talented.  This year, they offered a standard 12X12 page.  All of the supplies were cut and prepped in advance.  We were just told how to assemble it.

Admittedly, when I pick out background and border paper for a page, I always go for coordinated colors and patterns.  I fear the finished product will be too busy if I don't.  I NEVER mix several pieces of paper together.

Somehow Tara and Tiffany's pages always come together beautifully.  They even used a scrap strip of paper from an old dictionary.  It looks like it belongs in this layout.  Now, we're challenging you to use several colorful pieces of paper in your next scrapbooking page.  Get out of your comfort zone.

If you're interested in making this layout, here is the pattern that Tara and Tiffany provided to us.  Have fun!!


P.S.  You may have noticed a few cute flowers in the layout.  We'll show you how to make those soon.

So Many Faces Of Me

My two favorite forms of art are Scrap Booking and Art Journaling. For those of you who have seen my work before you know this! You will likely see many entries in the future on these topics! I find art journaling very therapeutic and recently discovered my love for it when I took a class. I also love that through these pieces of art I am leaving a little piece of me for future generations to discover. I do quite a bit of genealogy research and all I see are names and dates- It would be my greatest treasure to discover something like this and I hope a descendant of mine will feel the same way. While I’d love to share many more of my art journal pages with you, right now I’m drawn to this page because I found it very challenging for me.

First off, I found that my first Art Journal was very much influenced by the direction of my teacher. I loved her class and when it was over I felt a void so I kept on journaling. This is a page I put together without direction in my second journal. Not having guidance proved to be a challenge for me so I just started doodling on a piece of paper. I never fancied myself as a doodler so when my first few pictures came out ok-- I kept on going.

I thought it would be fun to try and pinpoint the many faces of me. Then when I really started liking the page I had a little fear that I couldn’t replicate it on my art journal- so, in true art journal form- I threw out my idea of being “perfect” and decided it would be taped to the page. I also threw out the idea of using color-something I always like a lot of. I stuck to the basics and tried to create with in the black and white.
I first whisked some black paint on to the page. There was no real goal here. I just did what I thought would look good. Then I taped my paper down in the corner with Washi tape and stared at it. It needed some journaling. I wrote with a white pen about how my eyes and eyebrows giveaway my thoughts and in the end that’s ok-- just be yourself!

It was a fun page to do. Do you like to Art Journal? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences or see your pictures on our Flicker page.