Time for Family

I love my extended family & love spending time with them. They live all over the country & it is hard to get together. Life is busy for everyone. On this occasion my sister-in-law wanted to travel & spend time with us as her birthday wish, so they flew from Texas for a long weekend. We had a great time & it was a wonderful weekend. Little did I know it would be one of the last times we would spend with her husband Jeff. An all round interesting story teller & kind, fun man who was also a fabulous father/husband. It was one of the first times we spent quality time with him. A few weeks later he was diagnosed with cancer and died 1 1/2years later. This photo was taken as we spent the day walking around. I cherish the short time we had to get to know him better & it is a reminder to me to take the time out & spend it with the people you love. 

 I took a Bo Bunny paper & inked it up. Adding washi tape & inky embellishments. It is a simple page but I love how it makes the photo pop. Remember to document the people in your life who are important to you!!!

Fashionista

Happy Earth Day!!! For those of you who know me- I love to reuse, recycle! So yay.  Here is a little inky layout I did. I started this page with a patterned paper that I didn't care for & gessoed it. I used some great stencils from want2scrap & craftersworkshop with lots of fun color. I added a metal cage cut from Spellbinders colored with alcohol ink.

  More flowers were cut from a Spellbinders die & stitched . The centers are bling from my stash & the alphabet too-yay. Using it up baby!

Artistcellar

I was selected as a guest blogger on Artistcellar!!!!! Yay! I love their stencils, they are very different & great quality too. Here is the project I did. I made a small canvas purse- perfect for summer!!!

 The stencils I used are Reims from the Cathedral series-(one of my favorites) & Flower of Life.

I did a tutorial on how I got the results of this fun purse you can find the post here. I hope you like it, please leave a comment!

Project Life & CSI65

Wohoo I am excited baby!!! I have fallen way behind on my project life (PL). Working on December currently, which is discouraging but I refuse to give up & I am trying to catch up. The challenge is I spend too much time working on each little spot. I know I need to speed it up but how???? Answer CSI!!!! Color, Stories, Inspiration. Each week they have a new challenge but they often add on a printable that you can download & print out with all sorts of journal spots, ephemera, sometimes paper. I wanted to get back after a few missed weeks to doing the layouts but I was trying to catch up on PL-the answer- obviously PL+CSI=a marriage made in heaven or at least in scrapland. The most amazing side effect was I got my page done much faster because I stuck to the elements in the print out!!!! Unbelievable joy & happiness!!!

Some of the elements I adhere directly to the photo & some on top to add depth & interest. The cut-out pinwheel I adhered on the outside with pop dots.

 Most of the cutouts I also distressed the edges to help them be noticed. For the CSI case file challenge I used stripes & the birds as my evidence & testimony is 3 words-playing, goofy, and live. The only downside with this is because of the photos I can't stay within the color rules (only 10% of the page can be outside the required colors & neutrals.) I hope they don't mind!!!

Follow Up Friday #4

Hi all it has been a crazy couple of weeks before, during & after spring break-hectic, hectic. I dragged my family home to Montreal to see the Granparents, & ski. I even got to take a Donna Downey class- fun, fun. Coming home I was slammed catching up. 3 kids in sports makes for some scrambling! Having lost the mojo, yesterday I just started arting for fun. I have 2 classes I am supposed to be designing but I decided I needed to just play. I am so glad I did. The challenge with teaching what you love is it becomes a job and I start fading off into other areas. So this play brought me right back where I need to be. I have wanted to do more collage for awhile & also to do more doodling. Here is my Follow Up Friday page:

I am currently taking the online class 21 secrets- an annual class with 21 teachers dedicated to teaching about art journaling in it's various forms. As a technique junkie/teacher it is sometimes hard for me to learn new things, or the teacher's style is very different...I have adopted the philosophy to try hard to find a way to incorporate what I am seeing into my style, or just be inspired to work on my personal art. Sometimes I just work on something completely different than my video "friend". The goal is to learn but if the material is not new to me I can still be inspired. My first class was with Cathy Bluteau. You can check out here video on what she does in class here. 

I have wanted to work on collage more, using my Copic markers for more than just coloring in stamps and to do more doodling. I was able to do all 3 on this aj page. My piece turned out a lot different than Cathy's which is great,the idea being to incorporate the inspiration!

I did this in my quote book so my background was printed paper. I adhered 2 pages together creating a spot for a pocket in which I put a tag from my wipe-up stash. This made me ridiculously happy using up supplies-yay. 

A lot of the collage pieces came from scrapbook paper and a stamp. This page turned out different than some of my regular work even though I used most of the same techniques, I used them in a different way.  I couldn't figure out a way to put my quote on the page without wrecking it so I put it on the tag.

The back of the tag I journaled how this quote reflects my parenting style.Thanks to Cathy for being my Follow Up Friday Inspiration! You can find her blog here.