Places for Creative Inspiration

Day 12 over at the 21 day challenge at Twopeasinabucket.com...I skipped yesterday, but the quotes are always so motivating. I don't know what it is, the snow on top of more snow, kid activities, the sick lil'guy or what, but whatever creative intent I had over the last two days has been zapped.
{I guess I'm doing something creative right now....I love updating the blog, I just try not to let it get too obsessive. It seems to fill a little creative need to write and share creative thoughts. Whether through words, photography, doodles, cards..etc. So today I made a little time for me}

While blog surfing....some real cool sites that I've been going back to

Music: Pandora Radio - just type in your fav song or artist and it automatically compiles a song list similar type songs. (found this on the 2peas site message board) cool. Its free and you have to register, but its pretty quick and painless I'm sure its been around awhile but I just discovered it! I've been playing it in the background.

A new stamping company to love: The Unity Stamp Company. Reeeeally pretty designs. Not available yet though. Great samples on their blog. I always hope that these new companies with fresh designs are available locally, but that is not always the case. I'll never figure out why our local scrapbooking, papercrafting, and/or rubberstamping shops don't carry these beautiful new lines that are appearing lately....they just seem to stick with the industry standbys. Of course you can probably find them online for sure.....but I always try to find it locally first.

Cool Design Inspiration: Rebecca Thuss. {also found this on the 2peas message board} just a glance through her beautiful portfolio gets the creative juices flowing. From one of the photos I had an idea for some favors for our kid's first communion coming up this spring. She has this under "weddings" but its such a versatile idea it could work for any event you need some simple favors for. They are presented beautifully in bowls or platters decorated with berry wreaths of some sort. Inside are little packets filled with teas for the guests to take home. You can't see every little detail, but it is enough to get the ideas flowing. Once I saw that I thought it would be an easy one to do and instead of teas I'm thinking flower seed packets inside {keeping with the spring time theme}

other big news {well for me it is :) : our daughter's 2nd grade artwork has been chosen to be included in the a district wide Art Show. That is this afternoon. They will exhibit grades 1-5 and 30 little artists per school are chosen. Can't wait to take some cute pics. Its always so cute to see the little artists standing near their awesome creations. This is very cool since her brother was in it last year. They both get to share the glory in each other's creative spirit!
A good mommy moment!

quickly she posted

Okay, the days are getting longer and I am so waiting for spring. Hence, the new banner with my favorite spring things....flowers, rain, and bare baby feet :)

I sidetracked a little in March -- here we are on day 6 but I haven't updated with my start of a "one week at a time" scrapbook -- it is one of my personal goals to get that started. Of course that is inspired by something Ali has done in the past. Like so many of her ideas/projects this one has inspired a whole bunch of neat ideas to capture the everyday moments in our lives. The days go by so quickly sometimes....I was reviewing old photos {from 2002} and I just had to stop at some of them and relive that moment just briefly. So good. There are some days when I just feel like I take so many pictures -- many more than I will ever use in an album -- but then I remember what it feels like to go through all the little odd ball ones and smile.

The rest of this week I have been following along with the 21 Day Challenge over at the 2peas site. Its a journal challenge for 21 days, make {or break} a habit. They are on day 6. I haven't posted anything on that site but my thoughts have gone into a new art journal. I am really enjoying the process and a side goal is to keep it from getting too complicated. Because I tend to over complicate -- that is one habit I'd love to break. But my challenge entails actually making the time in my day to do what I love to do --be creative.

To Wii a Mii

The big gift on Christmas morning was our Wii { -- because we all enjoy this silly thing called a Wii} Even more fun than playing the Wii games is the fact that you can design your own you...or as it is called a Mii. All the Miis that get created end up all together on one screen where they sort of walk around...looks like they are going up to one another and such. You can go in and "check on them" as my kids like to do. You can create more than one...this is too fun, one for each side of your personality. heehee. So we were a little bored and had a little fun creating new Miis to mingle with our real Miis...is this getting confusing???

my son: "look ma, your other Mii is laughing"
me: "cute"
my son: "lets change it"...[proceeds to give me all sorts of virtual makeovers, liposuction, botox treatments, disguises, beards, hairstyles, eye transplants, etc]

me: "ooooh, hairstyles, change my hairstyle....how about that one?" [pointing to the short cut]
my son: "um, that's just creepy"
me: "huh??"

my son: "you like that hairstyle? well okay then"
me: "why not? she's cute. Name her Mabel"
my son: "really, that's just creepy"

Okay so she really doesn't look like me at all except for the messy hair. but. but. she's my imaginary Mii friend.
okay.
I wish I had the freckles.

blog banner has new look

So I was going for a little something new -- something that would add the crafty side of me. Possibly the font combination took me a tad bit too long to come up with this afternoon {the downside of being a font-addict, is that I just have so many to choose from} but other than that I immediately was drawn to those photos from my stash. And gosh I am so long winded -- I was trying to say something about the blog contents. Blah blah, deep thoughts, blah. Finally satisfied, I saved and well there it is.

I added two of my favorite pics of homemade "crafty" gifts that we gave the kid's teachers this past June. They were fun to make -- mental note made today after finding the photos that I want to make more.

We gave them a theme {the teacher was a fan of turtles} and so I labeled the set of glass marble magnets the "swimmy sea turtles" set. I found a nice quote and typed it on card stock then cut it out to include as a tag on the pouch. I set them up in a little shimmery pouch bag {sold at acmoore for like .69 cents} and labeled a mini jewelry box with the name. She was like "wow, you guys made these?" Well I hope she did like them, I think she did. Useful, I hoped. Then a card I really enjoyed making; it turned out so pretty because of the paper flower. I got the idea about the magnets from the not martha site {real good creative site}


























I just love how this flower turned out! This is easy and made of varied round paper shapes cut into with scissors with a brad in the middle -- but any cute thing could be in the middle really -- button, fabric flower, felt shape.

Adding A Few Things

To this blog lately. I'm thrilled to finally figure out how to create a play list and share it. And how to add bits of other little personal touches. So fun!

sunday random thoughts

i thought it was a good idea to let the blog writing just flow, and just concentrate on that for a while. now i see that maybe i've been neglecting all those cool little do-dads there on the right side. new features they say. when i switched the blogs over to the new google, things shifted and when i made changes to one blog, it universally applied changes to my other blog -- the one with the kids artwork... {not much there yet.} i have to figure the new features out. i remember writing alot along the side for the profile. it changed a few times while i got comfortable with blogger. so many more options than livejournal had. but when i tweaked the kidart one, this one was left with "...we all love to doodle..." ?? uh, well that's not all of it. ok well. more tweaking later i guess.

i thought it was a good idea to sign-up for the AC Moore email coupon. oh! yes it is. but now I'm there every week. with my coupon in hand. my local store knows me. the other day i was sure i saw the floor tiles in the rubber stamp aisle, directly in front of the Rhonna Farrer stamps, showing a bit of wear, did I do that? hmm.




















$1.00 at AC Moore...a 4x6 album --- it has a soft, soft smooth cover, almost feels like suede, magnetic closure, could be just the perfect size for a little valentine scrapbook. ...channeling donna downey.

Found: Kiwi Spoons

Just had to post these two pics here...there is a story and an "I want to remember this" memory behind these that I am journaling in my head as I type this, but more on that later. Are these not the cutest spoons ever? The design is ultra cool modern, ergonomic, they are fun and easy to hold and frankly, I don't know why they don't make more spoons and other utensils like this.

:)