A Mother’s Day gift - mixed media collage

Pattern to Market Challenge - Mood Board 1

 Have joined a new challenge - because I have not been at all able to keep up with my "month of" tasks. Getting guided for a week - that will be fun. Also I am determined to bring more art into my life. 

Thanks to the artists at Pixabay.com for making images available for download and use. Worth browsing there. 

July Month of Party Favors

Decorated paper roll containers with wire handles and wrapped candies.

After a month of creating embellished paper clips as my project of the month, I now have a large selection of clips to use. I'm happy to send one to anyone who asks.

This month the planned topic is Party Favor Ideas.

Now this topic was originally set for earlier in the year. I pushed it forward when the coronavirus made parties seem unlikely. Evidently I was being too optimistic even then. However, in the spirit of looking forward to a time when gathering will not be a life threatening proposition, I have decided to collect, collate, and possibly construct some party favor ideas and place them on a Pinterest board made for the purpose.

Here's the truth. There are a LOT of very creative party favor ideas out there already. They kinda fall into categories:

1. Edible favors: Re-packaged candy or snacks in soft bags of some kind, often with a themed tag, or in a decorated tin, box or jar. For adults the consumables are sometimes mini-alcohol bottles, with custom labels or tags, or decoratively packaged tea bags, often with accessories. Fancy baked goods or chocolate-dipped items.

Gift tags on candy bags

2. Hair or fashion accessories - hair ties and scrunchies are very popular for bachelorette parties. Gorgeous unicorn head bands and flower crowns fall into this section. Friendship bracelets. Pendants on cords.

Pony beads on crocheted leather cord Friendship bracelets

3. Grab-one-and-go toys, especially small stuffed toys and dinosaurs.

4. Activity sets - like lego mini-sets or art kits - usually in a decorated bag or container, that is part of the favor. For adults, small notebooks and a coordinating pen.

5. Plants - either tiny potted succulents or seed packages and small pots.

6. Personal care items like soaps and lotions. Custom decorated lip balms.

7. Certificates or coupons in fancy envelopes.

8. Bubbles. Tiny bottles for weddings, bigger bottles for kids' parties. Bubble bottles and wee wands. Just going to give bubbles their own category.

Handmade tags upgrade a purchased item.

9. As a catch all category, things that are often part of the table decor at the event. Small silver picture frames that are place card holders, or decorated rocks at each place. Tea lights in holders - including fancy holders like vintage tea cups. Custom decorated mugs, printed cloth napkins.

Clearly when price is a factor, then creative presentation becomes important. Crafty ideas elevate a simple item along a theme. I have made or received items in almost all of these categories. Stay tuned. I'll see what I can come up with, and will post things to the Pinterest board I mentioned and/or my FB group.

This is a Wish Doll with a scented pillow. 

A Month of Projects - June - Altered Paper Clips

Peaceful Civil Rights Protesters in Los Angeles, June 2020
Original photo in Los Angeles Times.

Let's face it. It is hard to focus on the trivial right now.

Like many people, my creative energy was already sapped from the strangely timeless world of pandemic lock down. It was weird and twitchy to have my husband and daughter at home all the time, just when I had become accustomed to an empty house. But I have reoriented, and now I'm happy they are here and safe. My focus was on how to generate income to make up for the loss of it, while my husband is furloughed.

I'm a little old white lady. Now suddenly I am living in a nation where the pain that was a dull ache that I could ignore most of the time because of my privilege, has turned into a conflagration of fury and outrage. 

At this minute, my artworks don't seem needed in comparison to my ability to write letters to my representatives, or local officials. My energy is better spent helping people find work, and helping support the needed changes in our society at large. My attention is needed on learning how to help effectively, and implementing those strategies. That's going to be my main personal focus.

In the past when I felt powerless to help, I would make a beautiful doll and sell it to raise money. I might get to that too. But for now I have other priorities for my time.

So this month's creativity projects are very small, and entirely practical, for mostly my own use. Following inspiration from the ScraPerfect design team challenge a couple of years ago, I will be making altered or embellished paper clips for this month's projects.

Like the ATC's, these are miniature craft pieces that I can do pleasantly as I sit with my husband of an evening, while shouting at the television news.

I will use these decorative paper clips in my journals and notebooks, as I keep track of the letters I write. They make good little bookmarks.

I'm going to end up with a bunch of them. Certainly let me know if you would like a couple of pretty little paper clips. I will pop some in an envelope and mail them to you.

Here are the first few.

May - A Month of Printable inspiration.

Some scrapbook embellishments - stamped, die cut, fussy cut, pins and colored with pencils

February and March went very well with the "Month of..." art and creativity. Unfortunately, April not so much. I do have a brief video on its way about scrapbook embellishments, and with today May 3, being National Scrapbooking Day, it's probably a good day to get that done.

However, May is going to be a Month of Printables. It wasn't going to be, but I wanted to make it something that was feasible and easy to do often. Since I will be at my computer doing work most of the time, then doing something that will work on my computer is helpful. It's just the month of ATCs - I made up a tray of materials and it was easy and fun to make ATC's. I made so many that I even had to order more card holder sheets for my album.

So this month will focusing on choosing sayings that I like, and hopefully using lots of my own graphics and images for the backgrounds.

More ATCs

I've been putting the #aMonthofATCs up on my Facebook page. Here are some images of the recent cards.

A Month of ATCs

I've moved on from the Sketches, to my month of March activity - a month of ATCs.

I'm adding them to Facebook and Instagram, but here are some images of the collection I have started already. I'm hand coloring images from a vintage novelties catalog, adding washi tapes and some stickers adding what I consider an ironic commentary. The yellow highlight is what I consider the title of each piece.

Some of the images and names of items in this old catalog are racist, and frightful. I'm not using those particular product listings for my ATCs, which are a little lighter in tone, with only a bit of eye-rolling. I may find a place in larger collages for that other material - or not.

Last Day of a Month of Scrapbook Sketches

A month has gone by, and while I didn't get to a sketch every single day, I did put out a fair few. Of course, now I will need to turn some of these sketches into cards and layouts. I'll probably never need to work up a sketch ever again. It was fun to practice with Canva also. They made it easy, to make things with a lot of colors. I may have gone overboard with that!

If you use any of the sketches for your own papercrafting, please let me know. Post an image on the Creativity Blast Facebook group.

Next month is going to be a Month of ATC's. I've done this before and been very pleased with the results. It's always nice to have some to use for trading when I go to events. An ATC make-and-trade event is always fun. I might even put up some printables. Stay tuned.

Card Sketch - embellished with vellum accents

Circle of images Sketch

Tilted Image - Scraplift sketch

My colleague, the highly talented, Penny Arnold, designed a gorgeous layout for FotoBella.

It inspired me to create this scraplifted Tilted Image sketch. You can use lots of journaling or do as Penny did and add some graphic sayings and die cuts.

Here's a nice four picture layout

Letter sized Layout

Quartered Sketch - lots of Journaling

Splatter Sketch

Sketch with textures