Composition for Collage

Here is my last collage for Claudine Hellmuth's Composition for Collage class which ends this Wednesday. This one is using a grid compositional structure and I found this to be the easiest of the four that Claudine taught us (asymmetrical, horizontal, vignette and grid).  I think that comes from my scrapbooking and crafting background.  Vignette is my next favorite structure for the same reason.  Boy, those 4 weeks flew by!  I don't think I'll get another collage finished between now and Wed.  I'm getting my work space(s) straightened up and cleaned so I'm ready to start MotherLOAD on Thursday and continue with Finding Photo Freedom.  Those 2 classes will take me through the rest of the summer.  For Photo Freedom I'm working on some of the tasks on the weekly task lists but I'm in a holding pattern until the 2 new storage binders I ordered arrive on Tuesday than I continue filling those and then work on my category drawers. 
Just a reminder that the monthly One Little Word Blog Hop will be this Friday, July 1st starting at 11am ET.  Hope you'll stop back and hop through the blogs.  This month's prompt was a very creative one so I'll think you'll enjoy and maybe find some inspiration for your own work as well!

A Week in the Life, Composition for Collage, Finding Photo Freedom, Mother LOAD



Horizontal compositional structure - Composition for Collage



Three full storage binders - Finding Photo Freedom

I thought this would be a good time to provide an update with where I am with the Big Picture classes that I am taking this summer along with some of my other projects.   Top photo is my horizontal compositional piece that I finally finished.  I just really laugh every time I see that piece.  Kind of my view of how life goes - your sailing along just fine and then a duck comes along blocking your way!  Hope you enjoy it and get a laugh from it as well!  Just a fun piece and trying not to take it all so seriously!  This Thursday is then end of Composition for Collage - I'll be working on a grid compositional structure piece between now and then. 
Bottom photo is the 3 storage binders I have filled (more in them then there should be).  I've ordered 3 more binders from scrapbook.com and they should be here Tuesday.  I'm not sure at this point but I may need to order 1-2 more.  These are Pioneer 3-up storage binders.  In Finding Photo Freedom (formerly Library of Memories) storage binders are where the photos you want to scrapbook in the future go.  This is after purging & rating.  I'll try to remember to take a photo of the inside and talk a little more about this in the future.  I'm just keeping my head above water with the two classes these last 4 weeks but I'll try to go into more detail in the next few blog posts.
I need to finish up my postcards this next week for the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap - its due July 15th (where did June go?).  I'm trying to decide whether to use one of my compositional structure pieces from the Composition for Collage class or the piece I did for One Little Word this month.  Stay tuned!
Ali Edwards posted the code for this year's A Week in the Life if you want to pick that up for your blog.  Just go to http://www.aliedwards.com/ and check out her blog post for June 23rd.  She also posted links (same one I provided in my last blog post) to resources for A Week in the Life.  If you are thinking of doing Project Life in the future this is a great opportunity to see if you like this style of scrapbooking.  A Week in the Life is a more intense, in-depth type of Project Life. 
As Claudine Helmuth's Composition class ends, Lain Ehmann's MotherLOAD (Layout a Day) class will begin.  Very exciting!
Hope your finding creative time as summer swings into high gear!

Viva Decor Pearl Pen

One of the items I purchased last Friday was an impulse buy.  I picked up this Viva Decor Pearl Pen and while I was pretty sure I knew what it was I was happy to find this YouTube video that showed all it can do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXWD9yVY60M
I like the fact that I can make my own pearls as needed in whatever size or color I need and I don't need to keep multiple packages of pearls.  I definitely plan to pick up a couple more in a few other colors.  The one at right is Ice White.  Hope you enjoy the video - watch to the end to see how this works on fabric too!

Shopping Trip and A Week in the Life

This past Friday I was in Buffalo, NY (about one and a half hours away from my home) and I stopped into my favorite scrapbook store Buffalo Stamps.  In the top photo is are some of the items I got while I was there.  I also got $10 off my purchases for filling up my frequent shopper's card.  A modest day of shopping.  While I'll mention some of the other items over the next few days today I want to show you the item at the very top of the first photo.

These are Scribbles Glitter Borders Weekdays in Black (item # 4935).  The second photo down has a close-up of the one side of the package.  Saturday, Sunday and three phrases are on the back.  The 3 phrases are "a good day", "this week" and "enjoy today".  The 3rd photo has a close-up of the packaging top.  These looked similar to some of the digital stuff that Ali does and since I've not gotten into digital scrapbooking in a big way I thought these would be perfect for other paper scrapbookers!

These caught my eye as I am planning on doing Ali Edwards' A Week in the Life" this year.  She has it set for Monday, July 25th through Sunday, July 31st this year.  Here's the link to the basics about A Week in the Life http://aliedwards.com/2010/04/the-basics-of-documenting-a-week-in-your-life.html

Another link that has information on how to prepare for A Week in the Life is http://aliedwards.com/2010/01/week-in-the-life.html

The information provided on these 2 links will get you started & ready.  I'd also advise that you sign up to get Ali's emails from her blog so you'll have updated info delivered right to your mailbox.  She has tons of great info and I've learned so much from her. 



Vignette compositional structure



A close-up of the smaller pieces

For Derek, Katie & Arlington

As many of my followers know I am taking Claudine Hellmuth's class Composition for Collage online at Big Picture Classes.  This is my piece for the 3rd week of class.  This week we're learning about vignette compositional structure.  (If you've been following my blog closely you may be wondering where week 2's piece is - its still in progress and I think you'll love it).  When I saw the horses in the downloads this past Thursday I immediately knew what I wanted to do.  Some feedback from Claudine and a few small tweeks and its done. I hope you enjoy it!

More than art at Allentown Art Festival

 There is so much more than art at the Allentown Art Festival.  Sometimes my husband and I just find a spot to sit and people watch.  Along the route there are food vendors (yum) along with a variety of restaurants to try - many with outdoor patio areas.  There are also shops along the way.  At the dress shop in the 2nd photo I was mesmerized by the "live" mannequins.  Its hard to tell because of the glare on the window but there are 2 mannequins in the window and occasionally they moved like wind-up dolls to a new position accompanied by some great music.  They attracted quite a crowd and the shop was doing a brisk business.  I also love to look at the variety of houses along the route.  The third photo being an example of just one.  I'd love to see the inside of the towers!  Buffalo and the Allentown area has quite an architectural history and there are several tours that you can take to check it out - I need to do that one of these days.  Hope you have some great plans for the upcoming weekend.  My weekend is starting early as we head back to Buffalo tomorrow.

Second asymmetrical collage

Here's my second practice piece for my Composition class with Claudine Hellmuth.  The birdcage and man are some of the images that Claudine includes with the class as downloads.  So far we've gotten 5 sheets of images to download each week.  The dark paper with the gears is a piece of DCWC paper.  The stock market piece is from the newspaper and the definition of work came from an old dictionary that I got when a local bookstore went out of business.  The letters are chipboard and colored with Tim Holtz's Distress Stain (this stuff is great - so easy!)  This week's assignment is a horizontal line composition - I'll post when I finish it.  I've been working on finishing my piece for One Little Word - I'm really happy how that has turned out.  That will be posted in the OLW Blog Hop on July 1st.

Allentown Art Festival



This is embroidery - its NOT paint!



As always, Allentown was just amazing!  This is a very small sample of the artists that were there.  There's between 450-500 artists (my rough count from the program).  Can you tell I'm attracted to bright colors?  We had a little rain shortly after we got there so I didn't get photos of some of my other favorites.  Plus many artists had signs posted "no photos, please".   Hope you are able to get to an art festival close to you this summer.  Great way to be inspired!  Kane, PA's Art in the Wilds is next weekend. 

June 1st Blog Hop Giveaway Winner!

Jill Conyers - you are the winner of the June 1st OLW Blog Hop giveaway here at crafty-creativity!  Please email me (laew@aol.com) with your address and I'll get your package of goodies out in the mail to you!
Thank you to all who visited my blog and especially to those who left a comment (love 'em) and to those who now follow my blog!  July 1st will be the next OLW Blog Hop and I'm working on this month's artwork - we're getting messy this month!  So make sure you stop back for that. 

Inspiration

As I've mentioned before on the blog I love to get mail - the fun kind, not the bill kind.  So I try to participate in swaps when I have the chance.  On Creating with the Cricut FB's page I signed up to do a simple swap. The person on the list before me sends to me and I send to the person on the list after me. The items in the photo are what I got from my swap partner who had emailed me to ask what I liked and worked on.  We were to each send $25 of craft supplies to our partner.  Cindy did a great job as I do not have any of these Tim Holtz items and I did just pick up some of the Tattered Time paper packs and just love the papers!  As you can see I've already used the tissue tape (see yesterday's post - its on the bottom of the collage)  If you haven't used the tissue tape yet you need to get some - it so easy to use!  The fun thing about a swap like this is that you get things that you might not purchase yourself so it kind of forces you in new directions.  I got a bunch of fibers in a swap once and I thought I'm never going to use these but I saved them and eventually had a lot of fun using them.  These items are going to come in handy for the Composition for Collage class this month so I'm very happy about that.

For those of you in the western NY area this weekend is the Allentown Art Festival on Sat and Sun  11am-6pm in the Allentown District of Buffalo.  Here's the link http://www.allentownartfestival.com/
We're planning on going on Saturday.  Always amazing artwork and great gift items.
Summer is always full of opportunity for inspiration for your artwork.  My weekends will be full through Labor Day.  CKC-Buffalo is June 16-19 and I'll be up there for one day just to check the vendors out.  No classes or crops this year since I'm doing so many classes at BPC.  Jamestown's Secret Garden Tour is on June 18th and I'm always amazed at the things people do in their gardens - I love the ones that are like little retreats in the city.  The last weekend of the month I'm taking a class called Creating albums from altered books so I'm looking forward to that too.  Hope you're finding time for some creative field trips this summer.  Its a great way to re-energize your creative spirit!

Composition for Collage

Asymmetrical collage - take one



Asymmetrical collage - take two

 Here is my first assignment for the Composition for Collage class I'm taking online at Big Picture Classes.  The top photo is the first piece I put in for review by Claudine Hellmuth, the instructor.  The only suggestion she had was to cut away the piece to the left of the woman's face in that image and let the lace show through.  I did that but the piece of lace does not cover the entire width of the background and then when I went to adhere everything down I did not line up the top of the lace and the top of her head as well as I did in the first photo.   Classes are for learning, I remind myself, and I did have a lot of fun.  Please feel free to share your comments!

Stuff everywhere!

 This table is covered with items I'm working on for Composition for Collage and One Little Word(OLW).  I'm waiting for feedback from Claudine Hellmuth (our instructor) to see if I need to work on my first collage more.  Will post a photo once its done.  Will also post the artwork for OLW once its done.  We've been encouraged by both instructors to work on the pieces and then let them sit for awhile.  I have a hard time with that as I'm programmed to finish what I start.  So this is going to be a lesson in patience for me.

I currently have the dining room table covered with my 2011 Project Life album at the far end and Owen's baby album on the side toward the windows.  At this end are all the boxes of photos that I'm now starting to work on for Finding Photo Freedom (FPF).  With FPF my goal is to have all my print photos and all my digital photos to a point where I can find any photo within 5 minutes.  They will also be organized so that I can tell better stories with my layouts and get away from strict chronological scrapbooking.  I'll keep you posted as to how that is going over the next 10 weeks.  This week we've been working on putting digital prints into folders as well as purging photos that we do not want or are poor quality- I'm using Picasa.  We also are to take 250 print photos, purge what we don't want and put the rest into storage binders.  I'm about half done with that and am pretty much set with my digital photos.  I need to order a couple more storage binders now that I've decided to definitely use the 3-up albums.
Besides keeping on top of the classwork my other goal for this week is to get my craftroom back into shape.  The tables are all in our garage as we finish up our yard sale this week.

Finding Photo Freedom.....



Photo Central



Film cartridges, index prints, large photos, old photos, and ???



Photos stored chronologically  in a family box and each son has his own box

 The top photo is of Photo Central (my dining room).  At the far end is my Project Life album and supplies for that.  At the near end are my boxes of photos (a slight step up from how Mom left photos for me - shoe boxes full in her closet).  The photos are mostly organized chronologically.  Amazes me that I have 10 full albums of family photos and 4 albums for the boys and there are still all these photos.
I started scrapbooking while my oldest was in college so the photos definitely had a head start on me.  Today is the first day of Stacy Julian's Finding Photo Freedom class (formerly called Library of Memories or LOM) and I'm looking forward to utilizing her system for my photos and memorabilia.


Memorabilia

 Besides working on the print photos and memorabilia I've been working on my digital prints as part of our pre-class work.  I've downloaded Picasa (quite painless and easy) and pretty much have my digital photos organized there.  I don't have them rated yet as Stacy has outlined.  I have to think about that some more.  I don't have as many digital photos as most people do.  I have less than a 1000 total on Picasa.  We've only had the digital camera for 4-5 years (yes, we're slow adopters of new technology!) and I have been good about deleting poor quality shots or photos I know I'm not going to do anything with.  Plus our sons are all grown up, married and live on the opposite side of the country so most of our photo taking occurs a few times a year with visits back and forth.  So my journey begins in Finding Photo Freedom....I'll keep you posted!

June 1st - One Little Word Blog Hop begins at 11am ET

Before I begin discussing my pages for May's prompt I want to say Thank You to all that participated in last month's blog hop and for all the comments that were left.  I really appreciate the time that you take to do the blog hop. Last month's giveaway winner was "learncreatedo"  and I'm looking forward to hearing from them so that I can mail their goodies out.  Learncreatedo - please email me at laew@aol.com with your address and I'll get that out to you this week! 

This month we were asked to write down our "ideas, thougths, tasks, missions and stuff you want to tackle with your word this year".  Ali provided handouts where we could write our list along with comments about each one and a start and end date.  I ended up with several sheets filled out with things I want to complete this year in the areas of health, family, finance, creativity, simplicity, and clarity.  Some of the  things that we have accomplished so far this year as we have illuminated these areas are:
*started Life Lists
*turned in our second car and are learning to be a one car couple (we can do this easier than others as our workplace is only 3 minutes away)
*got rid of cable, our landline and found a less expensive option for internet service
(Just these 2 things combine for a saving of about $500 to decrease debt in other areas)
*continue to attend weekly Weight Watchers meeting - unfortunately a change in medications has caused me to gain back most of the weight I lost!
*de-cluttered our house (this has led to $450 in sales of items we no longer needed and our Yard Sale is coming up this Sat) and am working on Project 333
*completed a values assessment
*Have kept current with Project Life and One Little Word


My TO DO Lists




My One Little Word album through May




My Goals Box

 I'm very pleased with our progress to date.  One other thing that I have done and this was just my way of keeping myself immersed in my to do list and goals is the creation of the box above.  There is a folder in there for each of my areas I listed above (finance, family, health, etc) and as I find items (blog posts, info from websites or blogs, etc.) that pertain to that item it goes in its folder.  I had been thinking about an Inspiration Board but thought this was more functional.  Everything is in one place and I can review the materials in each folder to make sure I'm make steady progress on each goal and project.  I also have a second copy of My To Do Lists that I keep in my tote so that I can review every few days.  In the past I think I ended up losing track of what I wanted to accomplish so I'm hoping this will help me.  Thank you for stopping by.  I'm doing another giveaway this month so leave a comment and I'll be drawing a name for the goodies on the 8th of June. I'll post the winner here and on the OLW messageboard so watch for the winner!

Next stop on the Hop  is
Rebekah  http://istampscrapcraft.blogspot.com/

Here's the full list if you want to start from the beginning or lose your way!

JUNE 1 BLOG HOP PARTICIPANTS

Margie   http://xnomads.typepad.com/blog
Jamie   http://jmpgirl.blogspot.com/
Cherie   http://cheriandrews.blogspot.com/
Jill   http://jillconyers.typepad.com/
Amanda  http://scrappnbee.blogspot.com/
Lynn W  http://www.crafty-creativity.blogspot.com/
Rebekah  http://istampscrapcraft.blogspot.com/
Melissa S  http://blog.mshanhun.com/
Lisa A   http://backtoallen.com/writers_blog/
Sam   http://learncreatedo.wordpress.com/
Jenn   http://www.studiojenn.blogspot.com/
Junelle   http://yesandamenblog.blogspot.com/
Jen S   http://www.byjen.com/ ;
Monica B2  http://questtoperfectimperfection.blogspot.com/
Cindy   http://seriousplay.typepad.com/
Nikki   http://www.inkyart.com.au/
Karen D  http://womenontractors.blogspot.com/