Okay, I guess I'm just jinxed. I did a post up with a scheduled date on it and it failed to show up. Facebook hates me, too, so I shouldn't be surprised. I've been doing a good bit of scrapbooking here of late. Now that I'm over my fear of Photoshop and out of mourning for my beloved Digital Image Pro that Microsoft has now completely buried, I've found my work going in some new directions. I NEVER used to do artsy layouts or art journal pages. I just didn't feel like mine looked as good as others', but that's turned out to be untrue. I can do this! So I'm working on a few different albums at the moment. I'm still working on heritage albums and always will. I'm still working on family albums, of course, but I've added one for the flowers I love because it brings me joy, and I'm working on a digital journal. My grandchildren will not have as long as many kids do to know their grandparents since we got started really late, so I hope they will get to know us better through my photo journal.
All that said, I just have to show you some pages I did with Karen's newest kits. I've usually stayed away from boldly patterned and colored pages because they don't fit my "style" but Karen converted me. I love her fun colorful kits and even her somber thoughtful ones. They all have their place. She just released
Positive Vibes for the Gingerscraps Buffet, loaded with beautiful flowers, vibrant colors, some fabulous character transfers. The template was in the kit, but the map of Madrid at bottom left was not. Well, see for yourself:
The 1960s and 1970s were colorful years, to say the least, sometimes colorfully ugly. The ugly part could never be said about my beautiful cousin, Debbie. We graduated from high school at the same time, but half the world apart. My Uncle Joe was in the US Air Force stationed at Torrejon Air Force Base in Spain and Daddy worked for IBM in Huntsville, Alabama. My school's colors were blue and gray, Debbie's were red and white. I took one look at
Positive Vibes and knew it was perfect for these photos from Debbie's graduation. I love that flower wreath. It looks great on Debbie. They just looked silly on me!
This page will go into my garden book, even though I shot the picture on an outing to the Land Between the Lakes Nature Center. We love hummingbirds and have feeders of our own, but this scene - that I didn't even realize I'd captured until I looked at the photos later - just sort of belongs amongst the flowers. It just makes me happy.
I used Kakleidesigns
Positive Vibes and
Spring In Pink Templates. For those of you that are digi scrappers, the yellow paint is from the FWP template and papers 12 & 16, character stamp3, and original photo are
blended for the background. These are both in the Gingerscraps gallery if you want a closer look
Graduation and
Hummingbird.
Now for the post that didn't post. I'm a huge template fan. I don't necessarily use all parts of a template and often rearrange them, but I love them for inspiration and for learning new techniques. Kakleidesigns has a new set of templates,
Spring In Pink, that are fun and fabulous. I used one of them for Hummingbird and had a blast playing with the others. I did two more pages about flowers. One of them may go in my Footsteps of Paul album, though, because John shot the pictures on our trip in 2003 and bougainvilleas don't do especially well with Kentucky weather, so they will not find a home in my garden. I love them, but...
I especially love this page made with
Spring In Pink Template #1 and
Color Fest. The background is my favorite technique - blended papers - made from papers 20 and 24. These pictures are from the same day as the hummingbird picture at the Land Between the Lakes Nature Center. The page makes my soul sing.
The extraction of the flowers to go out of bounds was tricky, but worth it
The picture for this one was made on the Isle of Patmos, where Saint John was exiled. It's an amazing place and, like the rest of Greece, loaded with color and gorgeous flowers. It was made with
Spring in Pink Template #2 and with two of Karen's legacy kits Anniversary Treasures and Innocense Glance that are no longer available.
These are also in the Gingerscraps gallery if you'd like a better view:
Coreopsis Bougainvillea
I have one more I'd like to share with you. The technique for this layout is montage. Unlike a collage which has different images, often in different genres, pleasingly arranged, montage takes pictures and blends them into one harmonious, seamless image. This layout actually uses three photos - the two pathways are on one, the lake on another, and the photo the big arched tree is extracted from is another. That extraction was a demon! I used a Kakleidesigns kit,
Infinity, paper 2 for the background that you can just see peeping through on the lower side edges, paper 25 to fill the grunge layer, the mask on the lake picture, and flowers and foliage around the base of the tree. The challenge for this layout included using octagons, so they are placed like stepping stones on the left hand path, leading into the distance where I walked that day. You will probably need to view it in the
gallery to see those.
Journaling is my own “poetry”
Frost counseled take the road less traveled, I hearkened to his plea.
I wandered down the leftward track ‘til the lake there did I see.
A wondrous place of beautiful peace, peace that mends the soul,
A place to lift the saddened heart, God’s gift to make it whole.
I must be off for now. Have a wonderful day!
