Pages

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The Apartment

Here is one of my new pages that I did this week. This came together really quickly too. It is a page about a horrible apartment that we lived in when we were first married. It was so therapuetic to get all those angry feeling out in the journaling. I wanted the page to be very messy and distressed to reflect the state of the apartment. I used Basic Grey's Granola collection for the pp. I cut the leafy things and the ripped circles from pp in that line. Ialso used a lot of Tim Holtz's distress inks to to ink the papers. The journaling was on white cardstock and I used Vintage Photo ink to make it look old and worn. I also inked and tore the backgound papers and did some lacing.

This was a really fun layout to do and I am please with the result. I think it conveys my feeling about the apartment VERY clearly.
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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Card making.

So obviously my blog has gotten off to a slow start. It has been nearly 2 months since my first post. That being said I would like to get into something more substantive finally with my second post. On top of scrapbooking I love making cards. It seemed like a natural next step in paper crafting. I already had all the tools and supplies to start I just needed to take the time to do it.

I have been making cards now for about a year. Some of the first cards I made were for my dad and father in law last year for Father's day. Last night I was sitting and making their cards for this father's day and I was thinking about how much my card making style has evolved. I take less time thinking of a theme for a card then I used to and I focus more on the overall design. Also the designs of the cards have gotten (in my opinion) more complex and better. My cards are in no way works of art like many you see, but I am still pretty happy with how they look and my family enjoys getting these home made creations.

OK so after all that I finally am getting to why I posted. While I am very happy with how my designs are progressing I feel like the sentiments expressed in writing in my cards are lackluster and are even getting less original with time. Almost every birthday card has "Wishing you a very Happy Birthday" inside. Other occasions are equally as dull when it comes to writing inside the card. At the begining of my card making journey I always tried to find a cute saying or poem to write inside that fit the theme of my card, but as time went on I found this to be harder and harder to do without sounding like I copied it from inside another greeting card. So my question to you is ....What do you put in card and how do you come up with it? More and more lately I have tried to just write a more personal letter with personal sentiments, but sometimes it sounds a little contrived when I am just trying to wish someone a Happy Birthday.