Ink-spiration

Do you enjoy challenges to get your mojo flowing? Challenges of subject (make a layout/card/project about ____.) Challenges for color? Do crops, either RL or cyber, get things going for you?

For me, it's techniques. Here lately, I've been enjoying Jennifer McGuire's Thinking Inking video series. If you have distress inks, alcohol inks or just want to see some great ideas, go here or click on the Jennifer McGuire link on my sidebar.

She has videos for distress inks, perfect pearls, crackle paint, alcohol inks...if Ranger produces it, she's got a video on it! But what I really like is that these awesome techniques add that perfect extra something which makes your layouts or cards stand out above the rest.

Using less

Using less stuff is a challenge!! I grabbed a scrap of Little Yellow Bicycle valentine's day paper, red ribbon and stamped the image on plain cardstock using a stamp set I got on clearance at WalMart!


More LYB paper! Too cute. This is almost the last of these gorgeous Prima flowers I got from a fellow paper snob. I've been hoarding them!

This is the stamp I got from Hero Arts. It's one of their design blocks. I love the look of the flowers in shadow. These two cards feature this embossed image on alcohol inks. The purple-ish one was made using the inking tool. The magenta-ish one was made using a puddle of ink and swiping glossy cardstock through it.

This is a simple emboss-resist technique. I used white embossing powder instead of clear though. I think I was out of clear at that time! I made the leaves for the white flowers by cutting up a green one!

Scrapping classes

Here are the cards we'll be making in tomorrow's paper crafting class. Day one is cards and day two is scrapbooking with photos.

I'm really excited first of all because this is the second class I've gotten to do that focus on MY hobbies (the first was photography - which was a hit). Secondly, we put a lot of energy and effort in helping kids be reactive to their anger and emotion regulation problems. This is a way to be proactive. It introduces them to something that's prosocial. It gives them a unique area to develop skill mastery which is the building block of healthy self-esteem. I'm just atwitter with excitement!

These cards are pretty simple but these are kids at the very basic level...cut, fold, glue. :)