Hello Monday...

Oh dear, it's a Monday again. I'd like to boycott Mondays but I'm not independently wealthy so it's not an option. Had a lovely Saturday hanging with the girls at Archivers and scrapbooking. The only draw back is that I work so slow while visiting but it's worth the price. I did manage to finish embellishing another gift album. I did not manage to take pictures of it yesterday so it will have to wait until next weekend when I will have some good light again. Seems our little heat wave here in Atlanta may be over. Only 90 today instead of 100 or so.

I did not create anything else over the weekend. I really wanted to try my hand at some more watercolor but yesterday was a bluesy non productive day. Here is a picture of flower boxes in Montmartre from my trip to Paris a couple years ago. I am so ready to go back again. Mom and I had such a wonderful time and still did not get to see everything.

Well, I hope everyone has a lovely Monday.

Inspired by...

I'm still reading lots of blogs by artists and I find them so very inspiring. I want so much to spend more time being creative but the week is devoted to working and paying the bills which only leaves some of the weekend. I'm going to endeavor, though, to post more even if it is just one of the thousands of pictures I've taken. It is especially hard when you find so many mediums fascinating. Well, I'll just have to make more time to play. ;-) Hope you enjoy this picture of one of the Hosta flowers in my yard. I have my mom to thank for that. She just loves puttering in the yard gardening. I started with a manageable garden and then she moved in with me and has greatly expanded it. The patches of grass are getting smaller and smaller.

I also visited Hobby Lobby twice this week (somehow I missed seeing one of the sisters there. highly unusual) and am now the owner of a set of watercolor tube paints and acrylic tube paints. Some day I'll probably learn the difference between the less expensive ones and the more expensive ones. I went cheap just in case they sit on the shelf collecting dust. I've been so inspired by all the artwork I've seen that I want to try my hand at some of them. I also bought a box easel. I just love those 40% coupons and sales at HL. I'll take a picture of my new stuff once I'm home with some daylight to work with. Can't wait to play!

Watercolor Challenge

In my perusing of blogs I followed links and landed on Inspire Me Thursday which has a weekly art challenge. This weeks is to do a watercolor. The only thing I've done in the past with watercolors was with Hero flower stamps which I may post another time. I've decided it's time to stretch my wings so I took up the challenge and painted the above trees. It was an interesting process since I didn't really know what I was doing. I started with making an abstract background with three colors and then added the trees. Just kept playing with it and still wasn't happy because it looked cold and inspiration hit and I warmed it up with some spatters. I think I actually like it. Hope you all enjoy my first attempt at painting.

Getting Creative

Today was an exciting day of taming the chaos in my scraproom. Okay, exciting is overstating it a bit. It looked like something had exploded in there and now I have a table again. It was so bad I'm too embarrased to show any pictures of it.

Lately I've been exploring new blogs and getting inspired. There are so many talented people out there. I love to take pictures which is why I got into scrapbooking in the first place. You gotta do something with all those photos. So at one point today I took a break and went out in the yard with my camera and the macro lense. I still have a lot to learn about what settings to use but here are some of the pictures. Hope you enjoy them.

What I've been up to

So, I've made it through two weeks back at work. Funny how it feels like I haven't been gone at all. I'm feeling well and am back to exercising on a regular basis. yeah! I am still working up to five days but last week was two days and this week I've managed three days. We'll see if I manage to work out tomorrow too. Today I decided to live on the edge and started back on the weight machines. Didn't over do it though. I don't think I will be sore tomorrow but I did want to say hello to my muscles. As of today I'm down 29 pounds.

Last Saturday Rebecca, Kimberly and I spent the day at my local scrapbooking store, EMI. It's been there for a while but I never managed to visit until the Saturday before when Kimberly was there celebrating her birthday. Just had to stop by since she was practically across the street. We had a card challenge Saturday and were given strips of paper and a card with a template and told to expand on it. Below is the card I made by adding some paint, a painted chipboard heart with glitter and of course some flowers. It was a fun challenge since the paper was already picked out and it was more about embellishing.

Lately, I've also been looking for inspiration to branch out into more creative altering. I absolutely love some of the publications by Stampington & Co. They have just come out with a new one called Artful Blogging and is mentioned on several blogs with links to featured blogs. Something Sublime is a good one to check out. I am going to have to do something with the look of my blog but it's going to take me a while to cogitate on it. Checkout some of the other very creative Stampington publications.

Back to the Grind

Well, tomorrow is my first day back to the daily grind of work especially since I haven't won the lottery yet. Might help if I actually played it sometimes. There were so many things I wanted to get done during my time off including spending some time being creative. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men. Seems surgery took more out of me than I thought it would but I'm actually starting to get a little of my energy back. It's going to take a bit longer to get back to full speed but that doesn't mean I need to spend more time sitting on my butt.

During this time I've been surfing the net looking for ideas and inspiration and I see so much that I want to do. So many pictures to take and scrapbook, so many techniques to try, so many things to make. And oh so little time. Now how to figure out how to make more time for creativity and exercise. Need to start doing that a lot more too.

I did spend last Saturday at Archivers working on another gift album but didn't manage to finish it. Yesterday I popped into a local scrapbook store that I haven't visited before. My friend Kimberly was celebrating her birthday by escaping her family for a little girl time and I wanted to give her a card and say hello. I enjoyed seeing the things she's been working on lately and to meet the owner of EMI Scrapbooking, Susan.

Well, it's past my bedtime and I might turn into a pumpkin so time to sign off.