Playin' around

I don't believe in new years resolutions. I think that if you really want to change something in your life you should be able to do it at any time during the year, not wait for a new year to start before you do it. But since "everybody" else does, it makes it easier for me to tag along.

Like, I always wanted to be more creative. I come from a very creative family, where my parents and all my siblings are fairly comfortable with both drawing and painting. But I'm missing that gene. I can't draw for the life of me and I've never been comfortable with abstract or improvization in any form, least of all in painting. I'm a hard core theoretical person and a perfectionist, so creativity (in the form of drawing or painting) does not come easy to me.

Anyways, I heard about the Creative Jump Start Summit 2012 and decided to tag along to pick up some tips on how to be more creative. And just in case it would be too artsy for me, I signed up for an online class too, in Clean and Simple Cardmaking. And I don't regret any of those one bit! I've got so many ideas that I don't even know where to begin. But I've promised myself one thing: From now on I'm gonna have fun! Since I started cardmaking two years ago, I've said that I'm doing this for me - pure recreation for myself. But sometimes I get carried away and push myself to enter every challenge there is and creating becomes more of a forced task than fun. So now I'm going back to having fun and playing around with all the stuff that's accumulated over the years. I'm not quitting on the challenges, not at all, but I'm not gonna let them control my fun! So I've renamed my craft room to "Mom's play room" and this is what happens when mommy plays around:

Inspired by classes at Clean and Simple Cardmaking I wanted to make a One Layer Card for Trykkpressa this month. I then jumped at the challenge at Less Is More - Predominantly Purple, I mean it's purple, it's me, of course I had to do it! *lol*. I'm also throwing this in at Scrapping.no and Cupcake Crafts for their "new"-themed challenges (new stamps) and last but not least, for the Anything goes-challenge at Scrap-a-long.

This is how I did it:

I masked off an area, using PostIts, leaving about 1/2" white edge to give the illusion of a layer. Then I samped some daisies in embossing ink with my brand spankin' new used stamps that I bought on the forum scrapping.no. I got them in the mail yesterday and immediately thought "I'm gonna have some fun with these!" :) I embossed them in Frosted Crystal (I meant to use regular clear embossing, but got the jars mixed up. :-/), then I inked over with Distress Ink, Dusty Concorde, buffed it up a bit with a clean pad on my Ink Blending Tool. Normally I would spritz it all with a minimister and water, but that tend to curl the cardstock, and since this is a one layer card I skipped the water this time. Finished it all with a new little sentiment from Verve Stamps. And that's what happens when mom's having fun! *LOL*