Holiday Gift Gala Super Sale at Artella

Over at Artella they're having a Holiday Gift Gala Super Sale, where everyone can save 55% on up to 5 eProducts, PLUS get their choice of 4 Creative Gift Packs free.

This is their biggest sale event of the year, so you won't want to miss it.

Artella has lots of great collage kits, backgrounds, and image sheets that are perfect for your collage work and other crafting.

Inspire Me Thursday - Dear Diary

I'm coming to the table a bit late with my Inspire Me Thursday submission, but I didn't really expect to post anything this week. That's because the prompt is "Dear Diary" and I don't keep a diary. Never have. Sure, I've had diaries before, the kind with the leatherette cover and the tiny lock and key, but I never actually wrote in any of them. Maybe I was always afraid someone would read what I had written, and I would be exposed, and vulnerable. I was also expecting to skip this week because I've not been feeling myself the past few days. On Saturday I cleaned up my desk and my studio space so I could actually find things, but I still haven't been able to get motivated. There are just too many other things going on, and they're wearing me out. But when I finally arrived home last night from one of my usual evening activities (I really need to stay home more), I sat at my desk looking at my stack of lists, and was struck by the idea that, in a way, my list-making is a form of diary-keeping. You see, I make lists for everything -- creative ideas, things I need to do, websites to visit -- you name it, I probably have a list for it. All my lists are on scraps of paper, and they tend to get mixed up, or used for jotting down something else, and I end up rewriting that list. So, I remembered these tiny composition books (3.5 x 4.5 inches) I found at WalMart. And why not turn some of my collage and image transfer failures, which of course I had saved, into covers for my little books? You already know that I like to work small, and I enjoy making things to fix up my work area. Well, in less than 30 minutes I had completed two little "list diaries" and I think I've recovered my creative mojo. Sometimes, a little glue and some metal leaf will work wonders, and will help you get organized as well!

Inspire Me Thursday - Seven

Here's a quick digital collage for Inspire Me Thursday, where the prompt this week was "seven". Here, there are seven butterflies on a background text of sevens, such as "seven deadly sins", seven virtues", and "seventh son of a seventh son". I can never get the colors here to match my original Photoshop file, so they're a little bit off (probably need to calibrate my monitor). While thinking about what I would do for this challenge, it has been interesting to read about the historical, mythological, and superstitious use of the number seven.

Inspire Me Thursday - Copycats

This week's prompt for Inspire Me Thursday is "copycats". I've been experimenting with image transfers, so I thought I'd share a couple of examples. For these transfers I used art from Dover, which I printed on plain paper on my laser printer, and applied it with Golden Gel Medium to some formica sample chips I found at a local home improvement store. Most of the color you see here is the formica showing through, although I added some Prismacolor pencil accents and some rubber-stamped crackling to the one on the right. I had planned on adding some gold leaf to both, but after an extensive search of my supplies, I couldn't find my metal leaf. After I seal these I'll probably use them as tags for collage.

Circles

This is my very first submission for Inspire Me Thursday. The creative prompt this week is circles. I love circles, so I thought this was the perfect time to join this challenge. This is a photo collage of two images -- a huge,industrial sculpture I saw on a roadside in Pensacola, and coreopsis from my garden. I liked the idea of combining nature with a hard, man-made surface. I may have to take this natural vs. industrial concept a little further.