Getting My Groove Back

Welcome to Make It Monday!

This is a day that many of my fellow crafters take to share their latest creations, tips, inspiration, and tutorials with you. For a while now, every week, I’d stare at my computer screen in the days leading up to Monday and try to come up with something to share with you. And every week, I’d draw a blank.

You see, my mojo has been off. I had lost my crafting groove!

My photos and supplies have been piling up but I’ve had no idea what to do with them. I would move paper around, clean up my desk, sort through my scrap drawer, even organize my enamel dots. But nothing seemed to spark my creativity.

Now, there are many reasons why this is the case for me right now, none of which I will get into today. Maybe one day I’ll share, but today I want to talk about my Craft Cave!

Many years ago I set about turning what was originally a sewing room (for the previous owner) into a home office/craft room.

I emptied it out.

Took down the wire shelving that was there.

Patched all the holes.

Painted the room.

Purchased a new corner desk.

Assembled said desk and moved it into the newly painted room.

I spent hours meticulously space planning the room (I WAS at Interior Design school at the time so it was “my thing”), found a plan that worked, and then executed the plan. When I was finished I had an area for the home computer and our personal files, and an area for my drafting table where I could do my design homework.

It was awesome! And all mine. Or so I thought.

There was the pesky matter of the home computer being in there and all.

I tried to convince my husband to move the computer into the living room when I started selling Stampin’ Up with the excuse that we could maybe write off that room as a tax deduction. But he wasn’t buying it so I continued to have to share my space with my ever growing stash and three little girls with an ever growing interest in being on the computer. Like, ALL the time!

Fast forward to a couple months ago. Our home computer went kaput! If you are friends with me on Facebook you probably saw all the posts about stupid computer techs! Eventually we purchased a new computer which is more in demand now that the girls are older and it is fast, and cool, and touch screen. So of course they want to be on it ALL. THE. TIME! Mostly watching Minecraft videos. What’s with that?! Seeing as the office area is tucked away and it’s hard to keep tabs on what the girls are getting up to online, my husband was finally willing to move the computer out into the living room.

So what does all this have to do with Make It Monday and getting my scrapping groove back?

Having the freedom to spread out my papers and know that no one is going to move them to get onto the computer has released my creative juices in an delightful way. I cranked out 4 layouts in this past week alone. Two of them are double page spreads too!

In this recent post I shared my May 2015 Gossamer Blue kit with you and posed the question of whether or not I’d actually use it, or if it would be added to the growing pile of kits in my Scrap Cave. Well, I am please to share the first of the layouts I created with you today. I’ll share the rest throughout the week – I do hope you come back to see them.

As soon as I saw the ombre pink striped paper from Heidi Swapp I knew I wanted to use it on a layout about my girls dance recital. They were in coordinating pink and white costumes this year so it was perfect! Cutting it into two 6″ x 11.5″ pieces allowed me to spread it across the whole 12″ x 24″ double page canvas.

Here is the left page. The composition was also inspired by Shimelle’s newest mini workshop called Ready Set Scrapbook in which she walks you through the creation of three pages using three different design concepts that she commonly uses. This one is roughly based on her diagonal concept with three areas of embellishment. Stretched over the two pages though!

And this is the right page. The photos were from a different day so I did repeat my date stamp and added more journaling to reflect that.

One of the papers in the kit had these great big pink flowers on it so I fussy cut several out to use as embellishments.

I also wanted to keep the embellishment areas cohesive – using similar elements. So along with the fussy cut flowers I added round gold label stickers, wood veneer and heart stamps.

Even though it is spread over the join between these pages, this embellishment reads as one. But, when the pages are in their separate page protectors, they will each work as independent embellishments.

The little gold bow paper clips were just too cute not to include somewhere!

Well, that’s my first of four layouts to share with you. With the exception of the letter stickers and the white card stock background, everything was from the May kits I ordered. To see the kits in detail please watch my video on YouTube.

Now head on over to Melissa Shanhun’s site to scrap those Father’s Day memories today with her simple page design.

Thanks for visiting, be sure to check back for my layout shares this week!

Follow

Share