Weekend Creative Challenge #5

  Happy FriYAY! 

Nurturing one’s creativity is SO key to helping to ensure a healthy mindset … human beings are all born with an instinct to express themselves through creativity but sometimes external factors impede peoples abilty to engage in creative expression and so their full healthy mindset is also impeded! We need to get back to ensuring that everyone has at least ONE creative outlet for expressing themselves. 

So here’s another instalment of the Weekend Creativity Challenge - each week I will post a photo prompt that you can use to get your creativity mojo going! 

Choose from the photos colours or imagery or just the general feeling/emotion that it brings to your heart! 

You can create with whatever medium speaks to you and inspires you! There are so many ways to nurture one’s creative soul! 

Here’s my inspiration 

What’s your favorute way to nurture creativity?

Here are just a few of mine:

• Colouring 
• Mixed media / Painting
• Papercrafting
• Fun Nail designs
• Poetry/Short Story/Blog writing

Snap a photo of your creative work and share it in my Totallyawake4-life community group by the following Thursday night at midnight to get your name entered into the draw! 

Bonus entry if you share the creative prompt and your entry on your own social media in a public setting and tag my Totallyawake4-life & Nailin’ It Together group and use the hashtag #TA4L005 

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I will be doing a monthly prize draw inside the group here from all the creative entry’s shared and that show up tagged outside the group (remember the settings needs to be public otherwise I cannot search the hashtag to see them)  … let’s help spread the joy and benefits of creativity together 💗

Come join us for more Self care, motivation and clean living fun and tips as well! 

Here’s a few google images for adult colouring if you need an extra prompt to get your creativity flowing.

Happy Stampin’ 

Margaret 

Live, Laugh Love 

Be Totallyawake4-life

Seas the Day!

This stamp set is so darling! 

 

How stinking cute are these two card inspirations? 

 

 

 

Artisan team member Karine Lison created these two projects using the Seas the Day Bundle.

She says: “I used Sponge Daubers and two inks on my stamp to get a nice gradient on my octopus.”

 

 

 

Happy crafting .... looking for weekly crafty inspiration, self care and clean living inspiration come over to Facebook and join us in Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' It Together community!

 

Margaret

Live. Laugh. Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

Watercolour WOW!

Love this tip on making an abstract water colour effect using water colour paper and spritzer from SU Artisan team member Tami Hewlett. 

 

 

 

Such a pretty end result! 

 

3 easy steps!

Step 1 spritzing a sheet of water colour paper with water. Spritz both front and back to prevent the paper from curling.

Step 2 Ink up a stamp ad stamp off on scratch paper twice to lighten the colour. then stamp on the wet water colour paper. Spritz again if the paper starts drying between colours.

Step 3 Dry the paper with a heat tool. Then stamp on the image full strength over the water colour for a fun artsy look!

I can think of a few of my favorite stamp sets to use with this trick! How about you? 

 

 

Happy crafting

Margaret

Live.Laugh.Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

 

 

Are you creating for YOU?

I often hear card makers expressing frustration that they worked for over an hour creating a card for someone in their life and the receiver tossed it aside like meh and moved on oblivious to the time, love and care that went into it. My response is that you are gonna burn yourself out and stop enjoying if your relying on others to validate your crafting! IMO the passion needs to be in the experience of the CREATING and all the benefits that gives YOU in the DOING of the things more so than any potential accolades the receiver might give in appreciation of your byproduct. 

Does it make me feel good when someone tells me they love the card or project I gift them? ABSOLUTELY! Seriously who doesn’t like positive reinforcement!  But that’s just an added bonus when that happens because I already got my return on investing and internal positive reinforcement in the  creating! In the lowered stress and calmness and energy that creating brings me! 

I create for ME and it’s an added bonus if I can pass my creations on to others and they get some joy too! 

Or that I make money from people who want to commission a project or attend a technique class cause they want to learn to create for themselves too! 

When the doing of something brings you peace, joy and energizes you it doesn’t matter if others care! And when you’re more focused on external validation it looses all those things and becomes “a chore” where your more worried about pleasing someone else than you are about enjoying the process of creating. 

Happy Stampin’

Margaret 

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life.com 

The Month of Love is Coming!

Introduce more love into your life with these adorable products! Make sweet treat packaging, valentines, cards, and more with the Sweet Talk Suite Collection. 

Plus with Saleabration running  right now but the full Suite and add some adhesive and you qualify to choose TWO free Saleabration items!

Due to Covid I have had to unsubscribe to my personal online website with Stampin’ Up! However I am still an active demonstrator so if you’d like help order just give me a shout via email or Facebook link and I can place an order via my back office for you! 

Happy Stampin’

Margaret 

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life 

 

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What’s your must have time saving craft tool?

For me one of mine is the Stamperatus! It’s the BEST project saver - no more accidentally rocked the stamp lines on my projects, no more opps my fingers slipped and my stamp block landed in middle of my work and ruined my project! 

I also love this use shown here by a Stampin’ Up! Artisan team member to ensure you get the bold crisp stamp set for your project. Just makes the end results pop that much more! 

But the awesomeness doesn’t stop there - I also love how it speeds up layered stamping projects or when creating custom orders for customers using the same design over! Saving my precious commodity of time and therefore money when doing multiple projects! 

Plus you can adjust the plates to create a cascade or grid pattern along a card without having to adjust the stamp or paper alignment itself - just move the plastic plate to the next slot over. 

IMO it is a must have when designing cards and scrapbook projects! 

 

What’s your must have project saving and time saving crafting tool? 

Happy Stampin’

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life   

Bright Baubles

OK I already loved the Bright Baubles Bundle but seeing this Artisan team member inspiration and now he layered them to really make them POP I want it even more!!! 

So intricate and elegant! They’d look lovely hanging on a tree too! I just love making paper ornaments for my tree! 

Tombow glue is perfect for intricate gluing and dries clear. A little trick I use if I need a really intricate dab of glue is make a puddle in my silicone mar and use the paper poker to dot on OR I use a sponge and dab the glue onto sponge and than dab onto the paper dies for a nice even application.

 

Here is the entire Bright Baubles bundle!

 
Photo credit and full details here: 

Happy Stampin’ 

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love
Be Totallyawake4-life

Start the car - this deal is too good to be true!

Love to paper craft and looking for ways to save money while you do it? 

 

Ever considered joining Stampin' Up!? 

 

There’s no better time than November for customers to transition into the demonstrators they’ve dreamed of becoming. 

 

From 4–30 November, you will be able to start your Stampin’ Up! business strong—and with big savings!

 

Choose your own products to get started - $165 worth of goodies to get you going for only $100 Canadian. If you are US its $125 worth of goodies for $75.00

The Stampin' Up! family has demonstrator options for everyone from the discount demo who is their own best customer, the hobby demo who loves to craft with friends and family, to the Building an Empire demo who wants it all - the discount, the earnings, building a team and crafting presence in their community! 

 

 

 

Would be happy to have you join my team - sign up online via here:

 

Shoot me a message by email if you have any questions! 

Happy stampin'

 

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

 

*this post contains affiliate links

Peaceful Christmas Paper Pumpkin - alternatives

 OMG how stinking adorable is this month's kit?

 

Like Laura I love maximizing all the materials in the kit including the leftover pieces. This card uses the leftover vellum die cut tree pieces as the focal point for this beautiful Christmas/Holiday handmade card.

 

 These ones from Rachel are awesome as well!

 

 

Next months is adorable too! 

We all love to see piles of presents on Christmas morning. Make that your reality with the Gifts Galore Paper Pumpkin Kit! With classic Christmas sentiments, bright and festive colors, a sweet snowman, a tree with all the trimmings, or a playful pile of presents, you’ll have everything you need to make eye-catching treat packages that are sure to spread Christmas cheer. Each Gifts Galore box contains enough supplies to create nine treat packages—three each of three designs—and nine food-safe bags that are adorably styled for easy Christmas gifting. There’s plenty of joy to share with Gifts Galore!

Plus if you do not need all the contents for the intended treats demonstrators like myself love to share lots of alternative ideas for cards, scrapbook layouts and more!

Sign up for yours here before November 10th to get in on it!

 

Happy Stampin'

 

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life  

 

*post has affiliate links

Throwback Thursday!

 Having some fun over in the Scrapbook Nerd & Friends group on Facebook today in preparation for the weekend of crafty time!

 

This was one of my layouts from my first ever crop at the Scrap & Crop weekend retreats   at the Festival Inn in Stratford - I used a sketch from Pinterest to help get me inspired and love how it turned out - the little grids are a great way to show a sampling of papers and use up scraps!

 

Does anyone else have a photo of themself sitting on the toilet that their parents took - the good ole days when parents use to try to toilet train at like 14 months old by putting you on the thing every 10 minutes for a half hour thinking that was being trained!

 

Like you can even see my moms hand with a cup trying to force me to drink more fluids in order to get me to pee - hate to break it to you mum but it was YOU who were toilet trained at this stage in my life not ME!

 Happy Stampin' 

Margaret

Live,Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

Who loves an unboxing?

 Who doesn't love a good unboxing?

I love being a part of the Scrapbook Nerd Design team - choosing our quarterly goodies to showcase is so much fun! Check out all the goodies in my unboxing video! Make sure to head on over to Scrapbook Nerd's & Friends on Facebook and join in the on fun weekly challenges to help jump start creative juices and for chances to win free stuff!

 So what do you think I should play with first?

Happy Stampin'

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

It’s Paper Pumpkin time

 I am so excited each Month waiting for my Paper Pumpkin subscription - the Jolly Holly is on it’s way now - reminds me of being little and getting $1 to buy candy at the store and choosing one of those “surprise bags” that you rushed to get home and dump out all the penny candies inside it!

Except the Paper Pumpkin won’t rot your teeth 🤣

Sign up before the 10th of November to get the Jolly Gingerbread Kit! Here’s a little sneak peek!

Happy Stampin'

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

*this post contains affiliate links

March Paper Pumpkin - Outside the Box Scrapbook edition

I am SO loving this Paper Pumpkin! The embellishments and stamp sets are just adorable!

Plus for their 7th Birthday we also got an additional stamp set in this months kit! 

I was so excited to share my sneak peek when it arrived I did not even bother to edit my video and just uploaded it to Youtube! 

 

 I was eager to whip up my 3 trio design cards in the kit! I mean see how I was not kidding on how adorable are the embellishments here?

Today I have been working o on my Paper Pumpkin Alternatives today for Paper Pumpkin customers virtual class support over on my Totallyawake4-stampin' - double layout! If you are looking to subscribe to Paper Pumpkin please make sure to choose me as your demonstrator so I can support you with lots of 'outside the box' options!

I focused on one traditional with mat for a 5X7 layout - I cut up the card bases and envelopes and on this particular layout I used envelope pieces to create the banners along the top here as well as the stamps from the stamp set to create imagery along the white background and than card kit embellishments to add dimension. 

And than did one pocket with 4 mats for 4x6 photos! I had used the 3x3 cut outs from the card bases for the focal imagery along the 3 4x4 squares in the middle and stamped and fussy cut using the coordinating Under the Umbrella imagery on this layout It’s such an adorable little set 💕💕💕

 

Happy Stampin'

Margaret

Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

Be Totallyawake4-life

*this post contains affiliate links

Vicki Boutin - So Much Fun with Florals

Having fun guest designing over at Scrapbook Nerds!

Card Number One features Vicki Boutin's Color Kalidescope - So Much Fun stamp set with the floral stamps used to create a versamark collage embossed in gold on the crumb cake cardstock and than water colored with white pigment ink. 

Card number Two was a quick and simple card with the floral collage stamped in gold ink and than layered card fronts in the white, crumb cake and black ... just love this color combo! The Happy Birthday sentiment is from Concord & 9th Birthday Basics stamp set!

Seriously are these not two adorable quick clean and simple cards that pack a lot of punch? 

 

Made a fun little process video of the card I made for the Floral Challenge this week - you can play along too head on over to their Scrapbook Nerds & Friends on Facebook and join the fun! 

Happy Stampin'

Margaret

Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

Be Totallyawake4-life 

*this post contains affiliate links

Ornate Garden Suite JUGS challenge

Using my Sunday Social Distancing to have fun doing some card challenges - the Just Us Girls trend stretch #527 is “black background”!

I am playing with my sneak peek Orante Style stamp set and Ornate Layers dies from the Ornate Garden suite by Stampin’ Up! This amazing suite will be available to customers April 1st!

 

I have created a nice clean simple any occasion card with a tiny pop of color on my daisies 💕 I used the Ornate Layers die for the black background. Stamped with versamark. colored the leaves in solid with a versamark pen and than embossed it with white emboss powder. I coloured the stems and the middle of the flowers with Old Olive and Daffodil  Stampin' Blends.

 Happy Stampin'

Margaret

Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

Be Totallyawake4-life

*this post contains affiliate links