The Monday Creative Blog Tour

Hello Everybody and Happy Monday

I've been invited by Jane to join the Creative Blog Tour. The tour is full of blogs by incredibly talented and creative people, writers, artists, scrapbookers, needle artists ..... and more. And, they are all sharing a little bit of their creativeness. I'm primarily a scrapbooker but have more recently been delving into other forms of mixed media art. Now it's my turn to share with you a little about my creative process.

1. What am I working on?

I'm on the creative team for ARTastic Challenge Blog and I'm on the design teams for Off the Rails Scrapbooking Blog and Scrap It With Attitude. I love being on these teams because they keep me on my toes and force me to create. So, I'm usually working on something for one of these teams. At the same time, I like to keep my albums up to date and enter an occasional challenge of my own. I have had my work published in art and craft magazines and definitely want to find time to submit more of my work for publication. Here's a little peek of some of my latest work.

2. How does my work differ from others of it's genre?

I guess the main thing about my work is that I switch between digital and traditional scrapbooking all the time, depending on my mood. I often do hybrid layouts as well, using both digital and traditional elements. The examples above are mixtures of all three.

3. Why do I create what I do?

I originally started scrapbooking to document the heritage photos I collected during years of doing family history research (yes I'm a passionate family historian too). It took a lot of work to track down those photos and I always wished somebody had recorded more of my family's history to make the job a little easier for me. So, my first layouts were all vintage pages. The natural progression was then to start scrapbooking my own more recent photos. The photos in my many albums were degrading because of the acid and lignin used in photo albums. I removed all the photos and began to scrapbook them using archival supplies and I added much more journaling. This job is about 95% complete now. This makes me feel good because my scrapbooks will provide a document of the current life and times for future generations.

Another huge benefit is that scrapbooking gives me a sense of achievement and provides a creative outlet away from day to day chores. I can't ever imagine not doing it.

4. How does my creative process work?

My creative process works differently depending on the situation. My design team work is inspired by the challenges at the time; I may have to follow a sketch or colour palette or other criteria to complete my layout. My personal pages are inspired by the subject of the photo/s. For example, I usually colour co-ordinate scenery shots. People photos I scrap based on what was happening at the time the photo was taken. This could take the shape of an occasion (eg Christmas, birthday) or a mood (eg. funny, relaxing). Other times, I get inspired by the colour of an ink, paint or the colour and pattern of papers. At these times, when I want to just be creative with my supplies, I often convert the colour of my photos to co-ordinate with my page.

Well that's a little about me. Now I'm looking forward to us creative bloggers continuing on into the blogosphere so I am going to nominate Amanda Sousa and Rhonda Alman to keep the ball rolling next Monday.

Amanda is a talented scrapbooker and the owner of Off The Rails Scrapbooking Challenge blog and Scrap It With Attitude Facebook site.

Rhonda is a very talented crafter who owns the Wheelie Crafty Designs blog.

Thank you for stopping by. Cheers :)