to start posting once again on my blog. Now granted I only had one post so far; it was always an intention of mine to continue on with it, but life gets in the way sometimes and our wishes and dreams fall to the waste side. I was busy doing a lot of this and a lot of that, but hardly accomplishing much at all. Then was a lot different than what my now is going to be. I lost my father 2 weeks ago, January 31st. He lived with me for 9 years, well almost 9 years. He was 92 years old. He was totally dependent on me for everything. I'm not going to say that it was easy by no means and that I didn't dream of what it would be like when he was gone, I did, but I never expected my life to be a place that I didn't know what I wanted to do in it. My father defined my life for so long. Everything I did was based around how much time I had to do it before my father needed something. I kept educating myself with "stuff" while he was at day care or relaxing in his chair. I was always doing something. Now, I have all the time in the world and I find myself just sitting and not finding myself interested in too much of anything. I know it's only been 2 weeks and it's all normal with the grieving process, but still I just never expected it to be like this. We always see things differently after what you are expecting happens. I knew it would be tough, but not like this. I knew I would be able to sleep until I wanted to and I didn't realize that I wouldn't want to get up. I knew that I would be able to do whatever I wanted to do and now I don't know what I want to do. I also knew that me and my family could get back to planning and doing things together and enjoy our time with each other, but now there seems to be nothing that I really want to do. I guess it all goes hand in hand with loosing someone special.
So, here I have come to have a start at something. There is nothing keeping me away now. I have all the time I want to do whatever it is that I want. That's such a new concept for me, and I wish I knew what it was that I wanted to do with all this information I have been acquiring these past 9 years. I always told myself that one day it would all come together. So, here you have it, my start to wherever my life is going to lead me. Everyone says to take one day at a time, so that's what I am going to do.
I've been educating myself on photography, photoshop, digital design, scrapbooking and much more during these 9 years. So, what am I going to do with it all? I would love to do something with my photography. We've talked about making my father's old room into some sort of a studio. Rich did get me a lighting set-up this Christmas for studio lighting. I do think it would be a good place to set up something. That will have to be down the road though as I am not ready to be emptying out my father's room any time soon. From here I'm just not sure what to do next. I'm getting ready to take another photography class on finding the light. I think this will be interesting. It's a 3 month class I believe. I actually am looking forward to it, it will give me something that I enjoy to do. One day at a time, right? Yep, that's what I'm going to do just take one day at a time.
I will leave you with one photo today of my father. He was such a happy man. This was taken 4 1/2 years ago when he took 26 of us on a cruise. He got to spend the week with his whole family. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of us and we will remember it forever. So one door closes, and one door opens. I'm sure he will be there guiding me along my way.
02/14/2012
07/26/2010
Today is the day I start my blog.
Okay, today is the day to start my blog. Why today you may ask? What makes one start a blog to begin with you might also be asking. Well, I've wanted to start one for a long time now, but just haven't made the plunge. There are a couple of reasons that I actually need to start one now. I am endeavoring onto a new facet of my life, a creative happening you might say.
For those of you who know me, know that I am very passionate about all types of scrapbooking, photography and digital design. I teach scrapbooking at our local scrapbook store, Memory Lane, PA. I love teaching there. I love the people who come month after month to my classes. I think I get just as much inspiration from them as I do from creating on my own. Over the years I have met some wonderful people who have become my friends. So, this blog is for you and for hopefully new friends along the way.
I think my goal with this blog is to share ideas, techniques, inspiration and teach. I want to make this a place where you all can come to and perhaps learn a thing or two now and then. I want it to be a happy place for me to come and share.
I'm not much of a writer, and I have very limited time, and I think that is one reason I haven't done this before. I am making this a conscious effort to do this. So, please bare with me as I walk this walk and become familiar with this whole blog thing.
Recently, I've been asked on several occasions if I had a blog. My answer has always been, not yet. I mentioned before that I have a few reasons now to start one. One of those reasons is that I will be starting up, sometime in the near future, a place to showplace my digital designs. I am just about finished up with a class that I took from Jessica Sprague, The Art of Digital Design. It was an awesome class. I didn't know what I was going to do when I took it, but I think I enjoyed it so much that down the road I want to make digital kits, hybrid kits of some sort, maybe some page templates for photographers. I get all giddy inside while designing to see what you can do with Photoshop, and I can't wait to share with you some of my work, and hopefully inspire you along the way.
The other reason, well, I can't say at the present time, but in time I will. So, you'll just have to wait on this reason.
Until then, I will leave you with my first 2 papers that I have designed. They were both made from some old red work that I have on a quilt at home. I love red work stitchery. There are some really amazing designs out there. Anyway, when I figure out how to post pictures, I will post a picture of this beautiful quilt that I have that is covered with it and will show you where I got my inspiration from.
So, until then......let me go and hit the "Publish & Activate Your Blog" button and see where I end up.
Okay, so I got the quilt on. It's going to take me some time to get this going. So, please be patient and come back and visit me from time to time.
I took the square of the little girl jump roping (she's located on the bottom row, 4th in from the left) and made this paper. I also used the butterfly (top row, 2nd from the right). It was the same butterfly used on the page, just twisting it here and there. To do this in photoshop, take your photo or element, go to your move tool, hold down the command button and click and pull on one of the corners. This will allow you to pull and twist on the corners. This is a fun little trick to give some realism to things like this butterfly.
With this other paper, I used a stitchery that I had gotten at an antique store and scanned it in. It took about 9 scans to scan the whole thing in, and then it took quite a long time to line all the pieces up and fix little areas here and there until it looked perfect. This boy going fishing with the geese behind him is also a piece of red work that I extracted and used on the paper.
Here's the stitchery...
This stitchery inspired this paper....
Here you have my first post. I know it's really a rough start, I'm probably all over the place, but I'm so anxious to get this started. Hopefully, you can see how my brain works a little bit with the images I showed you that shows where I got some of my inspiration from.
So, more to come.
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