~ OLW blog hop ~

I'm so excited (and a bit nervous) to be participating in my first blog hop ever!  If you are visiting for the first time and you like what you see, please feel free to follow me by clicking over on the right!

As mentioned in previous posts, I am participating in a class over at Big Picture Classes called One Little Word with the fabulous Ali Edwards.  This is my first attempt at this class and I am enjoying pretty much everything about it.  I look forward to checking the gallery each day to see what my classmates have come up with.  This month, I have enjoyed the prompts and feel like they have helped me get to know my word, balance.  The one thing that has been difficult for me this round has been making decisions about the small stuff!  As I shared in my last post, I'm sweating the small stuff and I don't like it!!  :-) What I love most about this process though, is watching my word continue to pop up in my life everywhere!

But let's get to the photos and the process of putting it all together.  I'll start with the final product and if you are interested in the details keep reading.  Deal?

My word, balance.  The title page is a photograph that I took on January 1st, the same day I announced my One Little Word in this post, which also explains why/how I chose it (or it chose me) and how the necklace in the photo is related to my word.

January page with title page

January 2012

The decision making part of this was the most difficult.  Choosing the word was easy and picking out the album color wasn't at all a problem either, of course.  I saw a scrapbook layout online a while back that used a grey and orange color scheme and loved it.  I didn't pin it (I'm pretty sure I didn't even know about Pinterest at that time), so I couldn't find it again, but I remembered the colors and when this project came up I knew I wanted to use that palette.  But then....white or grey prompt cards?  type or handwrite? etc.  To illustrate the difficulties that I had early on, I give you this photograph...

indecision

These were all for one quotation card!  I love the quote, "Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving" by Albert Einstein.  This was the first card I worked on, and I decided if they were all going to take as long as this one, I was in trouble!  The real trouble was that I made six before I settled on this one...

I couldn't stop at just one quote!  I also chose a quote by Henri Matisse, "What I dream of is an art of balance".   I happen to love Matisse, so I was extra excited when I found it.  I purchased a digital print of a Matisse painting online and printed it for my page.  I chose this particular one because the people somehow remind me of my word -- and I like the colors.  There are three layers, the base layer (the grey card stock is a bit of BazzillBasics (canvas) smoky goodness).  The top layer is just the print, and I threw a bit of orange for good measure - a bit of an orange sandwich, if you will!  I used this EK Success edger punch for some added fun, and wrote the quote going up the side.  This one only took a couple of takes (headed in the right direction).

Probably my favorite card is the homemade chevron pattern, with the date.  Inspired by this post by Katie Scott, I decided to add some chevron fun.  First, I punched squares out of various paper.  Next, I cut the squares in half and, finally, glued into a chevron pattern!  Easy peasy!  (Now we're getting somewhere)

And then, my word, Balance, written over two cards.

For this I inked, cricuited (heh, new word) and sewed.

This awesome embossed card stock, BazzillBasics' Tin Roof, was the base of these two cards.  I cut them to fit and then I rounded the corners with my Creative Memories Corner Rounder.  I lightly inked the raised parts with orange (of course) Stampabilities pigment and then ran the edges across the ink pad, too.  I used the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge to cut out the letters on my Cricut.  I was able to use several patterned papers from my stash.  Finally, I got out my new(ish) sewing machine (read about my first adventure with that here) for a few, very imperfect finishing touches. 

I had several mistakes that actually worked, which is always nice if you have to have mistakes!  One is pictured below.

I had this great idea to use this awesome EK Success punch at the bottom of the thesaurus card (my first mistake was not spacing out the words to fill the card).  I completely forgot that this punch doesn't really create a border, it detaches completely from the original paper!  So I just stuck some patterned paper behind it, glued 'er down and called it a day.  

Overall, I'm please with the final product and it was fun!  I hope I didn't add too many boring details, but I happened to take a few photos while in the process and thought I'd share!

One more thing...looking for that self-portrait?  I have taken a few, but been quite unhappy with all.  So...I'll try again, soon.

Thanks for stopping by!  Next up, Tere!  

Margie 

Sharyn 

Jill

Lynn  

Jenn

Carmen  

Marilee

Kristina            

Cindy C 

Kelly

Cheri    

Amanda            

Cindy  

Brooke            

Naomi

Melissa            

Karen  

Melissa S            

Devon  

Donna 

Dawn                        

Katrina             

Sam                        

Monica             

Kimberlee              

Missus W            

Kaylea                         

Nikki                        

Erin                        

Jo                        

Coley                        

Beth                        

Veronica            

Jamie                        

Monica B            

Lisa                   

Rebekah         

Jan                  

Cate

Stephanie              

Orange Gearle   <~~~~~ you are here!  :-)            

Tere                           

Junelle                   

Ruth                  

Becky