Start Again

I think I’m beginning to iron out some of the flaws in the posting of this card blog. I’ve been trying to figure out a better way to photograph the cards. I’ve been looking at what other card bloggers do and decided that using a neutral background looks best, so I’m ditching the black.

Also, I found taking pictures of the cards upright is easier plus you avoid casting weird shadows. Another issue I’ve been tackling is trying to make all the pictures the same width so that it looks more pleasing when I post, by avoiding the annoying varying sizes of photo frames.

On the cards making front:  I have been continuing to make cards out of my doodles. Now that I have a few cards under my belt, when I look at some of my early cards they seem very plain. I didn’t use many embellishments or many layers. I’m finding as I get more comfortable with the process I am starting to experiment a little more.

This week I am posting some more of my early card designs. Two Birthday cards, one for a boy and one for a girl, plus a Thank You card coloured two ways. Once again, the images were drawn by me and coloured with Copic Markers. The word stamps are from Stampin’ Up! and the background papers are from a variety of different sources.

I am always open to suggestions, comments or critiques, after all this is a learning process.

Cheering

Well, I missed posting some new cards last week so I'm going to make up for it. This week I'm posting a couple of pictures of cards I made for my cheer leading nieces.  At this point the cards were still a work in progress, I guess I never took a picture of the the finished product...oh well.


The last card is a remake of one of the sketches to show a more traditional cheer-leading outfit.

Finding Creativity

Sometimes trying to be creative is a very difficult thing. It just doesn’t seem to work on demand. There are days you may want to do or make something, but you find yourself clueless about where to start. Other days you can have so many ideas that you’re left figuring out what to do first.  As the saying goes, “when it rains it pours”.

But what does one do when there is a dry spell? How do you handle days where nothing you draw looks right or you just can’t think of a subject to write about? Everything I’ve read on “writer’s block” suggests that the only solution is to keep pushing through. If you’re a writer just write, or if you draw just draw anything. It doesn’t need to good or have a point, you just have to keep moving. So I do what is suggested in the hopes when inspiration hits me I’ll be at the ready, pen in hand.

What my inner psychologist wonders is why this happens in the first place and whether there is a way to predict these ebbs and flows.

This week’s card I created when I was thinking of card that a son might give his mother. Once again I took one doodle and presented two ways: one for Mother’s day, the second as a birthday card.