While building this art journal page I just kept thinking about the quote & how true it is.  Who my kids are now – that was started when they were young.  The flower of strange teenage clothing choices came from the seed of individuality.  The flower  of reading came from the seed of bedtime stories as toddlers.  The flower of an odd sense of humor came from the seed of puns and other  jokes.   The flower of loving music came from the seed of 2 tone deaf parents singing along with kid songs and  80’s mega hits.  The seeds I am planting now will turn into flowers when they are adults.  I need to plant the seed of choosing a great nursing home so they don’t just granny dump me somewhere…

Gesso’d with punchinella and a wash of yellow acrylic paint.  Green for the ground – added with fingers just because I love to get my fingers in the paint.

Wanted coordinating paper to die cut the flowers so I just painted old book pages in the colors I needed.

The Hero Arts flower stamped and then die cut.  The die cut was so much nicer than cutting it out by hand.

Using a Pitt Pen I added the quote that inspired the page.

The quote was too plain so I used paint to fill in parts of the letters.

The tag at the top was the inspiration for the colors.  You can see how I made the tag here.  I wanted to use it but it just wasn’t working as a tag.  But I really liked it- does that ever happen to you – you love something but it just doesn’t seem to fit in the art?

I cut the tag and 2 others into clouds using one of Julie Fei-Fan Balzer’s stencils.  A happy accident- when I was erasing my pencil lines from writing the quote I found it erased some of the black Pitt pen.  I loved it so I went over all the letters and it gave them a more weathered look.  The clouds didn’t stand out the way I had envisioned so out came the Pitt pen to outline them.

Linking up with Just Journals and Julie Balzer- if you have a moment, stop by and check out all the fun art journals!

Being creative for me involves lots of stuff.  Thankfully, Creative Every Day helps keep me on the path to using my stuff everyday.  I am envious of artists who use just one medium and can neatly put all their supplies on one small desk.  Not envious enough to get rid of some of mine or stop buy more mind you.  So I have to find ways to organize my stuff – cheaply since I keep buying more stuff.  I am sure there isn’t anyone else out there who buys lots of stuff…

I love the new thin all metal dies – so many fun designs but they started getting to be a real mess in my drawer.  That means it made it hard for me to find what I was looking for which means I won’t do it as often.  So, I made a way to store them thanks to my heating vents.  I have magnetic covers for the vents in the basement & I found they hold the dies perfectly.

I ordered the magnetic covers, which really are just a think sheet of magnets.  Had to order more to replace the ones I stole from my vents!  They were too flimsy by themselves so I just glued them to a piece of cardboard (actually from the box they arrived in). Once dry I started organizing my dies on them.  It is so much easier to find a die when I need it now!  Now that CHA winter is over I am sure there will be more wonderful dies for me to own…