Aleida's Challenge- on Flickr Groups and I hate my photos

Boy do I hate how I look in photos and I have to get over that. Yesterday my friend Lucy was taking photos of me. On a good day I hate my photos, but I literally have been sick for a week and the face defietly shows.

Today I am reading Emily Ahren's blog and found this interesting post on taking photos of yourself with your children. You must read this!

Aleida's Challenge

From Emily's blog-

Many scrapbookers knew Aleida Franklin. She was a wonderful wife and mother and a brilliant artist. I didn't know Aleida personally, but she taught me something I will never forget.


She emailed me last year to tell me she loved my blog and to ask if I like my short hair-cut. This lead to a series of emails which eventually led me to remark that I really loved how often she posted pictures of herself with her children on her blog. And she replied to me, "Have you ever seen a photograph of your own mother and thought to yourself how fat she looked? Or how she wasn't wearing make-up? Or wasn't dressed in a glamorous outfit?" Of course my answer was no.


She then responded with saying that she made it a goal to take a picture of herself with her children at least once every month. And that to use excuses about how we look, as women, is ridiculous, since our children will never care what we looked like, but only that we had physical evidence of the bond between mother and child. Aleida tragically and unexpectedly passed away last September, leaving 2 small children and a grieving husband. After she passed I thought of how those children must feel to have those precious photographs.

Emily says:
I have made it my personal goal to follow her wise suggestion and I now take photos of myself with my children....double chins, make-up free, bed-head and all.


I invite Mothers everywhere to take Aleida's Challenge. To photograph yourself with your children each and every month. And to post them here so that we can see Aleida's legacy unfolding. If you want to share your projects and get encouragement, join the new Aleida's Challenge Flickr Group.

A Million Memories Layout of the Week- Baby Blue

My Niece Bailey will be so proud she is in the layout of the week at A Million Memories. Bailey is rapidly becoming the most published family member and she loves it. I will let her father know she can hand out autographs again.
http://www.amillionmemories.com/

A BIG thank you to A Million Memories designers for selecting me!

The Next Step

This is a wonderful day and a dream come true for each of us. We love to experiment, teach and share new ideas.

A little over a year ago I started a blog and kept encouraging a very good friend Lucy to start one. This opened new doors to friends along the way that shared like ideas and goals. What a wonderful world blogging has create for us and new friend Bethany.

Since that time we have all played along on the weekly and monthly challenges that are available for scrapbookers and altered artists. Meeting new friends and sharing our experiences along the way has been the best part.

Realizing how much fun participants have playing along we discussed that this is definitely an area that we have something to offer.

We are an ambitious, creative and adventerous group that loves to try new thing, teach and share new ideas. We hope you will be play along with us weekly.

Join us and tell your friends...we have some great ideas and techniques to show you!!!

Creative Therapy #58 Favorite Word SMILE- the universal language

Creative Therapy challenge this week was create something around your favorite word. Or in my case the favorite word this week. I just transferred to a new management position in my company. I am now working with all new employees on a different time schedule. I have an entirely new set of peers working with me..... all men.

So this entire week.... I got sick Allergies or something.... I have been sick every day that I went to work.

The employees all could look at me and pretty much see that I did not feel well
(a lovely sight). To top it off, by the second day I could not talk, there was no voice.
My son said that I sounded like a man on the phone and my husband said I sounded like (some basket ball coach- I think the coach yells alot).

So my word this week was SMILE, because that is all I could do as I met 100's of new people.( and try not to cough on them).

My usual relaxation every night is to work on my projects or scrapbook and there was very little of that this week.

But here is my smile project!!!

See you next week!

Pencil Line Sketch and Color Combos Galore - Rare Occasion

This page is my submission for the weekly challenge at Pencil Lines Sketches #130 and Color Combo's Galore. I really like to try and participate in some of the weekly challenges and there are two of my favorites. There are no restricitons other than following their prompts.

In this photos my daughter is wearing braces for the second time around at 24 years old. She wore braces as a teenager for 2 1/2 years, but unfortunately there were lots of problems after the braces came off. Meghan had a huge gap between her two front teeth prior to getting braces. About one week after the braces came off the gap reappeared.

Meghan was graduating from high school and at that point she wanted absolutely no part of having braces put on her teeth again. No amount of persuasion would convince her to go thru braces again.

Once she was in college in Gainesville we talked to another orthodontist and she again decided to not have them put on her teeth. This dentist told her it would be another 2 year process and she was not read to commit to that. It took another 2 years before she sought another orthodontist and arranged to have them put on for a second time.

So this March 2009 she had her braces removed for the second time. Prior to that it was virtually impossible to get a photo of her smiling with her mouth open.

Terri Conrad Designs- Having a give away

Check out Terri Conrad's site she had posted some of her new items for CR Gibson and She is giving them away. They are soooo cute.
http://terriconraddesigns.typepad.com

Creative Therapy- Unconditional Love

If you have never participated in the Creative Therapy challenge you should check out their web site.

Their weekly challenge makes you think out side of the creative circle. I am going to try and participate in this challenge weekly and my goal is to work on altered projects as often as possible. Stretching the boundaries.

My project this last week was an altered book and a photo of my daughter and her new husband.

I started by cutting out an opening in thr front of an old book. I measured it off and used and xacto knife to cut thru the front cover. I then cut a decreasing set of frames in side that area.

I layered papers on the front of the book and then sprayed misting inks on the cover. I also added acrylic paints to the cover. Once the paints had dried, I accented the seams with a charcoal pencil. Along the frame edges I painted on crackle medium and let it dry. I then took a charcoal pencil and scribbled over the crackled areas. Next I took my finger and rubbed the charcoal in to the crack and wiped the excess off .

I had alot of fun playing with this weeks challenge. TFL

Emma-

This page was made using Luminart home made spray mists. Formula is below in the previous post. There are lots of other uses for them that we can discuss. But for now here is a page I created using Webster's papers and the paints.

Tomorrow I will try and post some of the other pages I have created using the spray paints.

I heard that LuminArt is either reducing inventory or going out of business. I also read that they offer a discount on the product if you ask. happy painting.

LuminArt Pigment Paint Sprays

Thanks for the response to my home made spray mists. I really would love some of the glimmer mists, but have about 20 colors of LuminArt pigment paints so I decided to make my own.

Luminart powders are very intense and create wonderful colors splashes. The can be used several different ways, but we can get in to that later.

To make the misters, I purchased Walmart travel size spray misters 98 cents each in the shampoo and deodorant section. While you are there purchase a bottle of inexpensive liquid hair spray ( Rave, White Rain, any of the liquid pourable types).

I added about 1/4 teaspoon of the pigment powder and then added 2 parts water and then added 1 part hair spray.I am not an exact science person, as you probably can tell. The hair spray helps the paint to dry quicker and prevents the mica from getting all over your project or photos. The hair spray acts as a fixative.

You can also sprinkle the pure powders over your projects or pages and then spray the pure hair spray over the spots of paint and it will liquefy the paint and cause it to fuse out on your page. Once it drys it will adhere the powder to your page.

I will post photos of some of my before and after pages and projects.

Have fun, the pigments will dye your hands so if that is an issue for you, wear gloves. Wipe up the spills and blot your pages with paper towels and use them for other projects.