Last Blog of the Year...

and it's devoted to Alexa's challenge part two. She has uploaded the second part to this creative motivator on IACW here. Using the same advertisement as inspiration, we weren't allowed to use any craft tool that used electricity or batteries. Now, I'm like Alexa and use a hybrid style for my scrapbooks and would be lost without my computer normally, so this was indeed doing something that has almost become alien to me.

I recently took a photo of a tag my Dad handed over to me whilst sorting through Mum's jewellery. I'd never seen it before. I never knew she'd even held onto it all these years. It's so darn small. Hard to believe it once fit around my wrist or ankle. This, I decided, would be the perfect for this project.

I allowed myself to use the computer to print out the photos but after that, I switched it off and trudged off to my craft room. I looked at the photo of my little tag and the dominant blue on it and used this as a starting point for choosing the background paper. It then seemed that a yellow/orange would offer up some contrast, so I dug around and found something amongst the 600 patterned papers I own. I then looked at the big empty space to the right of the photos and looked in my scraps folders to create three more blocks. It was only at this point that I started to think about the words. I didn't want to journal because I couldn't use the computer and no way was I resorting to my handwriting. So I wanted something simple. Which is when the word "tag" popped into my head. I noticed I also had three blank squares to fill. Very handy. Then whilst looking through my chipboard for Tim Holtz's alphabets I saw that some of the designs were square. Perfect! All I had to do was paint them in a harmonious blue. And whilst I was digging around for letters, I found a mini alpha grunge set with numbers. Again creative bells started chiming. I painted them yellow to contrast against the background and voila the LO was done once I added a punched border to balance it out.

None of this was thought out beforehand. I just took it one step at a time and it all fell into place. It's a fantastic way of doing it but I'm not going to chance my luck again. It was brilliant to be reminded how creative scrapbooking can be but I'll stick to my planned LOs for now methinks.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to pop over to my blog this year and read my blatherings or looked at what I've created. I'm humbled that anyone wishes to do so and most of the time, surprised haha. A huge cyber hug to every one of you. Whatever your plans, I hope you enjoy your evening and may I take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy and hopefully prosperous New Year. xxxx