This is the first year I have participated in OLW with Ali Edwards.  I have seen it and read about it for the past few years but never nudged myself enough to do it.  This year was different, last year I had a lot of sadness, stress and anxiety in my life and I wanted to do something that just I could really relate to and OLW seemed to fit the bill perfectly.  I started to think about words, many words and nothing seemed quite right until I was designing a card one day for my project life album and the word INSPIRE popped up.  I filed it along with the other words I had been thinking about but it just kept working it's way back to the top and I finally realized that it was telling me "I'm your OLW."  So begins my year long journey to see just how INSPIRE will fit into my life.  Will it inspire me to get healthier, will this one word help me to focus on the fact that it is okay to have imperfections.  Will it inspire me to try new things?  I hope so, but whatever is ahead I am looking forward to this journey and learning more about myself.

 

My First Blog Post and Loving Mixed Media

THE BEGINNING
I am involved with a wonderful group of ladies both on a Facebook group and on our blog Project Life Card Swap who create handmade cards to swap that go into our project life albums.  Project Life is a product and a system created by Becky Higgins, http://beckyhiggins.com/.

So they asked me, "do you have a blog?"  I answered no, they in turn asked could you? and I thought "What would I blog about?"  Then it occurred to me maybe there were others out there like me (an empty nester) and they just might find what I had to share interesting so as reluctant as I was (since I didn't have a clue how to put a blog together) My Inspired Studio was born. 

As I begin this blog I can already see that it will be a work in progress for
awhile anyway.  One of the things I like best is the part about getting my thoughts down where I can see them, not just have them floating around in my head.  There will be days when I will share how I am feeling, some days I will share the projects I'm working on at the moment but mostly sharing how I use project life by Becky Higgins , One Little Word by Ali Edwards, Mixed Media and Art Journaling in my life as an empty nester. 

This is quite different than when I did my first project life album in 2010.  My husband and I had just moved to Texas from Iowa so that first year was filled with a lot of first's for us.  Now each day is pretty much the same so I have changed to doing my project life albums on a monthly basis instead of a weekly basis and this works well for us.  This way I can highlight the things that are really important that happen each month and also some of the once in a lifetime moments.  So I'm hoping other empty nesters who don't think project life will work for them will follow my journey and see your memories can be captured even when you think there's nothing to document.

MIXED MEDIA
I thought it would be fun to show you something I just put together.  I am totally in love with mixed media and using it in my project life album this year.  The texture, dimension and depth that it adds to my layouts is just outstanding and it almost makes my page come to life. 

I found a new product called modeling cream that looked interesting and like it would be a lot of fun to play around with and I'm telling you this was a blast.  I'm having a hard time deciding just what projects I'm going to use it on.  Below is a card I made for my Valentine's day layout in my album.  I just love how this turned out.  The hearts were made using pearl modeling cream and a Heidi Swapp stencil.  I think you will agree it turned out just darling.  So now I'm off to see what other little gems I can create.  I hope that I have inspired you to try something new.  You never know it just might become a favorite technique.