Love Is...Never Having To Give Up On Your Dreams

Wow...it's been one of those days. I had a pretty good time crafting & chatting with a friend. We plotted our plan to take over the world with our fabulous Stampin' Up! goodies and crafty genius, laughed about everything under the sun - and punched out WAY too many cardstock tags. But later in the day it all went very, very wrong.

I was feeling bored with my blog - the layout and design wasn't really representative of my creative personality, and I'd gotten to the point where I thought: what's the point? Enter a new Blogger feature, which immediately got my attention. And being a little trigger happy, I clicked before I thought it through...and my entire blog layout was messed up! I was tried to change it back and couldn't easily revert it to the previous format - so, having already felt a little frustrated, I stupidly decided that I would just delete this thread and start with a new template. Not realizing, at the time, that deleting the thread meant deleting the entire NAME of the blog!! In the split second it took me to realize the fallout, my surprisingly fast browser had already processed my action. My blog was completely gone. I was devastated. I'm so new at this and still trying to find my way, still trying to upload pictures and turn this page into something that represents me as an artist and as a person.
So I tried to retype the blog address - which of course came up with something along the lines of "blog not found". I then decided I would just start a new blog thread with the same name - but it wouldn't let me do that. EEK!

Fast-forward a few hours and my husband called me to say that he was coming home from work. I told him about my mishap, and he said it was no big deal, that he could figure out how to retrieve it - but I wasn't buying it. So imagine my surprise and delight when, simply clicking on a button on my Blogger dashboard, revealed the magic words that turned my whole evening around: UNDELETE THIS BLOG.

It's strange how something so seemingly insignificant can be so important on a particular day...Either way, I'm so happy that I was able to recover my blog, so I'm going to make an effort to post more regularly and start putting my artwork on here so that, hopefully, I can turn this blog into something fun, creative and inspirational! :)

Playlist of an Artist

Ever since I was a child, I've had a love of music - there's a soundtrack to just about every major event in my life and everything in between. As a teen, I used to sit at my desk with my homework, music playing and often talking on the phone with a girlfriend - I actually couldn't even concentrate on homework without music! Talk about multi-tasking at its finest...

As an aspiring artist, I find both inspiration and emotion in music. Depending on the mood I'm in or the project I'm working on, I have a different playlist. Classical and new age music is good for detail-oriented tasks like cutting out intricate shapes or writing in a journal, but I love Oldies or chart toppers for just about anything artsy. I tend to listen to Etta James, crooners like Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald and even big band music when I'm writing. There's something about being transported to a totally different time that just makes the words pour out!

This is the part where I have to plug iTunes - their different ways of suggesting music you might like based on past purchases is far more accurate than any other website with a similar program. Amazon and Netflix, for example, still don't have the first clue about my taste - based on over 500 rated items. EEK! So yeah, I love my iTunes!

A lot of the music I "discover" comes from either the suggestions on iTunes directly, or actually from tv shows I download and watch. If there's even a snippet of a song that sounds like something I might like, I'm on Google typing in snatched words from the lyrics to see who the artist is and what the song is called...and then it's off to my trusted iTunes to listen to a sample and, more often than not, download the song in question.

Another way that I've discovered some interesting music is through watching arts & craft videos on YouTube. I love how creative some people are beyond the "point and shoot" approach. One girl from did a really awesome video of an altered journal - the soundtrack she chose not only worked brilliantly but actually served to inspire me to look up the artist (which she had kindly inluded below the video) and gave me some brilliant ideas! Check out her video:



Today being Memorial Day, though, I wanted to share a particular montage that I discovered and absolutely love. Since a wonderful history teacher inspired a fascination and interest in WWII during my last two years in high school, I've looked for and collected items that relate to the era. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII, and my husband's side of the family has a long tradition of military service. So both my interest in WWII and my love of altered art come together in this fabulous display of patriotism:



So I'm going to end this post by wishing everyone and all a safe and happy Memorial Day!