Inspiration Elevator Challenge- Nostalgia

Hello!
Today I'm bring a page I made for this month's Inspiration Elevator Challenge- Nostaligia.

I have a different perspective on this challenge because I don't really scrap to capture moments or even record my life.
I do it because I love messing around with paper and because it gives me a good reason to keep shooting photos- something I would otherwise forget to do in my normal day to day routine.

Basic Grey film strip paper- I'll need to get a couple more of this print. The flair is from A Flair For Buttons, chipboard and white laser cut tags from Scrap FX. New York flag from Reminisce. I also cut some leaves from vellum just for the heck of it. Since we put our things in storage and brought essentials with us when we moved to Utah, I don't have much in terms of items that are nostalgic but the printed film strips are good stand-ins- read below to find out why.

My page doesn't have a lot of journaling this month.
I've covered the subject of Brooklyn longing so frequently in the last couple of months I really just wanted to make a page to match this summer 2013 photo I love.

I am deeply nostalgic for my college days when I spent all day (literally) in the darkroom developing film and printing black and white photos for my next critique class.

The photo is of a near perfect day in May.
We walk the Brooklyn Bridge.
Discover new parts of the park by getting lost in the streets.
Finally, the sun is setting,
Saidy has brought her nephews and Lola finally has someone her own age to play with.
The food truck tacos we buy are delicious.
The salsa band playing outdoors in the park is so amazing we get up and dance in front of everyone.

Lola sits on David's shoulders the whole time.
Then... fireworks!!! Someone is getting married and we get to share in their joy.
And I cry
I AM SO HAPPY!
I know we may never get to come back to a summer concert in Brooklyn Bridge Park again.

I'm painfully grateful. 
New adventures and perfect days await in Utah but nothing compares to golden evenings by the water;
Lady Liberty waving her torch just a quarter mile away.

Quiet subway rides home

You fall asleep yet it is us who sit dreaming

This is home.

Those banner stickers are from the Target dollar aisle- they've been on a roll lately with the kraft stuff.

Onto the official challenge~

You may recall that the purpose of this challenge group is to take our scrapbooking to the next level, to stretch our creative process and to grow as artists by embracing challenges that make us think, work and grow.

You can view all of the challenges our new Inspiration Elevator Blog, here.

We are also pleased to welcome Denise Morrison and her stunning artistic style back to Inspiration Elevator.
Our challenge this month comes from the very talented Lisa Spiegel .

Here's what she had to say in her very own words:
"October is my favorite month of the year. Hands down. The temperatures here in Southern California finally start to drop, we wear a light sweater, maybe even a little boot. We pull out the scarves and the jeggings and put away the capris and tank tops. Leaves begin to change and we prepare for Halloween! My whole house is decorated, from top to bottom, and it is no small feat. I even swap out my dishes and serving ware in preparation for Fall and Halloween and I love to just keep the festivities going all the way through the Thanksgiving and then holiday season. My house will not return to "normal" until January. 

So, Lisa, tell us, how does this relate to a scrapbooking challenge? Well, what I've found over the years is my scrapping even changes over the holidays. I layer more. Reach for the bling and really dig deep to embellish with meaningful objects. Journal my thoughts and stories and feelings. Fall just make me nostalgic. So here is the challenge. Create a layout that is nostalgic...the feeling should be evident from the title, the visible journaling and the embellishments you choose. 
Choose deliberately and with purpose to tell your nostalgic story. I can't wait to see how you interpret this challenge!" 
 I hope you will stop by and see what the rest of the incredible Inspiration Elevator designers have created:

Lisa Spiegel

Laurel Seabrook 

Joanne Burton

Jodi Wilton

Michelle Hernandez

Ann Jobes

Laura Whitaker

Lisa Moen 

Christa Uttley

Guest Designer Denise Morrison

If you feel inspired to play along with my challenge this month, please share it using the linky tool on our Inspiration Elevator blog and/or our Inspiration Elevator Facebook page.
We'd LOVE to see what you made!

Normally dancers go in front of the stage but we had 3 toddlers to care for so we got up and danced
right in front of all these folks- and it spread. It WAS a good day.

Skissedilla and DCWV & A Flair For Buttons Blog Hop sneak peeks

Hello!
Been gone for two weeks. OOPS!
There's lots of scrappy paper crafting going on in the background.

This Saturday I'll be participating in the first ever DCWV - A Flair For Buttons blog hop.
I made a couple of pages that took me out my usual color scheme so I'm excited.
Here are two a sneaky peeks at my projects:

I looked at the large record page on the DCWV stack FOR-EVER till this subject  idea rose up.
Whew! No need for a photo of   Lola rocking out to Van Halen after all.

I made a card- an actual CARD!!! And one I like- very rare indeed.

Then on Sunday, my guest designer for the October Skissedilla sketch challenge goes up.
I'm honored to be part of this group which has introduced me to so many incredible scrappers.
Sneaky peek:

I used a butterfly punch garland I've had in my stash for over a year as well as my
absolute favorite mini feathers chipboard from Scrap FX. My page won't be the only one
posted either- it's gonna be fly mi gente.

I've been doing a lot of soul searching as of late.
I write posts in my head but because I committed to a path of positivity (wait- is that even a word?) here I haven't been able to truly capture how I feel.
How much do I reveal?
How much detail do readers care to know?

It's hard to find the middle ground between honesty and pure emotional detritus.
So I'm keeping my trap shut for now.
Frankly- how I feel changes so frequently shutting up is probably the best idea- when I figure things out I can  tell it all with some perspective or just laugh at all the internal drama and move the effer on.

Anyway if you have some time this weekend please swing by and say hello.

We stumbled across a pumpkin farm on the way home yesterday- lots of  last minute Fall themed photos ensued.

Have a great week.
Michelle

Pattern and layers- A Flair For Buttons post

Hello and happy Friday!

Today I want to share a page I made for A Flair For Buttons.

I started with the fantastic circles pattern in the background and quickly decided I liked this pattern with the b/w chevron. After that is was just about playing around with window and pop out details.

The photo in this page is a good reminder- having fancy filter apps to add titles and effects on your photos is great but if your original image was already low rez, adding effects to the image will only highlight it's lack of focus.

Since I'm working without my beloved Mac I have no choice but to take images with my ipod and print to Walgreens.
It's an awful substitute to printing images at home where I tweak everything in photoshop but that's how I'll have to work for the foreseeable future.

I'm finding great American Crafts product bargains at TJ Maxx (Amy Tangerine, Studio Calico, Dear Lizzy) and Tuesday Morning (Crate Paper and Cosmo Crickett) 

Picking flair buttons for this page was easy!
Deciding which ones to keep and which ones to use somewhere else was hard.

Please swing by the Flair buttons blog and check out Ashley's fantastic series: "No More Floating Flair" where she talks about different ways to incorporate flair into your layouts without making them look totes random (a particular issue with my pages- lol!)

Have a great weekend!
Michelle

Inspiration Friday- Art happens.

HIYA!

This week went by so quickly I didn't make a thing.
Thursday was filled with ALL interesting things!

I've had a visit to The New Museum Of Contemporary Art in my "to do" list for over two years.
The have a gorgeous new building that looks like stacked corrugated steel blocks.

New Museum Website

See? SO PRETTY! Also? Giant metal rose! What's not to love?

I love modern, challenging and contemporary art museums.
The exhibit "NYC1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No star" was SO not time to visit this museum on a whim.
Very little of what's hanging in the galleries is ok to show here.
No, really.
Crude, shock baiting, obvious and irrelevant are all words that come to mind in regards to what's on exhibit now.

I am an open-minded person who enjoys having the rug pulled out from under her expectations.
But even for me, a good time does NOT include visiting a space where people stare and smirk at a "mixed media sculpture" of a man, a child and a goat.
That move.
Luridly.
Yes- feel free to imagine the very worst.

Who. Buys. This. Stuff?
More importantly, WHY?

I mean, yes, art is MORE than just pretty pictures to match your furniture.
Art is about making you see things in a new way.
It's about opening unexpected doors to new ideas and view points.
For me, art is NOT about beating the viewer over the head with the terms
SEXISM! RACISM! HOMOPHOBIA! FEMALE DISEMPOWERMENT and SUFFERING!

If I wanted to experience obvious interpretations of these societal ills I would walk down the street like I always do, eyes open.

When I see art, I want to be transported.
This exhibit took me straight to a dark place and left me there saying
"Ok. Never coming back here again."

Yet, there was another aspect to this.
As we trudged from gallery to gallery blocking Lola from the worst of the "art"
PS- that's not something I do. I would rather deal with the following:
"What is THAT?"
"That is a set of teeth jutting up and out of a chair." (See? Told you! BANANAS!)
But the husband wasn't HAVING IT!
He left and took the kiddo with him to the food court where a thousand tiny origami paper cranes flew.
Ahhh... art.
Transcendent and perfectly normal all at once.

In my feeble defense, I had no idea WHAT the museum was showing.
It was free thursday and we were curious to see the inside of the place.
SO not what you do.
SO. NOT. !!!
Always, ALWAYS check the museum website or stick to The Met.
The statues in The Met are naked but DO NOT MOVE.

I was feeling all kinds of mixed up.
Here I was grossed out by this spastic display of creative desperation
All the while getting a chance to relive my past.
Not a past of violence or political disempowerment but a past of youthful creativity and hope.

In 1993 I was a Freshman college major participating in an exciting program called Yo-Tv.
We got to make the exhibit video for the Whitney Museum's Biennial.

I met many of the artists in this exhibit 20 years ago when I was pretty impressionable but even THEN I knew the work was lacking.

Here are a few of the installations or exhibits I thought flew past their social ills moorings and spoke to the soul about truth not just capital lettered negativity.

Janine Antoni's "Lick and Lather".
Chocolate  or soap busts that have been licked or lathered.
The results are rather eerie and beautiful.
We can talk for HOURS about female ideations of beauty and empowerment or
we can admire this set of 20 busts that fills the room with the scent of chocolate. 

Didn't get the name of this artist but I loved the interpretation of words so hot they
burned the letters off the page. What a beautiful way to capture feelings and ideas about
sexuality, privacy and knowledge without thrusting body parts my direction. (EWW!)

No artist info- sorry! This was a huge room with wall paper, an orange rug,
lights hanging from the ceiling and music. It was pretty and I wanted a great picture
then the guard yelled at me for getting too close to the installation. So I hid him behind the light.

A photo of a  mirror. Cast your vote for what this stands for. Yeah pretty obvious.
I loved it anyway. It was printed beautifully by Zoe Leonard- an artist I got to meet
and whom I found especially insightful, inspiring and down to earth. 

Pepon Osorio. This two room installation showing all the stereotypical objects d'art that
Caribbean Latinos of a certain generation and dare I say, economic status, tended to fill their homes with.
On the floor is a dead body (a fake one- this is supposed to be a movie set).
I identified with and was repulsed by this but I interviewed this artist for the Biennial video.
I thought the work  didn't make a lick of sense but I liked that he was able to explain himself to
19 year old me plainly and without that tone grown ups get with ignorant know-it-all teenagers.

Uhmmm- enough of THAT.

The New Museum changes exhibits frequently so maybe I'll see something interesting next time- if I ever bother visiting gain.

Onto the more accessible art!
Thursday morning we lined up and waited an hour to get our portraits taken for the InsideOut NYC Project.
If you are near 46 street and Times Square and have a few hours to kill I suggest you line up.
It's free.
You go to the back of a black and white polka dot truck to sit for 6 seconds and get a photo taken- no backsies!
You can then choose to take the resulting poster home or let the crew paste it to the ground in front of the TKTS booth.
This was total AWESOME SAUCE.
We are going again because this happened:

Beware of "funny" faces and distracted toddlers. :)

If Lola had looked in the general direction of the camera, this would have come home with us.
I don't enjoy the sight of my daughter's enlarged nostrils.

Have a great weekend folks!
Michelle

Friday photo Inspiration- store displays and ripped posters.

Hiya!

This is going up late because I'm totally riveted by the developing news in Boston.

The Breaking News coverage by Fox News 5 is a complete mess.

They pulled a news intern (Explanation: "She's from Russia") presumably because she would be an expert on Chechniya. (???!!!)

She's from the former Solviet Republic of Georgia and refused to join in their truthiness quest.

I changed the channel when they declared the brothers were illegal immigrants (untrue and reported correctly everywhere else- OOOPS!).

AnYwAy..
Here are my inspiration photos from this week's series of aimless inspiration walks.
I found the KEUUTE Allegria Boutique here in Williamsburg.

I didn't buy a thing.
I'm not the kind of Mama who pays 45 dollars for kid sized jelly shoes (I can get them for 5 bucks in Chinatown!) but if you are, AWESOME!
Go here! Be happy!

Felt embroidery hoops at Allegria Boutique on North 3rd.
This place is a DYI children's crafts fairyland. Swing by and be inspired! 

Pudgy owls!!! I loved the wall paper, the sofas- everything in this shop!

Paper houses- wrapping paper, candy, dime store jewels, cupcake cups- adorable!

I also swung by Anthropologie- the display staff in this store deserve art awards- really.
Great stuff on sale this week.
I bought one of those a green ceramic strawberry basket for 9 dollars- half price.

Giant wall display at least 8 feet across. LOVE the wall color!

Coral, turquoise, pink and woodgrain triangles on a mustard yellow
cracked plaster background- this HAS to be my next page!

Giant water color wire and paper flowers- gorgeous!

And my last series- ripped paper.
I love the look!

Keith Haring Brooklyn Museum exhibit from last year.
This BLEW MY MIND. Someone had the forethought
 to rip this chalk drawing off a subway wall and frame it as ART!
Can you BELIEVE IT? I . LOVE. New York!!!

I believe Pterodactyl Ptarty is a band. Excuse my ignorance but I have no clue.
I love the blocking here.
With a color palette change this would make a SLAMMING scrapbook page!

Not a poster but I love the neon pink on blue color.

Have a great weekend!
Stay positive!

Michelle

Friday inspiration- Nolita Photo walk

Hello folks!

This week's photo inspiration post was brought to you by a recent walk through Soho and Nolita.

Hot little heavens for visual stimulation.

That sounds rather indecent.

If I get lucky I get to stand out front when I'm at work and make samples.
The idea is to try to capture a customer's attention and get them to see how they can
use the stamps and other products they buy while at the store.
I made both these cards in under 20 minutes using scraps I had on hand.
I rarely get to pick the colors I love most but a little orange helps both grey and teal pop.
Martha Stewart butterfly stickers, Studio Calico mist, Paper Source card stock and stamps. 

I just mean that there are so many museums and shops all close together that the streets are popping with ideas for the open minded crafter.

The ideas can sit in your brain for weeks when suddenly BOOM! an original page appears.

At least that how it works for me.

Case in point:

3 foot tall at marquee at sign.
I REALLY want to make one of these!

Big Boy gets several make overs.

This gorgeous bag hanging in a tiny shop in Nolita.
I didn't even try to go in and inquire how much it was.
The "feathers" are delicately curved sequins.

"Life isn't tragic, Love is being ignored."
Why this is fabulous: 1. They used Puffy
scrapbook stickers and brads. 2. Hello giant scrapbook layout!
3.This was a store window display.  4. It was over 6 feet wide.

Faces layered on top of each other.
This would make a great textile print.

Another mural I caught while the artists were still working.
No I didn't speak to them. Yes I regret it.

Wheat paste posters. 

Also?
I found a gif making app!
All you have to do is take a series of photos and open them in GifMill to animate- super easy to use.
The only drawback is that this is the final size of the file- it's crazy small!
Also- these won't animate of Facebook so you can't torture your friends with them (darn!)
Still...

Just imagine the tutorial possibilities!

Have a greet weekend. 

Go on and make something awesome!

Michelle

Inspiration Friday- Brooklyn Botanical Garden (and an art journal page)

Hello!

This week has run right past me laughing!
I barely had time to notice all the beautiful things so I could share them with you here.

Last night I was trolling Pinterest again.
I'm trying to figure out how to organize my boards since I have so many.
How do you pin?
How do you categorize it?

Here is a very quick page I came up with on the theme "summer heat/ summer sun"
Can you tell I'm SO over this lingering winter weather?

Don't ask my why I combined Tattered Angels "Frozen Lake" with Cosmo Crickets Twenty Three
collection paper and grey water color paper- it just "felt" right.

 The stencil set is from Michael's- 5 bucks and AWESOME!
I also scored on metallic Faber-Castell gelatos at TJ Maxx.
5 dollars for mixed media packs that included water color pencils and PITT pens.

We also visited the Brooklyn Botanical Garden which I put on my "flower watch" every year.
This year the trees have budded but none have flowered,
It will be a few more weeks before I get good Sakura photos.

I did take a couple of shots:

The Magnolias are still budding but the Chinese Camellia tree is in full bloom.

Many of our favorite trees have survived Hurricane Sandy. 

Tiny pine cones from the Japanese Pavilion.

Japanese Pavilion, Brooklyn Botanical Garden
First "winter" type shot I've ever taken.
I think I'm going to swing by and get a snow shot next year. 

Bonsai. It's amazing this tree is alive and thriving on a plate.
SO inspiring!

Sorry I cut the top off. 

Have a great weekend!
Michelle

Friday Inspiration- NYC photo walk-about

Hiya!

Yesterday was my day off.
Naturally I had a TON of errands to run so even though the day was freezing I decided to walk around and visit some of my favorite mural spots to see if anything new was up.

So. GLAD. I. did!!!

Here is what I found most inspiring this week:

BAST at Soho- not sure if the artist defaced his/her own mural- this was hella cool.

If you listen- the walls speak.

Ryan Russo's "Out Of Context" at the Charles Bank Gallery.
Acrylic spray paint and newspaper collage on canvas.

Meanwhile over at Nolita... (Kenmare and Bowery)

Crash AKA John Matos over at Bowery Mural
Also? POPEYE!!! TOO AWESOME!

Abandoned building across from
The New Museum has some of the best old school poster graffiti.
These are all letters cut out of ads.

Must go back and shoot this one again!

Detail of Ryan Russo piece- canvas was 8 x 8 feet.
Newsprint, paper, photographs- collage- amazing.

Layered oblong hexagon vellum over at the Anthropologie store window.

I freaking LOVE New York!
Michelle