Muse #19

I've been doing some soul searching.  Well, that's a little overly dramatic.  I guess you could say I've been doing some creative searching - not for creative things but for where my creativity lies.  I started in the card making world with a Cricut, making cards with lots of cuts and layers and inking and challenges geared to these types of cards.  Then I saw the Clean and Simple challenges and thought, "hmm I like these, let's try it."   and have been doing them for a while.  I have seen some fabulous creations by other bloggers but most of them are stampers.  That I am not.

I told myself when I got into this hobby that  (1) I wouldn't buy more Cricut cartridges than I would use, (2) that I would only buy sentiment stamps so I wouldn't always have to computer generate them and (3) only make cards that I would actual send and would go through the mail  This means no bows and very little embellishment which to my mind made them CAS.  Somewhere in all this, I lost my "style" and the hobby became a competition, which took all the fun and creativity out of it.  Now I'm going back to my roots.  I do better with mixing patterned papers and using cut images.  I have purchased a few stamps and they will also find their way into my cards - a couple of quilt designs especially as in the card below, made for the Muse challenge.  This is the inspiration by Michelle Williams.

And here is what I was inspired to do.

At first I didn't think I would do this challenge because I didn't have many floral stamps and I didn't want to make a lot of Cricut cuts. Then I thought "Wait a minute!  This is inspiration, not copying." See this old dog can learn new tricks.  lol.  I used my quilt stamp from WPlus9 , stamped the outline in black and then used my small stash of Hero Arts inks to fill in the color.  I love these inks (no I'm not dissing my Distress Inks, they have their place, too) and plan to buy a few more colors.  Wait, what?  I'm not buying stamps but I'm buying ink?  Of course.  A girl needs the right color to stamp a sentiment on her card.  Plus I plan to make a few more quilt cards and who knows, maybe there will be another quilt stamp coming along.

What is is with me and quilts?  I have made numerous and have collected others.  I love the variety of colors and patterns.  Yup, there it is.  Now why is the Righteous Brothers song "You're My Soul and Inspiration" running through my head.

If you've made it this far through my ramblings, I give you an extra thank you for stopping by.  I hope you have a wonderfully creative day.