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Loves Tea & Paper Loves Tea & Paper Sharing my creative endeavours and hoping to inspire you as I learn and journey in this scrapbooking passion! Home February 13, 2015 Inspiration Elevator: Enjoying the Creative Process After some thought and consideration, the time has come to retire Inspiration Elevator. But before we go, we need to hold a big retirement party, so we’ve invited everyone who’s been involved with Inspiration Elevator back for one last reveal, and to our delight most were able to accept! We are so delighted to have so many IE alumni along this month! Thank you to each of you for helping us end our elevator ride with so much fun and creative energy! This month’s challenge is posed by one of IE’s co-creators and team admin, Ann. This month’s challenge is simple, but I hope, challenging as well. Here’s the challenge: Inspiration Elevator launched on May 15, 2012 and at that time, we explained our purpose as, "Welcome to Inspiration Elevator! What a thrilling day! Today is the launch of Inspiration Elevator (IE), a challenge blog created by my dear friend Christa Uttley and me. We chose the name Inspiration Elevator because it is our intent to raise our creativity to heights through challenges issued every month. We want to raise our designs from the ordinary to the extraordinary. We hope you’ll join us on our journey! IE is a group of like minded scrappy friends who want to raise the bar in their own creative process through unique challenges that we issue to each other once a month. These won’t be run of the mill challenges and we hope you’ll join us each month and be inspired by the creative designs we’ve created." That vision has remained unchanged over the last (almost) 3 years. The challenge this month is to just create - no holds barred. Take some time, or challenge yourself to do it in 1/2 hour if time is tight, but think about what you’d like to create if there were no agenda, no design team requirement. In other words, create for you, and enjoy the process ! I haven’t been taking much time to create lately, my scrap space is in the process of being moved and everything is packed up. With it not handy, I have really only been creating when pressed to, like for our IE challenges. So, this time, I made sure I started early enough to have time to find supplies, enjoy creating my page. I allowed this photo taken this past fall by the talented Pam Stortz to lead my creative journey. I decided to print a large version of the photo. We had a challenge to work with a few months ago, and I wanted to try it again, since I often work with 4 x 6’s. The background page was gessoed and then a light wash of 3 colours of watercolours was brushed on in bands - it’s subtle, but I like how it picked up on the fall colours in the photo, and paled the stark white page. From cork to beads, there’s lots to create visual and tactile texture, and keep an earthy feel. The felt leaf stem was coloured with gelatos, and the metal plaque was altered with gesso and spray inks. It reads "Life is not a journey but a destination", which seemed an appropriate message for the theme about growing up and making decisions. We hope you’ll take the time to hop through and visit each of our participant’s blogs, beginning with our guests, then our current team, and finishing off with our co-founders. Feel free to leave comments and lavish each one with appreciation for all that they each brought to the Inspiration Elevator challenge over the last 3 years! Audrey Yeager Christy Riopel Denise Morrison Jodi Wilton Laura Whitaker Laurel Seabrook Shelby Dwyer Jayne Morgan Joanne Burton Katherine Sutton Lisa Moen Lisa Spiegel Michelle Hernandez Wendi Robinson Christa Uttley Ann Jobes (so glad you made it!) I know I am greatly indebted to each of these incredibly talented and wonderful women, and humbled to have been a part of this. Inspiration Elevator has been a fun creative journey. Thanks to each of them, and to you who take the time to follow along each month. Blessings, Ann 2015-02-13 10:41:34 AM | Design team , Inspiration Elevator , mixed media scrapbooking Comment 7 Reblog It 0 January 13, 2015 Inspiration Elevator: Time for Something New Our main purpose here at IE is to challenge ourselves, each other and YOU to take the creative process to the next level; to inspire growth and change in our scrapbooking beyond our usual boundaries. You can see all of Inspiration Elevator’s previous challenges on Facebook . This month’s challenge is issued by the creative and prolific Lisa Spiegel, a scrapbooker from California who works hard to keep her pages focused on the photos and the story. Here it is in her own words: " January is a month where we make resolutions, start fresh and have a new outlook towards many things. Our scrapping is the same way! We start new albums, pick "one little word" for new focus and even try new techniques. My challenge this month is to use the word "new" to inspire your page. Try to move beyond new products (although that is fun!) and scrap about something "new" you’re committed to (maybe a new diet?), "new" to you experience and while you’re at it, use a "new to you" technique. Something you’ve NEVER tried before this page. Tell us how it goes in your blog post!!" So a new year brings optimism for me, and excitement for new opportunities. Over the holidays, I worked to move my office area, which is what is pictured here. It’s a new space for work - my writing work is really winding down, and my hope and plan is to ramp up my direct selling businesses. So, this page is about the new space, but more importantly, a new headspace. I need to see myself as a professional, and that’s my opportunity. As for new technique, I used my flocking in a way I’ve never tried before, which is to work with stencils and flocking. It worked and I’ll try it again! We encourage you to check out each designer’s creation this month: here’s a complete list of this month’s participating designers! Lisa Spiegel Ann Jobes Jayne Morgan Wendy Robinson Lisa Moen Why not give the challenge a try yourself? Then pop by our Facebook page and share with us what you created! 2015-01-13 6:54:16 PM Comment 4 Reblog It 0 December 15, 2014 Inspiration Elevator: Christmas Memories Our main purpose here at IE is to challenge ourselves, each other and YOU to take the creative process to the next level; to inspire growth and change in our scrapbooking beyond our usual boundaries. You can see all of Inspiration Elevator’s previous challenges on Facebook . This month’s challenge is issued by the creative Lisa Moen. Lisa is a busy scrapbooker who takes on every creative challenge with gusto; she works layering and clustering beautifully. This month she has a seasonal challenge for us. Here it is in her own words: " Scrap A Christmas Past. We all have them- one Christmas that sticks out more in our minds than others. Maybe it was when you were a child or maybe it was more recent. Maybe it was a gift you received that makes it memorable. Maybe a special visitor? Create a page, with or without photos and tell us the story behind that Christmas.." I love Christmas and the message of hope and love told by the story of Christmas. The challenge for me in scrapbooking Christmas is working with the colours - there tend to be a lot of group photos where everyone is wearing a huge variety of colours, taken in settings where other colours (like green trees) are introduced just for the season. But when I read Lisa’s challenge, these photos immediately came to mind. Brian and I had shared a few Christmasses together, but our first as a family surely makes it memorable. I chose to pull mostly the red of the little Santa sleepers that had been given to Sarah, with a touch of blue and glitzy gold to add a festive touch. The title of this page is ’imperfect photos, perfect moments’, summarizes my feelings about this page. The page started with the large white dots spackled on through a template with...