Challenge #222 - week of 25th July 2016

I am inspired this week by a Whimsical Musings liebling, Lynnette, who has been posting wonderful videos and photos of her daughter's recent Annie experience. I've never been a performer - way too shy and introverted for that - and only sing when I'm alone in the car (but then, what a performance!) and am totally tone deaf! So I'm always in awe of those who can.

Anyway, this week I'd like you to be inspired by musicals.

Some time ago, I took my best friend to London for a special birthday weekend and we went along to see Wicked in the West End. It wasn't planned and was all the more lovely for that. We really enjoyed the show, the stage setting, the songs, the costumes, pretty much everything! I included this event in  a small mini-book I made about our weekend but of course, it's a total taboo to take photos during the show itself. Therefore, I had to make do with a shot of the stage before the curtain went up and then added in the ticket.

I love this little capture of our time in London and that's certainly one way to take this inspiration this week.

You might be lucky and have photos of a musical (I'm sure Lynnette had hundreds) if it's not Broadway or West End for example! You might have stared in a show yourself at some point. It might be something on your bucket list. Maybe you'd like to compare your life to a musical or one of the numbers.

We'd love you to be inspired by this prompt and hope you will share your creations - there are now two ways to do this!

You can either upload your layout into the Whimsical Musings Flickr gallery with the tag WM#222 or you can post it in our Whimsical Musings Facebook group. We've decided that we'll save albums for special occasions so just load up your photo to the group with the tag WM#222 in the write up text so that we can find it.

Challenge #221 - week of 18th July 2016

I love the Timehop app. It shows me which photos I took on this day 1, 2 or more years ago and shows me my Instagram feed too.

Now the story is way too long to explain but today's Timehop included this photo.

And it got me thinking that I'd like you to be inspired by water.

It's something that we take for granted but is such a valuable resource for the planet. It might represent summer swimming in the local pool, a lake or the ocean. It might talk to you about the ongoing work through the summer to keep your plants watered. It might remind you of wet days - whether that's rain, humidity or the sprinkler in the garden. You might take the photo I posted as direct inspiration and talk about your dream sink, your love of standing by the kitchen sink and looking out of the window or how you hate the washing up! I think water is a topic that you can take in any direction you'd like!

We'd love you to be inspired by this prompt and hope you will share your creations - there are now two ways to do this!

You can either upload your layout into the Whimsical Musings Flickr gallery with the tag WM#221 or you can post it in our Whimsical Musings Facebook group. We've decided that we'll save albums for special occasions so just load up your photo to the group with the tag WM#221 in the write up text so that we can find it.

Challenge #220 - week of 11th July 2016

Gosh, I'm late this week. But anyway, here I am!

Just a few days ago, Shimelle announced her new (rather fab) American Crafts collection, Go Now Go. And I did a lot of ooo'ing and ahh'ing, along with a lot of the scrapbooking world by the look of it.

But I realised that the item that most people seemed to be delighted about - me included - were the puffy heart stickers.

Fellow Master Forger, Susan, has a "thing" for them and has admitted to us over on our board that she just can't get enough of the puffy doodads.

And with all this buzz, I feel left out because I seem to have very few in my collection! Clearly, I need more...

Phew! Ok, so I found a couple of different types of puffy stickers in my stash by Pinkfresh, so now I feel a bit better.

But, there's obviously a trend there...

So, this week, I'd like you to be inspired by puffy stickers.

I recently shared this layout for WM#204 which features aforementioned puffy sequins.

We'd love you to be inspired by this prompt and hope you will share your creations - there are now two ways to do this!

You can either upload your layout into the Whimsical Musings Flickr gallery with the tag WM#220 or you can post it in our Whimsical Musings Facebook group. We've decided that we'll save albums for special occasions so just load up your photo to the group with the tag WM#220 in the write up text so that we can find it.

Challenge #219 week of 4th July 2016

Happy Independence to my friends over there in the US! I hope your celebrations were happy and memorable.

And that seemed to me to be the perfect segue-way to this week's prompt.

This week, I'd like you to be inspired by independence.

This prompt can be as wide or as narrow as you wish to make it. Make a page all about your own Independence Day celebrations - possible for many countries around the world. You could talk about the first time you tested out your own independence or someone you know. You could make the jump to the independence of time alone. What about your love of Independence Day - the film? Or a layout about some element from a typical Independence Day celebration such as fireworks, bbq's or a family get together. Make it fun, make it meaningful, make it you own!

We'd love you to be inspired by this prompt and hope you will share your creations - there are now two ways to do this!

You can either upload your layout into the Whimsical Musings Flickr gallery with the tag WM#219 or you can post it in our Whimsical Musings Facebook group. We've decided that we'll save albums for special occasions so just load up your photo to the group with the tag WM#219 in the write up text so that we can find it.

#167 - inspired by pineapples

This was a prompt long, long ago!

And I knew directly exactly what I was going to do for the page - I wanted to record the incredible pure pineapple Pina Coladas I get from the best barman in the world right here at home. I organised fresh pineapple and ordered the aforementioned Pinas. We even decorated them and took photos. And then the photos sat on my computer. I kept seeing them as a reminder to myself to get the page done but somehow it never happened.

So imagine my joy when I received the July Scrapabilly kit which features Beach Day by Carta Bella. All sorts of lovely with tropical themed items and yes, you guessed it, pineapples! There's even a cute matching pineapple washi tape which I decided that I had to have as an add on for the kit as well as the collection enamel dots.

Last summer, I'd even downloaded a batch of pineapples at the Silhouette store and knew that I wanted to use one of them somehow here on my page.

I brought all these ideas together for this page.

These two papers were perfect to back the pineapple elements - love how that turned out.

So happy to have finally made this layout that had been in my head for so long, and to finally be able to share it here with you.