Challenge #254 - week of 10th April 2017

Spring is in full bloom right now and the blossom trees are as pretty as ever. And it would appear that us scrappers are inspired by this time of year as my Pinterest feed is full of gorgeous, floral-filled layouts. Hand-made flowers, die-cut outlines of flowers backed with pretty paper, photos of blossom tree lined avenues. All so very pretty.

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

Go literal and feature flowers, blossom, spring or petals as the subject of your page or get creative in incorporating floral embellishments, fussy cut flowers or paper features. This is a wide prompt this week and there's so many directions to take. I'm particularly in love with using the Cameo to create an outline à la Paige Evans or even a stitched detail.

Here are just a few of the layouts or details I've made over the years featuring flowers or petals - it seems to be a real go-to for me.

We'd love you to use 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#254 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#254 in the write up text so that we can find it.

Challenge #253 week of 3rd April 2017

And another week somehow slipped away from me.

But I really don't want to let the blog go and so I'm going to try better. Perhaps I could manage to get a set of posts written ahead of time. Making the pages would even go one better!

Let's see.

Yesterday evening I had the joy of going to a Nigel Kennedy concert. If you don't know who he is, he's an unbelievably talented British violin player who has earned the reputation of being a bit of a rebel. He's a bit older now but has always been the bad boy of violin, thought of as a punk or a rebellious unconventional and yet has true classical credentials, studying as a child under Yehudi Menuhin for example. He doesn't play conventionally, nor does he look like a classical violin player. Last night was no different. Mixing a traditional instrument, with an eViolin he made incredible music ranging from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, for which he is most famous, to a truly psychedelic Jimmi Hendrix Crosstown traffic. It's not for the faint-hearted nor the purist. I loved every. single. second.

Which got me thinking about this week's prompt - better late than never. I'd like you to be inspired by genius.

As always, I think there are many ways and directions to take this prompt -

• a genuine genius you admire - yes, Kennedy might be making a reappearance in my album again
• a skill that you or someone you know are especially good at - genius skills!
• someone you know who is classified as a MENSA genius
• something you find amazing, incredible, wonderful
• copy the style of a scrapbooking genius you admire
• something you wish you were a genius about

I made this page about meeting up with Kennedy after the last concert I saw him at back in 2013. A life dream come true.

We'd love you to use 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#253 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#253 in the write up text so that we can find it.