Challenge #307 - week of 15th October 2018

I looked up what happened in the world on this day just a few moments ago and it's driven my decision for our prompt today. Do you ever do that? Apparently, the first ballet "Ballet Comique de la Reine" was staged in Paris in 1581, Napoleon was exiled to St Helena in 1815 and the first episode of "I Love Lucy" was aired in 1951. I can actually think of prompts for all three of these events - can you?

However, today I'd like you to be inspired by peace.

In 1993, Nelson Mandela and F W de Klerk, President of South Africa, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and I think that's definitely something to celebrate.

Were you watching when Mandela was released from prison? Maybe you remember him presenting the Rugby World Cup to the South African team captain in 1995? Or what about Mandela dancing with the Queen at a concert in his honour at the Royal Albert Hall?

Anyway, you don't need to use anything to do with Mandela on your layout but I think that "peace" is a very wide and thought invoking prompt for us this week.

What is peace for you? Time alone or time full of family noise? How do you find peace in the every day. For you ladies over there in the US, perhaps you have a Peace Corps story to tell this week - either your own or a family member. Or maybe you want to take a more philosophical approach and take the subject in its widest context. Of course, you could also interpret it as a peaceful design for your layout - lots of white space, simple products, a grid perhaps. And I happen to know that Paige Evans recently released one of her famous die cutting templates in the original peace sign design - I've seen it in the Silhouette store but I believe you can get it for other die cutting machines.

I love getting cosy in bed and this is where I find peace in my day to day!

I think there's a lot of scope for taking this prompt in different directions so why not give it a go? And who knows, one of those other "on this day" events might just appear this time next year!

And if you are inspired, I hope that you'll share. You can do that in our Facebook group here. Tag your entry with #WMXX so we know exactly which inspiration you've taken. 

Challenge #256 - week of 9th May 2017

The world is in voting fever right now. Or so it seems. And while this blog is not the place to talk about politics, I'm more interested in the results around me than ever before.

Alongside Brexit last summer, the US in November, and my adopted home country of Germany's General Election for Chancellor this coming September, we also have a Federal State election here in North-Rhine Westphalia next Sunday. And today, France went to the polls to elect Emmanuel Macron as their new, and youngest ever, President of France. It was a monumental election as were each of the others I mentioned. I'm sure there are many more happening around us right now but these are the ones that seem to mean the most to me for one reason or another.

As always, today's result got me thinking about the changes that may come but also about the national motto of France that I'm sure you're all familiar with and a prompt was born.

For this week's prompt I'd like you to be inspired by "Liberté, égalité, fraternité".

France used to be where I thought I would end up living. I used to be able to speak fluent French. The French culture is all its own and one that I loved. The land itself is beautiful and Paris is a dream. So there's always been a connection for me with the country and maybe that's the direction I will take my project this week. You might have been to France, learnt French or even have a thing for vintage French black and white art films you'd like to record.

But maybe I'd like to think a little deeper and consider the meanings of the infamous motto of freedom, equality and fraternity. If you'd like to find out a little more about the motto and its origins, head over to Wikipedia here. We've tackled some of the more serious prompts such as civil rights (WM#119 here) or even woman power (WM#199 here) before but this might be a time to really go deep about what these mainstays of society mean to you.

But whether you go light or deep, join me in a little je ne sais quoi this week and get creative with your projects.

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#256 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#256 in the write up text so that we can find it.

I headed over to Flickr today and found a bunch of layouts there that I'd missed - I'm so sorry for that. I had assumed that most of you joined us on Facebook but now that I know you're still there, I'll check it out more often!

And many thanks for your sweet comments about continuing the blog. I want to. Really I do. And I will continue as long as I can. But it makes me sad that somehow I don't even get around to making my own prompts. And I know that I've said this sort of thing on a regular basis over the last couple of years. Let's see how we get on ongoing and I will make more of an effort!