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.

Challenge #218 - week of 27th June 2016

Sorry that I missed a week and many thanks to Leslie for last week's prompt. Bit under the weather but nearly back to new now. And I need to get some scrapping done - I don't do enough just-for-me scrapping these days and I miss it. On my to do list.

I recently had the pleasure of working on my Scrapabilly July kit and one of the sheets of paper features such a pretty sunburst effect with subtle bokeh that I just had to use the whole sheet as it was and make sure I didn't cover too much of it up. I ended up buying another sheet to add to my ever-growing pile of "special" papers which now have the following categories: bokeh, foil, clouds, stars/constellations, vellum and maps.

I can't share the layout yet but I can give you a sneak...

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

Now it might be bokeh on the photo itself

This is an old layout - one I put together at the airport doing LOAD one year but I still love that I captured these two photos on one page together 

This was me trying out the shaped bokeh lens cover trick and I have to say that I love how it turned out!

Or maybe like my current addiction, bokeh paper 

It could even be a story about how you love taking photos and long to get that great bokeh shot. I'm sure you can come up with a long list of ideas!

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#218 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#218 in the write up text so that we can find it.

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Challenge #217 - week of 20th June 2016

I've had a look back through the hundreds of past prompts in search of inspiration. 

We have had a number of prior prompts inspired by words.

WM#2 "Dream Big & Dare to Fail. 

WM#11 "You have to kiss a lot of frogs in order to find your prince." 

My FIRST Whimsical Musings page - back in 2011 a week after our 35th wedding anniversary. I wanted a gold crown for the frog & Lynnette sent me one! It was added but after I had posted the layout.

WM#25 "I spend most of my time ____." 

WM#29 inspired by Dr. Suess - this one was fun! I wish I could rearrange the journaling on this one, plus take a new photo, but it was so fun to write in this style.

WM#57 inspired by song lyrics. 

WM#79 inspired by "Born to..."

WM#86 inspired by foreign words. 

WM#161 inspired by lyrics by the Beatles.

WM#173 inspired by "I *heart*... (fill in the blank)

WM#182 inspired by the word "translate"

 Today, let's be inspired by

Take time today to preserve your "peeps" on a page!

Explore & document what your "vibe" is.

I can think of a dozen ways to go with this...

Can't wait to see yours!

And if this doesn't spark your interest, try one of the other links in this post.

Don't forget that you can either upload your layout into the Whimsical Musings Flickr gallery with the tag WM#217 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#217 in the write up text so that we can find it.

Challenge #216 - week of 6th June 2016

This morning Timehop reminded me that this time last year, I had just come back from a weekend in Vienna, Austria visiting my brother who was studying there for a semester. It's a beautiful city, full of gorgeous, historical buildings and plenty of Viennese culture. He's heading back there in October for his PostGrad studies so you can bet I'll be going back for more as soon as I can.

But it got me thinking about the details we remember about these short trips away - so many prompts to come from this idea. And one of the over-riding memories of mine was one of cake! Yes, if you go to Vienna, it's a must to go to Hotel Sacher for a piece of Sacher-Torte.

I even made a layout about it.

Can you see where I'm heading? This week, I'd like you to be inspired by cake.

Be it an actual cake, a sweet culinary extravaganza, something that reminds you of cake, a treasured cake recipe, products featuring cake - it's all open for you this week!

I recently shared another cake layout over on my personal blog and I'm sure if I looked hard enough, I'd be sure to find others.

Our weekend in Vienna had plenty of the sweet stuff, so you never know, I might feature another. But seeing as though cake features large in my life, there's plenty of choice!


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#216 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#216 in the write up text so that we can find it.

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Challenge #204 - inspired by Tiffany Blue

As promised, I'd like to share a layout I made on the last day of LOAD216 which has been a long time in the making.

I think my problem is often in the execution of my prompts - I often immediately have a story or an idea, even think about which of my kits to use that might have the ideal colours etc but then, I come to a standstill. I have to find photos. Or take photos. Or think about where the memorabilia is. Or make something that isn't for an assignment so that it can be shared.

All excuses but this really is often the case.

For the Tiffany Blue prompt - WM#204 - I had so many stories that it sort of inhibited me to actually pick out a photo and product and get going with it. In the end, I decided to just take a photo to match where it all began. And take it from there.

The result is this page.

A few things to note here. First up, this is the first page I've made just for me, not using a kit for a LONG time! Usually, when I scrap, I use my Scrapabilly kits or my Counterfeit Kit Challenge kits and am "limited" to using what's included in those kits. Sometimes, the stories I want to tell don't match the feel the papers or products have and I get hung up on not telling the story until I have those "right" colours or patterns. To be honest, this is one of those stories. But then I spotted the brand new Pinkfresh Studio papers that I'd just picked up at Scrapabilly and decided that I had to find a way to use them to tell this story. Just because I wanted to. They are new and pretty and were calling my name.

Then there was the photo itself. Not particularly stellar but made better by using a filter and a bokeh effect but which adjusted that Tiffany Blue to much more of a blue! I don't know if you have the same discussions with the men in your life, but mine swears this particular blue is more of a green and as you know, Tiffany certainly doesn't call it Tiffany Green! But he would definitely approve of the blue in the photo.

I matched up the photo with some of the simpler patterns found in this collection and then realised just how green that paper was in the background. Funny - I have a photo that's too blue and a paper that's too green but I really wanted to give a nod to the original tone of that infamous packaging.

The tissue paper confetti which I punched from the Scrapabilly wrapping came to the rescue and matched up with the box and pouch perfectly. I guess I could say that this fulfils with the current Whimsical Musings prompt WM#215 to use tissue paper too!

I had treated myself to several of the items in the collection including the puffy elements and this half-gold frame is so gorgeous that I just had to use it straight away. I kept the journalling in subtle gold so that it didn't distract too much from the design and the pretty photo.

That little heart embellishment was also a perfect match to the Tiffany Blue and the messy gold thread softened up the more linear feel to the papers I'd used.

I'm sure I have more to share so I'll see what I can find and post again soon.

Thanks for dropping by.

Challenge #213 - inspired by the selfie

Happy 1st June. I have scrappy plans this month due to the increased mojo I have after a month of LOAD! What about you?

Now back to the prompt: to be honest, I use a lot of selfies in my scrapping about myself - I'm usually the only one taking any photos of me - so this challenge wasn't so difficult for me.

And during LOAD516, I usually have the chance to make a few layouts that covered more than one prompt, challenge or commitment all at the same time and I'm pleased that I can share one or two of those here on the Whimsical Musings blog over the next few days.

First up is WM#213 - be inspired by the selfie.

At the beginning of April, I realised that I hadn't been taking and sharing many photos and that I was a little short of photos to use on my pages. I then decided that I would try to challenge myself to 30 days of selfies. I managed 25 out of 30 days and got very creative in interpreting the selfie on bad hair/face days!

This layout uses the Scrapabilly June kit which features Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Fancy Free collection. I knew that I wanted a whole spread of all the photos I'd taken for this self-imposed challenge but fitting 25 photos onto one layout meant that either the page would be completely filled up or I'd need to extend.

I decided to go for the 12x18 which I love so much which gave me space for some minimal embellishing and my Cameo cut title which seemed perfect.

There were several other pages featuring selfies during my LOAD516 month but let me just share these last two with you which both use my Counterfeit Kit Challenge kits.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge April 2016 kit, Bisou #2

Counterfeit Kit Challenge May 2016 kit, Sprinkle #7

I'll sort out some more pages to share soon. But I just wanted to prove that I really do make pages for my own challenges sometimes!

Don't forget that we love it when you share your own pages that have been inspired by a Whimsical Musings prompt. There's the Whimsical Musings Flickr group here or our own Whimsical Musings Facebook group here. Use the tag WM#XX so that we know which prompt inspired you!