Inspiration Avenue Challenge-Which Road?

I consider this collage a work in progress.  Several years ago, I was faced with an opportunity to make a choice.  I could choose to remain in my teaching career or I could leave and see where the road would take me.  I chose the latter and I'm grateful every day that I did.  So far, I've found the new road to be full of challenges and rewards.  But in life, there never is just one road.  So, I hope you'll join me in celebrating the journey!

Little Mermaid's Birthday Party

I met a little mermaid friend when I participated in the Grow Your Blog Hop.  Her name is Evening and she is celebrating her first birthday today.  I made a digital collage to wish her a happy birthday.

Her mom, Jenn, is another new blogging friend.  She made the crown for Evening and the princess hats for the guests.  You can see her wonderful, creative blog here.  She's posted directions for making the head pieces and the multi colored bunting on her blog.  She made a wonderful surprise gift for me that you can read about on a later post.  For now, let's all wish little Evening a happy birthday!

Inspiration Avenue Challenge-February Holidays

Over at Inspiration Avenue it was my turn to host the challenge.  I was leaning strongly toward a Valentine's Day post but then found out there was at least on holiday per day between February 11 and February 17.  People responded with an image related to the holiday they preferred and we got some fun results.  Today was "Be Nice to a Grump Day."  I did my best to be grumpy and sure enough my husband was extra nice to me.  Tomorrow is "Random Act of Kindness Day" and I'm going to share something special that someone did for me.  Since I'd made six Valentine cards just for fun, I decided to contribute that to my IA challenge.  I've consolidated them all into one page because I couldn't choose just one.  I hope you'll hop over to IA to see the other entries.

I hope everyone had a great week!  Be sure to check out IA to see the fun holidays you can celebrate next February.  Just click here.

Credits for Image Components:
Raspberry Road Designs, Pewter 7, Marisa Lerin-Pixelscrapper, Far Far Hill, Graphic's Fairy,  Marta Van Eck, Nothing But Freebies, Coffeeshop, BCMD (Busy Crafting Mommy Designs), Free Vintage Printables, Mommyish, mdk scraps, JanetB Designs, ADB Designs, Aimee Harrison, CBJ (Created by Jill), idbc (Inspired Designs), Wendy Tunison, DBD, and Bits O'Scrap.

A Misplaced Mermaid's Journal-Day 26

Credits for image components:
Scrap and Tubes, Finecrafted Designs, KittyKat79, IM Scrappiness Down Under, and OWTF.

Inspiration Avenue Challenge-Chinese New Year

Maggie, my Inspiration Avenue friend, challenged us with creating an image related to Chinese New Year.  I was excited, until I realized that February 10 would bring The Year of the Snake.  Not wanting to shun the official animal of the Lunar New Year for 2013, I began searching the internet for images.  Of course Maggie left it wide open so I could have chosen any of the signs, including the rat.  Yes, that is my sign.  I'm a rat.  But I wanted to stay true to this year's symbol, so a snake is what I chose.

One thing I found was a series of Chinese paper cutting folk art.  When I took a trip to Hong Kong many years ago, I was amazed at both the simplicity and the beauty of this type of art.  (You can see a digital collage sheet made from images of cats done in this style in my Etsy Shop.)    Here is an example of one for The Year of the Snake.

And an even prettier one, both from Sinopaperart

I love the delicate colors of the thinly sliced tissue paper.  It amazes me that people can cut these designs by hand.

I created a postcard in honor of Chinese New Year last year and decided to rework it to fit this challenge.  I've learned so much more about digital collage since then so it was lots of fun working with the images I selected to keep, and the ones I decided to add.   The dragons had to go.  The background wasn't changed too much but I did add some new elements, including the snake pieces.

2013-The Year of the Snake.

Please visit Inspiration Avenue HERE to see the other entries for this week's challenge.  I know you'll enjoy seeing them.  If you don't know which sign you are you can find out from Maggie's marvelous post.

Credits for image components:
Publikado, Cajoline, Friendly Scrap, Courtney's Digiscrappin', Raspberry Road Designs, Pixelscrapper, and Linda Lou Creations.