Making It Monday (Scrapbook and Fashion Week Edition)--Jan 23 2017

Again, nothing in the quilting or embroidery world going on here. Still working on my class assignment. But this weekend was also my husband's birthday as well as the first year anniversary of his father's passing, so one of his brothers flew in from out of town and there were a couple of family gatherings, as well as my husband and I on our own celebrating his birthday. So I didn't get either classwork or creative stuff done over the weekend, but lots of good family memories were made.

Speaking of memories, what I can report on is that I have successfully completed my first page of a Project Life scrapbook using their new app. I believe I already blogged awhile back about how Sandi of Quilt Cabana Patterns and I have sort of a "soft challenge" going to complete some scrapbook pages--basically, we're encouraging each other forward. Since I'd never used PL before, I did a quick test page using some photos one of my D.Min. friends had shared with us from our January intensive. It took me all of about 15 minutes to create this page--can't beat that! I put a big black box over the names--the actual page looks much friendlier than this. Now that I know it works well, I'll finish the other pages I want to do in this particular album--at least, all the pages until graduation, which will have to wait until May 2018. I can complete this album quickly because, frankly, I don't have that many pictures: just enough for one page per intensive. At the same time, I'm working on the album from our 25th anniversary, but that's going to take a lot longer--hundreds of photos to sort through. I'm also thinking this would be a great way to do a quilt documentation album, which I've really slacked off on. Maybe once I'm done writing my thesis next fall...

Palette from Alphonse

Palette from Alphonse

The other thing I played around with had to do with my closet. It was actually very creative! I'm doing Imogene Lamport's 12 month "Ignite Your Style Genius" program, which involves activities every month on different themes to help you develop your personal style and get smarter about shopping. I know, I know. Like I have time for this. But it's something entertaining for me to do in the evenings when I'm feeling a bit fried and y'all know how I'm trying to seriously update my wardrobe. It's a lot of fun and it's already been really helpful! It's got me looking at some of my clothes differently. January has been about color--right up my alley as a quilter, right? So I've been having fun playing with different color schemes. I did one activity last week around finding an image and pulling the color scheme from it--I used an Alphonse Mucha print (he's one of my faves).  I uploaded it to Adobe Color CC and pulled a palette from it, then went to my closet. 

I didn't have much of a problem pulling together outfits with this palette--there's a reason I like that particular Mucha print. (And yes, that's Scrapabonzitude on our bed--thanks to Charlotte!)

Two of the three outfits are composed mostly of clothes I've owned for awhile but hadn't thought to put together before. The camel pants on the left are new due to a sale at Chadwicks of Boston.  But I'm still feeling my way into finding good outfits for them as they're not a color pant I've ever owned before. Seriously comfortable, though, so I'm highly motivated! I'd already worn them as part of another outfit so I'm getting there--my new rule of thumb is that if an item of clothing doesn't work with at least three different outfits, it won't take up space in my closet anymore. Makes getting dressed in the morning a whole lot easier that way!

So those are my creative endeavors of the week, along with still working on finding a planner system that really works for me but doesn't take more time to keep it up than it does getting the stuff done that's written in it!