Creative Blogger

Oh my goodness ... the adorable and amazingly talented Morgan Vogt has nominated my Pretty Pieces Café blog for the Creative Blogger "hop". In some ways it's kind of a reverse hop where you can go back and see everyone who has posted about this before I have. There are a lot of wonderful creative blogs out there. The idea here is to answer a few questions about this particular blog.

What am I currently working on?
Right now I am working on something I call Take Out Kits for the month of October. I'm somewhere in the middle of creating the art and getting it ready to reveal to the public!! (Come back later to see the finished layouts).

This Pretty Pieces Café blog is "strictly business". If something is posted here you can make it yourself by coming to an event or picking up a kit. I'm hoping to launch the ability to order my projects through the mail. If all goes well you can make your own custom card kits by selecting from the items in the Al A Carte section of this blog. That's going to be a lot of fun!

How does my work differ from others in its genre?
My work is different because .........  (ok, can I just say that I've been staring at this statement for an uncomfortable period of time). Well, it's hard to step back and take a look at your own work in order to offer a description.

The main goal for the artwork that you see on this blog is that ANYONE with adhesive and scissors can make it. I try to provide a challenge to everyone who works with the items from the Pretty Pieces Café, but I want every card and layout to be a success for you. When everything is said and done I want you to feel like you created it from scratch all by yourself.  I try to offer a wide variety so that the projects don't necessarily have my style. I even use colors, themes and techniques I don't necessarily love. I know that everyone has different taste. It's fun for me to try all of these new things.

Why do I create what I do?
This is a VERY easy question. I create for PEOPLE.

I create for the people who take the time to come and hang out with me in the PPC. I want the experience to be successful every time. It's exciting to see someone lift up a finished card and be so very happy with it. I love seeing people put together a layout and talk about the pictures that are going to be perfect on it. It doesn't matter what it is as long as the people are happy.

I create for the second group of people too. Those are the people who will receive the card or look through the scrapbook. I love knowing that once all of the paper is glued together it serves an amazing purpose. These paper creations connect people together. A special bond can come through a handwritten note or a page where a loved one is highlighted. I rarely meet the second group of people but I'm creating for them just as much as the people who hold the adhesive runner.

What's not to love when someone stops in the middle of a creative session to write a note in the card that she made. She was creating a card for a PERSON, not just for the love of gluing paper together. THAT is awesomeness to me!!

As I was writing this blog post I got this text ... really ... just now ...
"I used one of my cards (made at the PPC) for a co-worker going through some health issues. She kept saying how much it uplifted her and made her day! I love that [cards] have the ability to do that and it means so much more when they're hand made."  SO, that's a really great reason to create!!

How does my creative process work?
One nice thing about a blog like this is that there are basically two items that people expect me to create here ... cards and scrapbook layouts.

The layouts come through a more streamlined process. I have a paper pack to work with and I move forward from there. Usually I use my own pictures to get some idea of where I want to go. The nice thing about that is that when a layout is finished it's an example for my customers and it's also album ready.

Cards are a free for all!!! Sometimes I have an idea in my head that I just have to get out of there and other times I see something that I'm inspired to repeat with my own twist. I'm pretty sure there's actually no process. NONE! How do I know that? Because sometimes I can make a card in ten minutes and sometimes it takes an hour. If I had a process I'm pretty sure there'd be more consistency.


THANK YOU for much for reading a little bit about what makes me tick and what this blog is all about. I hope you'll come back and keep checking on a regular basis to see what kinds of projects I'm creating for you to put together.

Take a look at my dear friend Amie Kiger's blog. When I grow up I want to blog just like she does!!

AND I also have a blog for everything else in my paper creating life ... Just One Pretty Piece. This blog was also just nominated for a blog hop like this. SO, I'll be doing this all over again, to some extent, next week and nominating other awesome bloggers.