An Explorer of Life

 I was just reading this blog post here by Heather Plett, whom I follow on Twitter, about who we are. Americans seem to especially define themselves by what we do to earn a living and it's a question I've often struggled with. As I wrote my response to her post I figured I'd share it with you here as well.

I often struggle with this question myself.  There have been times when my profession defined who I thought I was and times when I did not. I'm primarily a caregiver now & for the last 4+ yrs to my grandmother, but I don't particularly like being defined by that, although taking care of ones grandmother 24/7 is an honorary purpose I don't ultimately relate to it.  I'm here because of love, not because of passion. I'd rather be known as the job I will go back to: a hairstylist. That tells more about me I think. But I see the negative in that too. Ultimately I'd like to be known as an artist. I spend most days creating in some way whether scrapping or art journaling or taking pictures or painting quirky little gifts yet I don't feel like an artist because I don't support myself with that job, yet it's my passion. I'd like to be known as a reader for I love a great book but the books I love reading aren't the types of books "well read" people read.  Traveling the world is one of my greatest dreams, & I've spent some time in a handful of places, but does this qualify me to be a world traveler? I love photography and I take a ton of pictures but the other day someone was describing a friends scrapbooking compared to mine and said that this other person was a photographer and that made her layouts pop because the pictures popped where my lo's were about the art. I took a slight offense to this. Does the other girl take great photos? Yes she does but does her expensive camera give her the title of photographer over my cheapo camera? I think not. I think I can take a great picture, just a different picture than she and maybe a little less to work with than her. But I am an artist, a caregiver, a reader, a very amatuer photographer, an art journaler, a hairstylist, a would-be world traveler, an explorer of life. An Explorer of life kind of sums it all up for me.

EEEEEKKK!!!!

So the other day I open my email and I get this:

Hi there I love how you used my papers...I would love to post them on my blog and on my fac book fan page and of course give you credit and link you up.
if you are interested please send images to
marah_johnson

keep on creating!
Marah Johnson


O.M.G! Was I INTERESTED??? You BETCHA! She's long been one of my fav designers since I started scrapping just a few years ago. Her tattoo collection is still one of my fav's and I will only use it for lo's I deem worthy. So not only are my lo's on her Facebook Fan Page but they are also on her blog here! I'm so totally honored I can't even tell you!

Challenges Challenges Challenges

The new Gutter Girlz challenge is up! Below is my take on it. The prompts this time are  
THE PROMPT:
I'm Still Sugar and Spice
THE SONG:
One of the Boys by Katy Perry
PRODUCT/TECHNIQUE:
Ribbon/Bows AND Dirty Socks

On my lo you might notice those cool flowers. Well I made them. Fellow DT member Carole Stirrat over at Scraptivity showed us this fantastic tutorial which you can see right HERE. I made a couple of minor changes to mine like using Glimmer Mist instead of dye to color them and Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks to color the pearls. I'd been wanting to make these for a while and Carole's tutorial pushed me to try.

 

I really love how they turned out! So girlie and perfect for my Sugar & Spice lo.

I've done a couple of lo's for Tally Idol. The first challenge was to use stars, chipboard, 2 different pp's & the word Climb in the title as the challenge was based on Miley Cyrus's song The Climb.

 

Last weeks challenge was about Idols! Scrap someone who's your idol. I immediately thought of my girl crushes on Gwen Stefani and Kat Von D. Kat's show starts back up this week too!!! Hope Aubrey is G-O-N-E!!! Ok anyway. We were also suppose to use paint and journaling and I think that's it. I've been holding on to these Marah Johnson Tattoo & Rock Star papers and I think they made the perfect lo

 

I've been participating in Happy Mail and since I got sick last month I was a little behind in my mailing but finally got a couple of things sent. First I made this box for one girl

 

And then I painted on this record for the Happy Mail Queen herself. Hope she likes it. It's a little quirky but I think she likes quirky.

 

I finally finished my rainbow lo for my BPS class. It ended at the end of January and I'm on week 3 still. 

Story of my life!

 

Then at Scrapperie I'm the team leader for the Book of Me group and we scrapped about our favorite beverage. I noticed all these Starbucks cups on my floorboard after a weekend spent in Tulsa and knew the pic would be good for an upcoming lo and I was right. Good thing there isn't a Starbucks in Smallville here.

 

I went to a fun weekend crop at my lss a couple of weekends ago and that was a great time. A cold one but still fun. I got 4 lo's done which was amazing. The Starbucks and Rainbow lo's were 2 of them. You'll have to wait to see the others.  I've been doing some art journaling as well. Finally caught up on posting my 52 Self Portraits on my  tumblog and am working on catching up on P365. The pics are taken but I forget to upload sometimes. Loving my P365 app because it helps keep me on track. That's it for today. Just trying to keep being creative every day. I'm lucky that I have a life that allows for such things. If only it also allowed for a cleaner house. You know, one with a maid that's name isn't Susan!

Erosion Bundle Update

My Erosion Bundles have officially been in the weather for 15 days now. They've experienced a bit of rain and this past weekend a lot of snow, which is melting now. I grabbed a couple of pics before it got to bad out the other day.

Here is the one hanging from the Shephard's hook that usually has a hummingbird feeder on it. We had some ice first so that is what is clinging to the sides of it now. I've had to replace it on the hook a couple of times due to the high winds.

Now the one in the ivy couldn't even been seen at this point but I could tell where it was just a bit. By that night you couldn't even see my shoe prints from earlier in the day so all that melting snow is doing some marvelous things to that bundle now

 

And that's it for now. We'll see what's happening in 15 days.