Finger Pointing – April 19

After a long day at work with meetings, emails, and more meetings, I love nothing more than being able to put me feet up, keep an ear open for updates in the playoff hockey games (and my husband’s screaming at the screen and fist-pumping the air), and turn the laptop on to retreat into the world of digital scrapbooking. It’s days like these, like today, where I need that little bit of a creative break.  Know what I mean?  Let’s see what grabbed my attention in the galleries tonight.

This page by hclappy just made me smile.  Wynwood Walls is such a fun page – and a great way to make street art into a colorful layout.  Pocket-style scrapping was the perfect way to capture the paintings on this wall and highlight a few of the scrappers faves.  I really would love to see this wall up close.

It’s no secret that I love patterned papers, so I’m always on the look out for a mix ‘n’ match layout – and I found one tonight.  In mhreen08’s Just Ducky page, not only did they rock one or two patterns, or even three … but nine!! I love the balance of the vertical paper strips, some with banner “tails” against the background. There’s even patterned washi tape. A scrapper after my own heart: no fear!  Love the idea of placing the photo (and look at that cutie!) on a simple white mat to give them a little definition and separation from the patterns.

Patterns get my attention (obviously! LOL), but I’m also always on the look out for interesting photo crops or processing – and it was the processing on mrivas’s layout, Snapshot, that made me keep going back to this page.  The high-contrast blown out photo around her daughters head is tempered, somewhat, by keeping the black/white contrast on the photo muted.  Sure, it could have been amped up, but that probably wouldn’t work as well with the soft color palette.  Just a few element details, including some well-placed stitched pieces.  Nice job at showing restraint — lovely page.

Miki’s layout, Celebrate Arbor Day, is a great piece of art. I was particularly drawn into her layering of brushes created the illusion of land – the paint swirl and watercolor splatters on the left, leading all the way through to the arrows on the right. See the messy stitches used to create the tree roots?  Clever!  The circular brush surrounding the tree, with the leaf in the upper right makes me think of something akin to the circle of life. A small title and date was all it needed.

Not all layouts are about sunshine and rainbows — and for those of us that not only scrap those more troubling times, but are brave enough to share in public galleries, bravo! Making today’s standout’s list is one such page.  In 2worldswings page, All is Temporary, she shares what appears to be a less-favorable time. There’s a grungy edginess to this page, but still with some softer elements, like the color palette and the addition of the butterfly. Under multiple layers of brushes, I really like that this scrapper chose to keep her face the focus of the page, highlighting it in the circular brush “frame.”

Rounding out tonight’s picks is Musically by golya. The quote at the top of the layout, “Sing like nobody is listening” is really appropriate for this one – someone (a parent perhaps?) taking pictures of the kids taking selfies. Funny faces, probably a lot of giggling and yes, some singing, too.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my selections for today (well, I guess it’s officially night now).  Until next time 🙂