Finger Pointing – January 7th

Hello everyone and welcome to the first GSO blog post of 2018! Our bloggers took a well earned break over the festive season – our last post of 2017 was December 17th but the last time I personally blogged here was way back on December 10th which appears to have been so long ago for me as I had to check whether ‘finger pointing’ was one word or two when I started this post today!

I hope you all had wonderful festive season and I see from the galleries, so many of you managed to forge yourself some scrapping time amongst all the festivities too so… drum roll please…  it’s now full steam ahead for Gallery Standouts 2018!! I’ve a bit of a bumper issue today – I won’t tell you how many wonderful pages I initially selected but it made me rather heart-sore to have to narrow my selection down, but if I didn’t, I’d be here all week!

So here we are and I’m pleased to start off this year with Anja DD’s layout, aptly entitled Happy New Year! I love that this page screams celebration with the brushwork and accents appearing to be fired by the sparkler. Gold is such a warm colour and I like how it works with the pinks and greens to give a super colour palette for this wonderful page!

A design element that I always enjoy is the use of a series of photo’s that compliment the story, from image to image. Fuzzy Socks and Hot Cocoa by fellow GSO Blogger Beatricemi is a super example and I like how the journaling splits the pictorial clusters that are diagonal to one another. Neat layers are shadowed beautifully and I love the text paper from which the title of this page is taken. All of this against a delicate snowflake backdrop with a little seasonal embellishment here and there makes for a beautiful layout!

Staying with the colder weather is this minimalistic page by sylvia appropriately entitled Snow. I adore the simplicity of this, the delicate elements, the gorgeous photo and, of course, all that white space – can’t you hear the silence of the snow fall in this page?! But don’t get me wrong though when I say simplicity… pages like this can be the most challenging because a lot of us find it super hard to go with the ‘less is more’ approach when we have so many goodies at our disposal! This page is such a treasure!

We all know that a new year brings many resolutions and I like the selection NAdams has documented on Nancy 2018 – I can identify with them all and I like that they’re expressed differently to the norm! I love the tones here, the photo treatment and the blending is beautiful. A gorgeous artsy page!

I often find masculine pages tricky but Senior Pictures by jenmc72 is amazing! Firstly, I love the design with the horizontal detail to the top. Secondly, I love how the colour palette plays along with the black and white images. Thirdly, the elements, the brushwork, the stars and the splatters, and the doodles are so fitting for the subject. And lastly, the stitched border with the neat little label bottom right, holds it all together perfectly! I seriously want to lift this page!

For a while now I’ve been thinking about documenting more about me, my hopes, dreams, wishes and also my thoughts and feelings. In fact, I’m likely to use my Project Life as a vehicle for it this year and I’m inspired to do so all the more by This is Me by Heidi Nicole. I love the mix here, from the patterned canvas to the interesting layers, to the journaling. Most of all, I’m interpreting the various elements and colours as complete and utter freedom. I like that! And a lovely black and white image is always good! Love this!

Moving onto a really pretty piece of work, this is Kaleidoscope by bcazzell. As one who is inspired by colour (I may just obsess about this and about tones every now and then!), and as one who wishes she could do ‘artsy’, this is so, so beautiful, every time I look at it, I catch something different – and I’d have it on my wall, it’s simply quite stunning!

I always enjoy layouts that don’t include people. Sorry, don’t take that personally, I just love the ordinary and the every day of life! People-Less Challenge by tammybean004 made me wonder how many of us still use a library… with all the modern technology we have these days. I have to admit, I do still enjoy picking up a book every now and then (disclaimer… it’s normally only to flick through it!) However, I don’t use the library any more – not since I was stung with a £20 fine (yes, you read that right – not sure of the exchange rate but it’s a pretty hefty amount!) for a book I had hold of for months and months which I never read! Anyhow, I digress… I like the staggered papers here and the one with all the date stamps is brilliant! Again, a terrific mix of brushwork and another great use of little pops of colour here and there, simply giving the impression of a book with a couple of pictures! A lovely, ‘this is life’ page!

Onto more colour and another great design is Ctrl+Z by chloe. I love the diagonal design with the circles that provide a great backdrop for the square image to rest – repetition is always great and this is a super way to incorporate patterned paper on a page. A little cluster of elements here and there, together with the journaling, add interest and I love the hashtag and page title! Just brilliant!

Another example of repetition on a page is View by iciclelady. The pretty floral detail up top leads the viewer down the page to the two landscape images – the tones in which are so beautiful! I love the top to bottom design and how each side of the vertical strip is flanked by more pretty detail while the single flower and the two little printed labels form that visual triangle that makes for a great layout. Gorgeous!

And so my friends, that brings me to the end of my post for today! I hope you’ve enjoyed my selections and if you have a few spare moments, please click on the links above and leave a comment or two for the artists. Until next time, have a great week and I’ll see you in the galleries!