Stretch your creative muscles

When was the last time you really stretched your creative muscle? Are you stuck in a kraft paper rut, do you always reach for the same color combinations, do you tend to only do "happy" pages? Obviously there's nothing wrong with any of the above. I tend to love kraft paper, red and cream are my favorite combo, and the world can always stand a little more happiness right? But occasionally it's a really good idea to switch things up once in awhile to keep things interesting.



The kit includes an idea book and two sets of cards. It's really like playing a game (see how much fun this is going to be)? You draw one card from the word set of cards and one or two from the color set of cards.

Claudine writes in her book, "Now, let's say you draw food + pink + red. You would need to create a project that had something to do with food (even loosely!) using red and pink somewhere in your piece. You can create whatever interpretation of the three elements your imagination desires! You might choose to do a layout about your favorite food, your child's favorite food or something that you would like to be your child's favorite food (like green beans). If you don't like pink and red together, you might decide to test the limits of the challenge and squeeze in a teeny tiny bit of pink or small bit of red along with more appealing colors. But you could also decide to use only pink and red. Remember, there are no rules!"

Here's a page Claudine created for the prompt Change + Blue-green + Celery Green:

She writes, "Reading the prompt, I thought of changing clothes, then good life changes and bad changes, which then led me to thoughts of a bad haircut I got when I was little. I got my hair cut at the cheap chain-store hairdresser's, and I hated it. I cried and cried. While I was working on this piece I wanted to focus in closely on the photo of me getting a haircut and the instant I knew it was a bad idea. And I loved working with the celery and blue-green color combination from the prompt."

So, are you ready for your challenge? Here's a photo of the cards I picked:

Two notes before we begin. You'll notice two words on the word card. You're supposed to do the word that is facing up. So for this challenge the word is fear. In real life the middle card is a much more purple hue it shows on my monitor. Sorry, I'm not sure what color you're seeing! I told my team lavender and green. Here's the challenge I gave them:


and here's what they came up with:

Bonnie Wiggins:

Bonnie's wonderful journaling reads: "What is it that makes you have fears? You do not want attention, you do not want people to tell you that you are pretty. You have always had a fear of Santa, the Easter Bunny and even Grampa Boone. You are easily frightened by almost anything different. You had a horrible fear of the water until this last year. Hopefully the other fears will go as well. I pray that we can keep you safe always and that you will not need to fear anything."

Melanie Grimes: