Call me a blogger! Oh, and a Little Heidi Swapp too!

I can now be officially called a blogger! I'm excited to take this new step in my life, but also a little nervous. I've been taking small steps out of my comfort zone for a few years now, and now is the time I take it public. I thrive on creativity. I get inspiration from others. I want to see others succeed and bloom into who they are truly meant to be and hopefully, this is a way that I can do it. My life didn't start so creative, I had a mom, aunts, grandmas, and friends all guide me. Now we have Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram. We all feed on these and it's so easy to follow and create off each other.

I've decided to start my first post to talk about how I fell out of my creativeness when I had my first son. I wasn't looking to add more stress to my life, I thought. Creativity for me is a release. A way that I relax, a way to block out the rest of the world. While I know getting these supplies can be expensive, I want to try and use what I have and up-cycle.

I used a wooden Heidi Swapp frame that I had around the house and sprayed it with Blush color shine. It sat on the frame for a good 5 minutes to absorb all that shine.

Next, I took 2 stencils, my butterfly from the Hello Today collection and the 6×6 polka dot. I took white acrylic paint and a cosmetic wedge and pounced in random areas to create a background.

I took those same stencils and layered them over the butterfly individually, then placed them on white Bazzil cardstock. For the scallop stencil, I used the gold color shine and for the polka dots, I used the seafoam color shine. I then cut them out so they looked like personal punched out butterflies (super gorgeous). I then stapled them together, added a large background stamp and pulled up their wings to add dimension. Heidi did a segment on My Craft Channel for this technique if you'd like to watch.

I started to assemble my frame piece by piece. I added some stamping on the background from her Hello Today collection available at Michaels. I found in my stash some Maggie Holmes ephemera and added the tag behind my butterfly. I sprayed some polyester ribbon with some mint color shine and with my tiny attacher, stapled it to the center of the butterfly. I then added some pins to pierce the middle of the butterfly and added a pearl to add a feminine touch. On the left side, I added some more of Heidi's acrylic letters and spelt “bloom” to mark the season. I folded some papers and ran them through my Xyron and stuck them to the paper. I bought a Martha Stewart crafters clay kit a while ago and made this cute mini frame. I figured it matched and let's add it. More is more and I like that!

I then added some banners, again from the Hello Today collection, to the right corner. I built up quite a few layers of these wanting a big, bold look. I found these laser cut wood butterflies at Michaels and sprayed them with seafoam and mint color shine. Once that was on there I took my gold color shine and just halfway pumped the bottle and it leaves these big splashes of gold on the project which I just love.

I love how this frame turned out and I love how I got my groove back! Who else didn't love watching that movie with Taye Diggs in all his glory? Ha! Life has been good to me lately and I can only see it going up from here. I hope to see you back here more often. I've got a lot of things to share and it's part of me, all of me.