jamie pate: The Art of Observation

{warning...photo heavy post}

I took the plunge and signed up for Heidi Swapp's class The Art of Observation.
And already so thankful that I did.

I have taken a couple of online courses she has offered before. And she has never dissappointed.
Having followed her since the early Designing With publications, she has been an integral part of teaching me the art of memory keeping, observation, plus a myriad of technique through the years.
When I first came upon her style, it opened up many doors for me in my own creativity...
and I love that I can still learn so much from her now...over a decade or so later.

The class is still available for purchase. So I am only here today to reveal my first project.
I have already put a project like this together and posted it just last week...
but she has already taken it so much further for me.

Another reason for taking this class is to kick start some needed creative change up...
we all can find ourselves in a rut at times...whether it is in our daily everyday...
or in our creative endeavors.

That need for a new outlook also provoked this class.
I love what it is doing already.
Already causing me to, once again, look at life a little differently.
Already causing me to journal that life a little differently.
Already causing me to collect those memories a little differently.

And I would be remiss if I did not make a shout out to the amazing community that is involved with this class.

They are already such a supportive and inspiring group of creatives.

I forget, with these online classes, how amazing the boards and galleries can be.

A serendipity.

I had already pre-made this mini that is part of the project prompt...it already had those pink banners firmly in place...but it was to be my oldest male teens page...what to do...what to do...
keep it! and it worked. And I think it indeed did work. Real men DO wear pink.

I shared in the gallery that part of the embellishment here was to cover up a not so great background on this photo...I could not resist this shot, nor adding it to this mini...so I made it work. How often do you have to make YOUR photos work?

Do you ever 'scrap' your kids nicknames...the idea came to me after I did the first page...and so I just let that page be (because you have to learn to be o.k. when a thing is NOT perfect), and starting with this page letter-stickered there names here at home, and then hand wrote their real names...