Weekly colours

It's Saturday - time for the weekly colour palette. Today's palette is made of colours I've used on my blog for the month of April: Tangerine Tango, Solar Power, and Bright Chartreuse.  I love this bright and sunny combo:

Happy, bright and sunny weekend to all of you!!!
xxx
Anya

Weekend colours

While waiting for poppies to bloom I get my colour inspiration from the beautiful photo.

I do not know who is the author.  The image was found on Pinterest

Weekend colours

I decided to use one of my own photos for today's colour palette:

Red tulips I got last spring:

This year I am waiting for purple and pink tulips from the garden. I hope they will show up soon.
Happy weekend, my dear readers!!!
xxx
Anya

Happy Easter

It's Easter weekend and I am spending most of it in the garden: replanting, pruning, and preparing for my second gardening season.
Happy Easter and Passover for those of you celebrating. Here is some Easter and spring inspiration (click on the image to see more):

via Nicety

via Nicety

via Nicety

via Centsational Girl

via 79 ideas

Pin It

Creativity ...

It seems that just yesterday my head was buzzing with creative ideas and I couldn't wait to get home from my day job to finish a project, or maybe begin a new one, or blog about things I've made ....
... and then something happened and my creative buzz went away and my unfinished projects are now sitting idle on the crafting table.

At first I blamed the lack of time, but I soon realized that time had nothing to do with it.  Just last week, when I had a lot of free time, I tried getting back to my crafting on several occasions and gave up before making anything.
This week I feel determined to shake this weird non-crafty state of mind off.  I am creating a series of exercises to help me. 

  -   First comes a weekly project.  The idea is borrowed from the ever-so-popular project life: documenting my weeks using crafty materials and supplies.  I am planning on creating 2 pages every weekend using papers and embellishments I'd find throughout the week.  It would also be a great way to use my huge pile of inspirational images.
  -   Second is the new TEA TIME series for this blog (more about it in the upcoming posts).
  -   I am also hoping to get some mood boards/inspirational boards going.  I've been contemplating an idea of creating those for a while and it seems like the time could not be better.
  -   And finally I will try to come up with short 5-10 minutes crafty exercises to fire up my creative mojo.  I would like to use them as warm-ups, completing one before jumping into big projects.

P.S. I've sketched this post yesterday morning and simply thinking about different creative activities got me so happy and inspired.  I already have several ideas for things I'd like to try out this weekend; most of them have to do with bringing spring mood into our house decor. P.P.S. The images have little to do with the topic of the post: they are my parade roses and lantana plant from last summer.
P.P.P.S. I would love to hear your inspirational ideas.  What do you usually do to get into creative mood?

______
A year ago Anya was cooking ROASTED PEPPER SOUP

Weekend colours

March is here and I've changed the colours of the blog.  Here is February's palette inspired by PANTONE'S SPRING 2012 MEN'S COLOURS: Tangerine Tango, Rhubarb, and Driftwood

To see January palette click HERE

Bringing creativity back - Winter tag

I've already mentioned my week off blogging and crafting. Having no creative energy was almost depressing so the whole week I was trying to come up with ways to get my creative mojo back.

I believe that creativity is a "muscle": the more you use it, the "better" it gets. So to bring my creative energy back I needed to create something. I needed a simple and fast project that would keep me happily-occupied.

Trying to come up with an idea for a project I made a mental checklist:

• fast
• fun and simple
• challenging

This would also be an incredible opportunity to practice new techniques and mediums I wanted to try before. And to silence my inner critic I wanted to simply create, without any reasons or rules.

For the first creative exercise I decided to make 4 tags (fast and simple, right?) - one for each season.  As it turned out the project was not as fast as it originally seemed but I managed to make all 4 tags in one (long) evening.

I began with winter, which to me means holidays and Christmas-time.  I've used snippets of decorative branches: green, red, and golden.  I also wanted to incorporate something from our Christmas decor so I used a string of a handmade garland.

Here is what I did for the background:

• primed my tag with white acrylic gesso first and then used 2 distress inks: pine needles and old paper
• using one of newly-bought stencils printed designs on the background with regular inks
• sprayed everything with clear glimmer mist - loved how background colours melted and mixed together
• glued 2 strings of my handmade garland

At this point I noticed that the background calls for more colour.  I wanted to bring back the red of my branches and repeat the round shape of berries, background design, and the garland. I made red confetti to add to the background:

• sprayed a sheet of paper with red glimmer mist
• once the sheet was dry - used a hole puncher to punch out confetti

fast, simple, and fun!

Last but not least, I attached all the branches onto the tag.

The tag came out more Christmasy than wintery but I do not mind it at all.  After all, Christmas IS "the most wonderful time of the year".


Pin It

Weekend colours

We are snowed in today ...  Montreal and its suburbs are covered with a thick white blanket.  But even if I see white outside of my window I dream of bright spring colours:

The bright palette was inspired by a beautiful photo of ranunculus (one of my favorite flowers) by LUPEN GRAINNE.  I absolutely love Lupen's work and was surprised to know that she is a self taught photographer!
You can find her on Flickr, read her blog, and buy wonderful prints of her images at HONEYTREE Etsy store.

Photo by Lupen Grainne (via Pinterest)

Happy weekend everyone!
xxx
Anya

Weekend colours

Are you enjoying the weekend?  My weekend is spent dreaming of spring, flowers, and spring colours:

The photo of Chives Blossoms Vinegar tutorial is to blame for my daydreaming:

Word of the month

February is passing so fast that I completely forgot to share this month's word.  It seems to me after spending January ORGANIZING it is now time to focus on yourself.  And thus my February's word of the month is:

To me, pampering is about nurturing yourself, helping yourself grow, and occasionally spoiling yourself ...

Stay tuned for February posts from the PAMPER series.

Pin It

Weekend colours

Today's tender palette is inspired by DONNA GRIFFITH's photograph:

I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!
xxx
Anya

______
Psst: want to browse through previous colour palettes?  Check out COLOURS page.

On February ...

February makes me long for spring. In the place where I come from, February was truly the last winter month, whose final days were sunny and spring-like. Here, in the Northern place I live now, spring comes much later and we often have to wait until April to feel its warmth.

February here is often long, windy, and snowy ... the most difficult winter month. Yet, something is definitely changing during these cold days; maybe the light, maybe smells or sounds, but every February this something tells me that spring is not that far away.


A year ago Anya was blogging about VALENTINE DAY COUNTDOWN

January colours

Orange colour has been popping up all over.  I keep finding orange shoes and clothes, orange colour for make up and accessories and orange accents in design and decor.  And if you are wondering why there is so much orange around, the answer is simple - PANTONE named Tangerine Tango to be the colour of the year.  So after last year's honeysuckle (pink) we'll have an explosion of orange in 2012.

I decided to be trendy and pick orange as a colour for SAS-does. But to have some fun with it I will be changing the complimentary colours of the blog every month or so.  For the month of January I picked 2 shades of blue: Cockatoo and Sodalite Blue (also from Pantone suggestions) and like I did in the past, created a colour palette:

Looking for more colourful inspiration? Click on the COLOURS page to find previous palettes featured on SAS-does.

Weekend colours

I decided to create a subdued, almost monochrome palette this week, to go with a quiet mood of a snowy January:

The palette is inspired by a beautiful image I found on Pinterest.  The photograph was taken by Rach

Image by Rach

Happy weekend!

Weekend colours

I've been busy working on an updated look for the blog.  Things are still "in works" but I am hoping to finish everything over the next week.  Meanwhile, here is my weekly colour palette inspired by a beautiful winter-y image.

Inspiration:

Image by Meg Hawkey

I've been also working on a craft project for the Valentine day.  Stay tuned for the updates.

Weekend colours

One way to ADD MORE COLOUR TO YOUR LIFE this month is by incorporating flowers into your decor.  Amy Merrick shared her stunning amaryllis and poppies flower arrangement at Design*Sponge.   Amaryllis flowers tend to be forgotten after the holiday season but Amy shows (and explains) how to make beautiful and inexpensive arrangements using these winter beauties.

Image by Amy Merrick

I am completely in love with the colours of Amy's creation.  Inspired, I created this week's palette:

I am wishing you a colourful and beautiful weekend.  And Merry Christmas to my Orthodox Christian friends!

Pin It

"Organize" inspiration

Pin It

Weekend colours

I decided to have some Christmas colours on this blog and today's palette is also quite Christmas-y:

 Here is the beautiful image that inspired me.  I found this shot on Pinterest so it was a little bit difficult to trace it back to the author/photographer.

Image via NORDINGARDEN

 If I am not mistaken the original comes from the NORDINGARDEN blog.

Pin It

Weekend colours

Today's palette is inspired by this viral image.  Unfortunately I can not find the original so the photographer who captured the beautiful moment remains unknown.

UPDATE:
I've made a second version of the palette later on and decided to share it with you:

Can't decide which one I like better ...

Pin It

days 3 and 2

I've spent most of Thursday teaching so I decided to take some pictures of the training room.  It looks more welcoming in real life but it definitely needs some decor:

And for Friday I finished my 30 THINGS list: