Monday Morning Inspiration

1. Michael DeMeng has a fascinating "quiz" where you try to match a palette with a painter.  Go check it out here.

2.  The Scrappy Tree has this great tutorial for making paper bag gift pockets. What a great way to use that paper which is too gorgeous to cover up! And they would be perfect for holding gift cards. 

3. October Afternoon shows how to do this really cool misting, masking and stamping technique.

4. I'm thinking about joining Ayala's Art 29 Faces challenges for February.

5. I just signed up for this class: The Art of Wild Abandonment with Christy Tomlinson. It starts in March. Thanks for the link Jacky. I think I'm really going to like it.
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Weekly OLW Check-In:
1. Organized the front hallway closet. Donated a dozen coats to the coat drive (three big bags), and threw away a huge bag of stuff (including some old Halloween costumes which had gotten icky) from there. I realized that I need to come up with a plan for selecting and storing the heirloom quality toys, children books, and children's clothes I want to keep. I also need to figure out how many family games I want to have on the "game shelf" and need to let the others go.  And what do I do with large, framed, high quality family portraits and framed artwork which we have outgrown? They're stored in the front hallway for now, and I'm not sure what to do with them. Any ideas welcome!
2. Dealt with the three large plastic pieces of kids play equipment languishing in the backyard (2 picnic tables and a slide). Added one to the dump pile and free-cycled the other two.
2. Picked up all my repaired jewelry. Still working on creating a piece with some heirloom stones. I have the diamond from my first engagement ring and two small emeralds. I was thinking about a right hand ring, but now I'm considering a necklace. Any thoughts?
3. Took two bags of clothes to the donation bin and gave one bag of "cool hand-me-downs" to our friends with kids who are just the right age.
4. Finished my gratitude journal and sketchbook project.