12/13/08

two roads


The Saturday Inspiration Challenge on SCS has to be my favorite. I love venturing into the world around me and seeing the patterns...everything in nature is connected!  Art is certainly no different. Robert Frost's famous quote was to be the center of my design today.  The red mushroom pendant was my inspiration.   And it's interesting for me to think of how I have progressed in my paper craft journey in just over a year.  In the beginning I would go right at it, the ideas flowed freely and I would stamp in a hurry...now I visualize the end product, more times than not and SEE the steps I'm to take to get there.

Today's card is a perfect example.  I decided on my sentiment and the label first off and stamped on white card stock. But as I paused, the idea of having a grove of trees on the edge of my label  popped in my head (I realize this is not scientific!!!).  After watching Tim Holtz demo his 12 days of Christmas and how he works with the distress ink, I purchased the craft mat.  Oh my, what have I been missing with the mat...it was so easy to stencil color onto the stamp.  You 'NEED' one if you don't already own it. When I placed the label onto the wood grain background of the Basic Grey granola paper, I decided I liked the way the split in the grove looked against the dark of the wood grain. I suppose it mirrors the choice of paths.  

 This card is for a dear friend who remembers holidays in Czechoslovakia as a young girl going mushroom picking with her father and relatives who lived in the tiny villages and hamlets along dirt roads.  She ended up going to university in England and a career offer in the United States...all along taking a path that would bring her into my life.  It is fun to see where our choices take us...if we realize these roads have bends, twists, curves,  hills, summits, valleys, and many straight aways.  And I think our choice is to keep journeying  and trust.

I'd love to hear your take on the road less traveled....

4 comments:

Mark's Finest Papers said...

I must say that this is by far my FAVORITE card of yours! You have a real talent for seeing between the lines!

I LOVE your art!

Dawn B. said...

This is awesome Susan. I could only wish that your insight was like sweet perfume and you could spray it on them and they would smell the sweet fragrance of that path. I have always encouraged my kids to take the path less traveled. The other is so boring. Have a great day.
Dawn B.

~amy~ said...

Gorgeous card with a fabulous sentiment. It seems I'm always headed on a road less traveled..my life is so different than a year ago...in a very good way though..every year I learn more about myself... isn't that what life is about? We should never stop learning whether it is about ourselves...about the people we love...

Joanne Travis said...

This is my favorite poem. I love most of Robert Frost but this one the most.
We transplanted here to Washington in 2001 from NJ where I lived my whole life. Everyone I knew is there so it was quite a scary move but my husband got a job at Microsoft and we thought that sounded like a stable place to be. We have no regrets but every once in a while we look at each other and ask what the heck are we doing out here? I tease him that he couldn't have taken me any farther from home except for maybe Alaska!