Monthly Archives: September 2010

Creative Workspace Die-Cutting Leather

My creative workspace is currently filled with lots of leather and die-cutting bits and pieces! I’m having so much fun with my Big Shot machine and super happy with the results of the steel dies since I can now cut my leather quite easily and nicely. I have shaky hands and sad Xacto-cutting skills, so [...] See the full post »

Posted in creative progress | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Printable Vintage Text Pages

Vintage and grungy looking text seems to be always in style and useful for any crafty project. I was reading some sonnets by Shakespeare and decided to make a few vintage looking text pages with his verses. These can be printed out for crafting with or used digitally in scrapbooking or other artsy projects. Hope [...] See the full post »

Posted in free goodies | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Let's Make A Moveable Paper Doll

Babysitting my niece is always a joy and an adventure in crafting. She’s in that wonderful creative stage of seeing something and asking if we can try making it, straight away. Just like that, no thought of it being too hard or if we might not have the supplies…let’s just do it because it looks [...] See the full post »

Posted in projects | Tagged | 12 Comments

Music Gets Me In The Mood

It’s bizarre how we all need a little bit of peace and quiet to concentrate, but at the same time complete silence is deafening and really weird feeling – at least for me! I always complain about the construction noises across the street, waiting for the day when they’ll finish building the apartments. However, when [...] See the full post »

Posted in inspiration | Tagged | 12 Comments

Thoughts on the Leap Into Something Scary

As I approach a big birthday milestone this month, I’ve been thinking a lot about the challenges I’ve faced, the work I’ve done and what I’ve accomplished so far. Looking back, it’s so much easier to see how silly certain situations might have been or how I might have really made a mountain out of [...] See the full post »

Posted in thoughts + discussion | Tagged | 10 Comments

Creative Workspace of Sketching and Inking

This week, I’ve been doing a lot of sketch practicing in attempts to train my drawing hand and strengthen it up. I suppose my hands and fingers could be considered quite weak, since I waver and shake a lot for lack of control. However, I do love to sketch, whether just line drawings or trying to [...] See the full post »

Posted in creative progress | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Printable Notepages with Motivational Quotes

You might have noticed that Wednesdays happen to be freebie days here on tortagialla.com. In my mind I like to celebrate the middle of the week (hump day) by sharing something with all of you. This past week, in my attempts of planning and organizing, I whipped up some printable notepages for myself. They have [...] See the full post »

Posted in free goodies | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Let's Scrape Some Paint

Today I wanted to play with some paint, so joined in with Crusade No. 44 over on Michelle Ward’s blog. This month’s experiment is all about scraping paint for a grungy, textured look. I’ve definitely experimented with this technique before and love the process and results. I use an old plastic card to scrape dots [...] See the full post »

Posted in art journaling | Tagged | 44 Comments

All About Zines – Inspirations and Resources

Happy Monday to everyone and today I’m officially starting my every weekday blogging schedule, with each day dedicated to a particular topic of interest. As I’ve posted about inspiration most Mondays here on tortagialla.com, I’ve decided to continue with Monday inspirational posts. I’m going to add more resources and links as well though, because I [...] See the full post »

Posted in inspiration, zine | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Thoughts on Building Up a Schedule…

Another week and I’m still struggling to get back into the swing of things. I think one of the issues I have is wanting to do too much. Everyone knows the statement of spreading yourself too thin and my caffeine crazed excitement for all things creative really does pull me in too many directions. I’ve [...] See the full post »

Posted in thoughts + discussion | Tagged | 14 Comments