I won :)

I was lucky enough to be one of two winners chosen to win one of  Kara Haupt's WONDERFUL  Life Story Classes  on Michelle Clement's fabulous blog!!!  I am just so happy - I can't quite believe it!  I sooo enjoyed both Kara's classes that I took part in last year - I learned soooo much from them!!  I am sooo in love with composition art journals now - just today Sam sat on Vals lap and showed her his art journal and I was so proud to see how much he loved his creation - at just 5 years old!!!

And my Daughters both LOVE art journaling!!!  I KNOW that if I had bought them expensive art journals or tried in a different way, they would have felt pressure to create 'perfect' pages....but Kara taught us to glue and mod podge the pages and make them lovely and wrinkly...and gesso them - and so the girls have these gorgeous wrinkled pages that are already NOT perfect, so they feel FREE to create.  Susannah has a music art journal and a friendship art journal, and various other journals.....Abigail has soooo many - and just has fun making new ones and decorating the covers.  Susannah even made journals for her friends as Christmas gifts!!  And it's something we do when they have friends over - almost all their friends go home with a new art journal and a few extra supplies so they can continue at home!!!

I took Kara's 'Fall In Love' class and my little album is on a shelf in my craft room - I love it :)  I even copied my technique and used that as the style for my Christmas album because it's such a simple style.  I think thats what Kara taught me most of all - to let go of trying to be perfect - it doesn't HAVE to be perfect - pages can be wrinkled.....writing can be messy.....paper can be torn.....pictures can be lopsided....you can try styles and techniques that are NOT your usual type.

I don't think I would have finished my Christmas album if I had not taken the Fall class - because I would have still been in that 'perfection' mindset....and yet now I have two mini albums that I LOVE - probably my favourite albums of all - and the most fun to make - because they were a joy to make - so simple and FUN!!!

So yes, I'm pretty excited about being able to do this other class of Kara's and if you have some free time and feel like getting a little creative then I wholeheartedly recommend checking out Kara's brilliant classes.