Donna's Blog Book Challenge

I love reading other people's blogs; to see what is on their minds; the artwork they are creating; issues that they are dealing with. One blog I read often is Donna Downey's "Simply Me" on Typepad. I admire Donna's work and her contributions in the scrapbook industry. Her style is simply amazing and she is such an encouragement to other scrapbook creators always striving to inspire them to reach new heights and to get out of the box with their artwork. While reading Donna's blog today I came across a challenge Donna is hosting. She desired to reflect her blog within her scrapbooking someway; however, she desired to focus on it being truly interactive in the same nature of blogs themselves. Hence, her challenge for a "Blog Book" to be created with tags.

Now, I don't personally know Donna, however, she has been on 2P's for quite some time. Always helpful, inspiring, and pleasant to be around so I decided participating in her challenge was something I desired to do. I set out creating my tags using a lot of Basic Gray products, some Danielle Johnson's epoxy stickers, fun fibers, ribbons, and tags. I wasn't certain what content to include so I simply followed my heart and decided to use the opportunity to introduce myself to Donna. My first tag does exactly that with "Cathy Highland, Mixed Media Artist" on the reverse side, I added a quote, "Beginnings are always scary; Endings are always sad; But it is what is in the middle that makes it all worthwhile." ~unknown! The quote really summed up how I often feel as an artist, branching out, and reminds me of when I began my own blog back in Dec. of 2004. There is such a sense of vulnerability in putting oneself out there in the public eye.

My next two tags contains "SNIPPETS" of my Artist Statement. They are mix of images and text, and I tried to pull out some of the colors in the Basic Gray printed papers. The third tag features a transparency overlay and on the reverse side an accordian booklet. The accordian booklet reads, http://partlypaper.blogspot.com and the following text, "Donna, When I saw the challenge to be a part of your interactive "blog book" I jumped at the opportunity. I created my tags to reflect my interests, so that you could also learn a little about the artist behind the inspiration. Some of the snippets of text are taken from my Artist Statement and the portfolio that I am in the midst of creating. May your "blog book" be all that you envisioned it be and so much more! sincerely, Cathy Highland" I included a notation of my 2P's screen name: nchantin.