A Fanciful Twist

Last, but not least, in our Creative Inspiration Week we have someone I have found to be incredibly creative on a few levels. I am sooooo excited to have her here today! Not only is she a talented artist (her work is even featured in Domino Magazine), but she has crafted a blog that has a unique and creative personality all its own! You really do feel like you have entered an imaginary world when you come to her site, and that hasn’t happened by accident. She has a vivid imagination, that girl!

I was impressed on my first visit and continue to find Vanessa Valencia a true creative genius. And I am not just saying that because she is so nice. But that helps, too. You can have all the talent in the world and be less than charming. She has the impressive combination of a sweet and charming personality AND talent galore. I’ve enjoyed getting to know her, we’ve shared some laughs and some really horrid tales about rodents in our houses. Ewwwww! She doesn’t like them either.

I LOVE what she has to share here today. It is really the perfect inspirational ending to this week (we didn’t plan for this to be the last one, I am not that great at planning, but in a stroke of accidental creative brilliance, it is the perfect ending! I love when that happens!) She has captured the essence of creativity, and I think you’ll be inspired as much as I am by this fanciful post she created for us!

Welcome Miss Vanessa!

a funny thing that happened to me last week… You see, I was having this nostalgia and itch for an old fashioned toy store… An itch for handmade toys and simplicity… A lost time indeed…. Mr. Lovee and I were talking about how that is really non-existent…

So, I went out to several antique stores.. In search of nothing but little quirky toys or such…. And, in a glass case in an antique store were these little vintage cardboard houses.. I chose two. Then I looked around and found the deer and gnome… I brought them all home, so intrigued by the cardboard houses. They warmed my heart more than any little houses I had ever seen….

Then this weekend, I decided that I would like to make my own little cardboard house… So I made up a box I had, and cut it in half. I just folded and cut, making a little house as best as I could. No mold, no instructions. Just following the look of one of the little houses I had purchased at the antique store.

I also decided to make my own gnome (head out of wooden bead …. A few hours later after letting my mind wander, making a cardboard house and a gnome, with Pride and Prejudice playing in the background… I found myself having no real life worries… I was just totally in the moment, enchanted by this little creation.

I covered the glued house in crepe paper… Next time I might use a texturing medium or such… I cut out little windows and put crepe paper in the back of them so you could actually see light through them…

I had sooo much fun making my very own gnome and house. I am tempted to make more little toys for myself… I used only things I had to make them…

I am so inspired to make more little cone trees and such… Sometimes, we have to just break free from the real world and create something pointless.. No rhyme or reason… Just letting the imagination unravel….

Thank you so much for being an inspiration, Vanessa! You’re wonderful! xoxoxo –m
Photos and text copyright Vanessa Valencia. Used by permission.