mardi 28 avril 2009

Torments of creation

En anglais, si vous désirez lire ce message en français, reportez vous au message précédent.
Today I propose you immerse yourself into the process of kit creation by Plum raconte, in other words how I created a kit for the month of May.
Fact number 1:
When I discovered digital scrapbooking and digiscrapdepot eighteen months ago, I spent several hours browsing through freebies, and several kits created by one person caught my eye. The designer was Susan Darter from Raspberry Road Designs. She offered a freebie almost every day, and I admired her generosity and talent. She made me want to start creating my own collection. I'm influenced by the style she had a year and a half ago.
Fact number 2:
After completing my kit "Faire la Cour" I had no desire to create a next kit, I worked on a personal project. I wanted to create recipe cards o that my mother could collect, copy and store her recipes, using her favorite color, red, and her favorite pattern, gingham. And polka dots, and berries. The style would be simple with an old country feeling. On February 15th, I got this.
Dates are important. I thought I would use the material created for these cards to create a kit.The urge to create is back, and so is the berries season, I resumed this work for May.
Fact number 3:
Before each kit, I do some research. I consult the dictionary, I seek proverbs in French and in English, I look for embellishments in commercial-use, I search for copyright-free images, all linked to the chosen theme. I learned that the blueberries, cranberries, strawberries and raspberries are not actually berries. And I found some illustrations to create my kit, mostly from strawberry. I thus began to design papers and elements about this fruit before tackling other berries. I had about fifteen papers and three times more elements very quickly. I was pretty happy, I had some nice papers and I learned how use new tricks to create original elements, and colors blend harmoniously. So I decide to design only about the strawberry.
And then I got mortified. For this country kit about the strawberry already exists. Created by Susan of Raspberry Road. Several weeks ago. And creating this kit was easy only because I was copying what I saw. Below average copying.
What should I do? I feel like a naughty cheater. A bad naughty cheater.
On the other hand, I started this kit mid-February, long before seeing the "Strawberry Farms collection”. The colors are slightly different. I almost finished my kit. And mine is a freebie. As you can see, the balance is in favor of sharing this kit with you anyway. Even if I get accused of plagiarism.

Come back on Saturday to grab the first part.

1 commentaire:

nine a dit…

Wanna know what's funny? If someone were to give 100 people the same theme to make a kit of, probably 90% would be using similar colors and moods.. Because an artist sets a mood, and usually it's a harmonious blend of colors and nature. So it's no one's "new" or "unique" idea to have strawberries be in a country theme with the yellows, browns, greens. It's not plagiarism at all. I'm sure Raspberry Road designs is doing something similar that someone else has done before. Afterall, strawberries have been around forever LOL. But what an artist DOES do, is puts their own unique signature style into the designs! Keep up the great work!