Light Bulb!

(Bonus points for you if you got that movie quote. Plus, your kids would like my kids.)

I think of scrapbooking as writing, and I love coming up with creative ideas for pages. I don't care where the ideas come from; it's not a regular place, and I like the various places my ideas come from. Like I mentioned Wednesday, sometimes a phrase will pop in my head (My Life in Sticky Notes) and a page is born. Here's a few of the other places my ideas come from:

1. My photos

Sometimes I take a photo with a page in mind, other times I browse the photos on my computer and get ideas. This layout is from the latter:

I saw a bunch of fort photos when I was looking through my computer and used the two I liked best for this page. I used a sketch from Studio Calico for this, along with the August kit, Summer Camp.

I'm not sure about the circles? But the whole look of this page--the stars, the grid, the arrow--made me think of maps used in military campaigns, therefore I made circles.

2. HistoryBy "history," I mean "What's going on out there." I thought of this when I went to the Twins at their new ballpark this summer. Thinking back to last season, I realized I attended the first and last series at the Dome last season. Even though I'd scrapped those events, I decided I needed to scrap an homage to the Dome, since that's what I knew for many years.

Just a design note: I hand cut the banners from The Girls' Paperie On Holiday paper, which looked baseball-ish to me. To do the rope, I just laid glue down in a thin line, then pressed the hemp down, already knotted at the ends. Then I washed my sticky glue hands. A lot.

3. Product

A while back I mentioned finding some unused Hambly zoo rub-ons, one of which was a pig. I have recently discovered my Chinese Zodiac sign is the pig, much to my surprise. I finally made the page I'd been thinking about (the background color of this page is blue):

Amazingly, I also had another sticker from Jillibean Soup with pigs on it. I put it all together on this page. Because I sincerely hope I never have to use pigs again on a layout.*

I also have two more rub-ons from the collection left, a skunk and a snail. What could I use those for? Maybe the time my Granny skunked me in cribbage, and a layout about letters, AKA snail mail...

I sometimes put ideas in my notebook so I can remember them if I don't have time (or photos) to make the page now. Sometimes, though, when I go back to my list, I am no longer enthused to do the page I got an idea for, and that's OK. I think of this an an idea dying an honorable death. It's OK. If I still want to do the page when it's been on the list a while, I do it. That's why I did the Metrodome page.

*Oh wait, I forgot about this page:


I guess as long as Derick grills, I will have a use for pig. The food, not him.