Telling the stories

I have a hard time answering the question, "Why do you scrap?" For me, it's not one thing. I love pairing photos with pretty product and writing the story down. It's a nice stress reliever to sort through patterned paper at night. Learning something new always invigorates me. I love making meaning out of my life.

If I had to choose any, I would choose the latter. When I spend time trying to figure out why I want to scrap something, I figure out the reasons, specifically, the reason why this moment/event/ person is important. I feel like this helps me live a life of purpose. That's important. Not everything I scrap is serious, and playing with pretty paper feeds my creative soul (and is probably helping to sustain the economy!), but everything I scrap has meaning. My only dissatisfying pages are the rare instances when I create a page for which I never found a purpose.

Here's my two latest purposeful pages (click on the images to view them larger):




This was my latest Project 12 venture. I used Studio Calico's Who's Who. To bring out the rich colors of the paper, I used a Pioneer Woman action called Boost, which increases the color and darkens the image a bit. I'm also trying to get over the fact that I still can't sew straight.


This page warms my heart. I love love love this paper from Studio Calico. When I get a paper like this, where the whole paper is too beautiful to cover, I don't. I use fewer photos and product and try to work my design into the paper's design. In this case, I tucked everything behind one of the trees, in some cases literally: I tucked the photo and title into a slit in the paper. And the inspiration for this page--the series of notes my son left me--are in an envelope on the back of the page.

Just for information's sake, I also used Who's Who for this page, and I used the Boost action on this page as well.

My internet is a little wonky right now--it ceases to work after about a half hour, which I'm taking as God's way of telling me to get off the computer and go do something. So, today I shall probably be spending time attending my cousins' children's birthday party, shoveling snow, and editing heritage photos my mom brought to me (this is technically on the computer, but oh well). My husband says there's some money shots in these photos. If you want a good laugh, check back in later this week for some peeks into my scarily dressed, too-big-eyeglasses, crooked teeth past, in which I apparently loved Wonder Woman and wanted to be a ballerina.

One more reminder: Laura, if I don't hear from you by tomorrow, I'll choose another winner for the scrapbooking sketches book! Gotta get people scrapping!