Sunday 13 July 2014

Things Are About to Change

For a long time now I have been planning to change my Blog so that it becomes the home for my creativity, rather than a place for me to just 'Muse'. I don't think the two things are mutually exclusive, but I want the main emphasis for this site to be the creativity, rather than the 'Musing'. 

I have been a keen Scrapbooker for about ten years now, but have always enjoyed being creative. I have worked in an office all of my career, with the working getting more and more serious as I get older. There are moments when I am really not sure how I got involved in what I now do, but I really enjoy it. However, as it has become more and more a seriously serious job, I have found that the creative side of my life has become more important to me. It is now time to start sharing some of my work, the Better Half has been on at me for months, neigh years, to start doing this, so here goes.

Over the next few weeks and months I will be sharing some of the Scrapbook pages I have made over the years. It has been interesting looking back at these as it shows how my style has changed and settled, not completely, but certainly more so than it was. A major change has been that I now rarely produce a page that does not have some journalling on it. There are a few occasions when this is still the case, but very few. I am not going to show these pages in chronological order, not least of all because I have no idea what that would look like as I don't scrap in date order. 

For many years I spent more time scrapping old family, often vintage, photos, than current photos. To a degree this was, I think, why my scrapping did not include much journalling, as the most I know about the photos was who was in them, but sometimes not even that. I was keen that what information I did have, should be recorded for future generations, so my pages generally only included 'Facts' and that became my style. As I have finished (well, 90%) recording the old family photos, I have now had a chance to spend more time on photos that are current, or at least are old photos of me, my friends and family, so I am able to include more of my thoughts. 

One major source of inspiration for me is the wonderful Shimelle Laine. I really cannot remember how I first came across her work, but her website is an inspiration. I have taken lots of her classes and would recommend them to anyone who wants to learn more about both technique and the theory of design. You can find a link to her website here. She is currently running a class 'Return to the Collection', which was first available a few months ago and I did it then. It is a great class and I return to the materials, including videos, often. In the Class Shimelle takes you through how to get the best out of a Paper Collection Pack, with a few additions from your existing stash. I found the class really helpful and is a great way to bust your stash. It only costs £12 and, like all of her classes, you get to take it as many times as you want at no extra cost. Why not give it a try?

The first page I am going to share is one I made about four years ago. I have chosen this as the opener simply because it is probably the page that took me longest to put together. From memory it took about five hours, simply because I had to punch so many border pieces to create the background. It was one of those ideas that seemed like such a good idea at the time, but I did end up cursing it. Having prepared all the strips, I then had to stick them all down. But I do like the final page, and the lack of journalling and date is not really a problem for me because of the subject matter; it really does not matter.


I do remember some of the supplies I used for this page, which is more than I can say for most of my pages. The patterned paper is all from Anna Griffin and was some that I had in my stash for far too long, so using lots of it for this page was a good idea, other than having to do all the punching. The punches were Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page and a Deep Edge Punch. The cardstock was Bazzill Bling and gives a soft sheen in the background. The gems are from Papermania.




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