confessions of a deco-scissor-aholic.

My scrapbooking roots can actually be traced back to my 7th grade english class (Mrs. Rubin, 5th period, room 40, Tioga Middle...I like details). Contained in a yellowing magnetic photo album are pages of handwritten journaling about each state that I had lived in, accompanied by photos with handwritten caption strips. Errors in grammar & punctuation are circled in red (thanks Mrs. Rubin!). I've been meaning to scan everything, and transfer the pages & photos to a safer book. I have several other scrapbooks tucked away...most are filled with report cards, movie ticket stubs, and snapshots from childhood. As a child who moved a lot (not military...just gypsy!), I loved collecting memories from each place that I lived. So, I guess you could say that I grew up scrapbooking!

My first foray into "modern" scrapbooking came after a Creative Memories party. I'm a girl who likes structure, so I came away from that party with several rules to follow:

• use deco scissors as much as possible
• use plain cardstock sparingly, to make room for really busy patterned paper
• use your own handwriting, but make it "fancy" by drawing dots as serifs
• always, always use stencils to cut out your photos

Simply follow these rules, and voila...

While kids, work, & life got in the way, I put down my deco scissors for a bit. Fast forward nearly a decade, and I walked into a scrapbooking store and thought "hey! I used to scrapbook!" Random bit of trivia - one of the first patterned papers that I bought after my hiatus was made by a company called Two Busy Moms & was designed by Ali Edwards. I started collecting scrapbooking supplies, with every intention to actually scrapbook. I jumped back into the hobby in 2004, and haven't looked back since!

In 2006, I discovered that "real people" could submit to scrapbooking magazines. How cool is that? So I sent in a page to Simple Scrapbooks. Several weeks later, I squealed as I opened an email from Wendy Smedley asking if Simple could publish that layout. For reals?? OF COURSE! In a funny twist of fate, that layout wasn't published by Simple, but was picked up by Creating Keepsakes instead. Wendy was kind enough to give me an assignment when the 1st submission didn't work out. This layout appeared in the October 2006 issue....

My style has definitely evolved...and most importantly, I've abandoned the notion that there are "rules" in this creative outlet. I scrap 12x12 and 8.5x11. I scrap new pictures and old pictures. I scrap out of chronological order. I scrap about my kids, and about other people's kids. I scrap about myself. I scrap about my friends. I'm an anything goes kind of gal. I dig combining photos & words to capture memories. That's why I scrapbook.

Why do you scrapbook? I hope you'll share your layouts with us in the Flickr group (link above).

thanks for stopping by!