Normally, Papa Smurf says no about 150 times before arriving to the Smurfs' destination. Folks, we have arrived at our destination! Do you hear the excitement in my voice? You should. And you should hear it loud and clear.
It is official! My studio is COMPLETE! That's right. No more remodeling. No more painting. No more sanding. No more freaking cleaning. No more unpacking. No more figuring out where to put things. No more trying to figure out if I really want to keep some things. It's all done! I'm soooooooo freaking excited. I've been waiting for this day for months. We moved in six months ago today.
While at Crop on the Cape two weeks ago, I felt totally lost. I couldn't figure out how to lay out my scrapping goodies and where to begin! I used to have this down pat and had a serious system. It was so strange to me to be so lost while scrapbooking. I've never experienced this.
Was I losing my love for paper? Yeah, right! Not exactly. Someone asked me if I had scrapbooked since I moved. Nope. Then she asked me when the last time I scrapbooked was. I had to think about it for a minute. Good grief! It was last June in North Carolina. That's nine months ago. I've never gone that long without playing with my paper collection. No wonder I was so lost.
Good news is that I found my way. I got quite a bit accomplished. Not nearly as much as I expected to given my track record. But I was quite pleased since the first night I didn't get much done and I was so lost. It was rather quite sad.
This sadness motivated me. I have been working on unpacking my studio for about two months now. I thought it would take two weeks. Boy, was I dreaming! I really do have a lot of stuff. No arguments here. My quilting and office are also in my studio so that took me some extra time. Previously, they were together in their own room. Here I get to have everything together!
Over 70 boxes later, they are all empty! Most are already at the landfill being recycled into something useful again. Tomorrow the rest will be recycled. I'm so happy to see them gone. Gone. Gone!
With the Great Unpack 2013 comes some challenges and new things. I have gone through every piece of paper crafting material I own. I roughly went through everything before I moved and had 2 boxes of things I planned on selling. Well, now that everything has been unpacked and sorted out, I can say wowee! There are a ton of pieces I will be parting with. I have dozens of brand new stamps and ink pads I'll be selling. I will be listing with photos and details everything on here first. Then it will move to my new Etsy store after a week or so. This is my project for next week. Wish me luck! Pretty sure I'm going to need it.
I will be starting posts on my new studio Wednesday! Exciting I know! There will be tons and tons and tons of photos and links on where to get the items I used for storage. Yeah, I'm cool that way. And nothing is expensive. Remember, every dollar spent on storage takes away from my precious paper budget!
Think Tank Tuesday will also be back next week. I completely forgot to set it up while I was away at Crop on the Cape. I'm a bad girl. I know. Sorry! Oh and Crop on the Cape 2014 will be March 13-16. Please visit the Colorful Creations website for details. Registration opens in November so the details may not be announced until then, but you can see the crop from 2013 and it will be very similar.
Until next time *
Look through an album you haven't looked at in years! You might be surprised to see how your style has changed and how different the faces are now.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Think Tank Tuesday
Today's Think Tank Tuesday is all about journaling. I'm personally not a huge fan of journaling, but I am finding that it is a necessity. I won't live forever and I won't remember every place I have visited in my lifetime. There are already many that I have forgotten and without my photos would have no idea I was ever there! It's a good thing I take photos of signs when traveling as well. I'd really be up a creek without many of them.
So why journal? You can jot down dates and places and faces. We have hundreds of photos in our mountain of genealogy and we have no idea who most of those people are. We're guessing their family, but we have no idea if they're Great Aunt Tildy or Great Great Great Uncle Fred. Why? Because no one took the two seconds to write down who they were! Everyone probably just assumed that everyone would remember. Heck, there are people in my wedding photos who I have no idea who they are and that was only 16 years ago. I will need name tags for everyone in another 20 years! Probably one for myself as well.
People come and go from our lives. With journaling, you can write down so much more than a time, place, and face. You can write the story. Isn't the story why we scrapbook? If we weren't interested in the story, we could simply have photo albums stuffed to the gills on our bookshelves. Scrapbooks don't just hold photos; they tell our story. How we lived our life. Whether we were world travelers, annual Disney vacationers, gardeners, military families who move every few months, come from large or small families, have a house full of pets, built our own house and our homes, made your own clothes or quilts, went to prom and attended graduation (yay for making it!), were born, and most importantly that we LIVED.
Here's my CHALLENGE to you: Journal. Yes, really it's that simple. But do NOT use your computer and a pretty font to type it all up. Write it out with a pen or marker in YOUR hand writing! Hand writing is going way of the typewriter.
So many kids today don't learn cursive and it's an art that has been dying since I was a child. My great-grandmother taught handwriting way, way back when. My grandfather had the most beautiful handwriting. When I was a little girl, I would sit on his lap and ask him to write for me. His name was Earl Ezra and his E's were simply gorgeous. They had about a hundred loops and looked like calligraphy. I always wanted to learn how to write like him. I loved sitting in his lap and watching him wind up to write those loops.
Sounds like a silly memory, but it still fascinates me 30-something years later and I remember it like it was yesterday. He's gone now, but I have that amazing memory and I think of him every time I see handwriting. Little did I know that as a little girl that would have such an impact on me.
This is why handwriting your journaling my CHALLENGE to you. I CHALLENGE you to create a memory for someone in your life. It could be with one of your children or a sibling. Talk about your writing. My mother has nice handwriting. It's not as fancy as my grandfather's, but her handwriting looks like a script font as well. Somewhere along the way our society lost that. That saddens me because it's another lost art form. People took great pride in their handwriting abilities and nowadays we just type everything on a computer and print it out in one the tens of thousands of fonts we have accessible to us at a moment's notice.
You and I won't be here forever. But our memory can live on in something as simple as our handwriting. While we may not particularly care for our handwriting, it is ours and ours alone. It's unique to each of us!
Until next time *
Write. With a pen. Not with mechanical means.
So why journal? You can jot down dates and places and faces. We have hundreds of photos in our mountain of genealogy and we have no idea who most of those people are. We're guessing their family, but we have no idea if they're Great Aunt Tildy or Great Great Great Uncle Fred. Why? Because no one took the two seconds to write down who they were! Everyone probably just assumed that everyone would remember. Heck, there are people in my wedding photos who I have no idea who they are and that was only 16 years ago. I will need name tags for everyone in another 20 years! Probably one for myself as well.
People come and go from our lives. With journaling, you can write down so much more than a time, place, and face. You can write the story. Isn't the story why we scrapbook? If we weren't interested in the story, we could simply have photo albums stuffed to the gills on our bookshelves. Scrapbooks don't just hold photos; they tell our story. How we lived our life. Whether we were world travelers, annual Disney vacationers, gardeners, military families who move every few months, come from large or small families, have a house full of pets, built our own house and our homes, made your own clothes or quilts, went to prom and attended graduation (yay for making it!), were born, and most importantly that we LIVED.
Here's my CHALLENGE to you: Journal. Yes, really it's that simple. But do NOT use your computer and a pretty font to type it all up. Write it out with a pen or marker in YOUR hand writing! Hand writing is going way of the typewriter.
So many kids today don't learn cursive and it's an art that has been dying since I was a child. My great-grandmother taught handwriting way, way back when. My grandfather had the most beautiful handwriting. When I was a little girl, I would sit on his lap and ask him to write for me. His name was Earl Ezra and his E's were simply gorgeous. They had about a hundred loops and looked like calligraphy. I always wanted to learn how to write like him. I loved sitting in his lap and watching him wind up to write those loops.
Sounds like a silly memory, but it still fascinates me 30-something years later and I remember it like it was yesterday. He's gone now, but I have that amazing memory and I think of him every time I see handwriting. Little did I know that as a little girl that would have such an impact on me.
This is why handwriting your journaling my CHALLENGE to you. I CHALLENGE you to create a memory for someone in your life. It could be with one of your children or a sibling. Talk about your writing. My mother has nice handwriting. It's not as fancy as my grandfather's, but her handwriting looks like a script font as well. Somewhere along the way our society lost that. That saddens me because it's another lost art form. People took great pride in their handwriting abilities and nowadays we just type everything on a computer and print it out in one the tens of thousands of fonts we have accessible to us at a moment's notice.
You and I won't be here forever. But our memory can live on in something as simple as our handwriting. While we may not particularly care for our handwriting, it is ours and ours alone. It's unique to each of us!
Until next time *
Write. With a pen. Not with mechanical means.
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