I've been scrappin'!

I'm very happy with myself. I've been scrappin'!

Well, you say, you ARE, after all, a self proclaimed, scrapbooking addict completely and totally obsessed with all things pertaining to scrapping, stamping, crafting with paper, paper product and loads of the lastest and greatest fun embellishments. One would assume, by my own definition, that having a wonderful scrapping room, more scrapping toys that one person of meager means should rightfully have and my day times free, I would scrapbook daily each and every week day until my little heart is content. Alas, not so.

In November my get up and go, got up and went.... It's been a long long dry spell, not having any mojo on top of having even less energy. I didn't scrap, I made very few cards, made little effort to play with my "stuff" and got excited only when the arrival of my wonderful little bug (Cricut) came. I took it out of the box, touched it, turned it on, saw how it worked and put it all back again. Why? Because it was my Christmas gift and since it was my ONLY Christmas gift, I really really wanted to open it and be excited for Christmas. Yes, I was excited about Christmas from the standpoint of loving every single exciting second of it from my children's eyes, but, forgive me, I still feel like a kid at Christmas myself so I had to close up my toy to be given to me on the 25th. It was lovingly wrapped and placed under the tree like a good momma should have done.

Besides, despite my excitement at cutting out all sorts of fun letters and things, I had no idea on what I'd use said cut items...No energy, no creativity, no fun dinner planned for Thanksgiving or Christmas, no hoopla. It was all I could do to plan Dalton's birthday party. Yep, I made his invitations. Straight from copying a picture from the internet and using it for the invitation cover. The inside was stamped and I wrote the details in but that was the extent of it. Cute and functional but lacking creativity. I was totally out of energy period.

Now I know why and now that's changing and now I feel so so much better! I attribute much of it to my dear Divas at Meghan's Yahoo group, Divaliscious. Where we are ALL Divas in our own right. They asked me for weekly sketches so that got me started. Once the sketches started, I started realizing that I felt overwhelmed by my "stuff". I played touchy feely with it, purged TONS of it, gave bunches away, sold bunches of it (still more to go in that department) and all that playing and organizing started the old juices up and WHAM! It hit me! I actually invited some friends over to scrap and I made my first true 12 x 12 layout and I actually LIKED it! Me, the die hard 8.5 x 11 chick (because I despise stitching my layouts and the pics of them always turn out so so bad), loved making that 12 x 12 layout. And, I made another. I did! I finished it today. I'm so proud!

I thought I'd do at least one book of 12 x 12's for my boys. A couple of each of them. I don't think I'll give up my 8.5 x 11 coz I do love them, but I also loved this.

Without further ado, here is my first 12 x 12 and, when I can get a decent scan/stitch/picture of the second I'll let you in on that one too (though admitedly I like it less than the first).



I had a blast with it. I really did (I'm not trying to convince myself that I did, I'm surprised that I did... I really really didn't like trying to fill up a 12 x 12 page... it's just too roomy!).

Here's my second. My oldest was complaining that there were very few layouts of him. God love him, he's right. I haVe many albums of my old days (very unlike my current work) and he's feeling left out. (He has always suffered these feelings of being left out - ever since his younger brother was born three years after him.) So, I had to go create a layout of him. These were duplicate photos of some pictures I had put into his first book. It was fun revisiting these precious pictures, particularly since this little doll baby turns 22 in July... (Egads... when exactly did THAT happen...)