Just Another Groupie

I love playing with paper. It's been a constant source of pleasure for so long now, sometimes when I'm in lax creative times, I wonder, am I burnt out? Have a dabbled with patterns so often that they all look the same now (or is that just my pages)? If given the choice between staying up late to watch a movie, or staying up late to create, which would I choose... oh, you know the answers, friends.

No burn out, no caring about repetition amongst my layouts, no hesitation (okay, hardly any) about staying up late to whip up a new batch of cards or a memory saving page or two, either. Last night I hosted a entertaining evening of Valentine's cardmaking for our preschool as a fundraiser; what a delightful night at our local wine shop, Blend! It was so interesting to walk around the room and see how everyone chose to adhere the same basic elements. Afterward, my mom followed me home and we hit the night running with scissors.

You'd think that after three hours of teaching, some schmoozing, massive calorie consumption, wine drinking and clean-up, I'd have been opting for a no-more-crafting conclusion, but my friends are enjoying a craft retreat without me (!) so I felt obligated to greet the dawn and play play play in my usual retreat way :-) I didn't quite make it to dawn, but I did make four layouts from within my pre-prepped Christmas album, and got to message images back and forth into the wee hours through the magic of facebook with my crafty cohorts as well. That kind of interaction makes the possibilities of burn out, or creative hesitation, fly right out the window!

 

And repetition is the same as continuity to me when it comes to scrapbook reading. So if my pages tend to be identifiable as mine, that's more than okay to me. In fact, in most of my classes, I teach other people to recognize those repetitive urges and embrace them as indicators of personal style! I even laughed as I lamented on taking five hours (!) to complete a layout only to have it turn out like everyother page in my albums... my friend knew exactly what "look" I referred to and commented that she'd made an "Anna" page recently too! What a compliment, huh?

This page was created for Shimelle.com's creative call to Scrapbook a Selfie. I used a pic with my two girls, and technically I 've learned this is a Groupie shot, but I love it, and the papers and embellishments, and am very happy that indeed, it is done in my recognizable style.

Happy crafting indeed!