Ode to Simple Scrapbooks

The saddest day in my scrapbooking history was the day that Simple Scrapbooks magazine shut down. I began scrapping in the days when shabby chic was queen and I could NEVER master that style. I make very simple, almost graphic pages, usually from one single collection. I do not relish spending hours searching for patterned papers that work together, or hunting for embellishments that go perfectly with my color scheme. So when I first saw the layouts in Simple Scrapbooks, I knew I had found my place. There were pages that looked like mine! There were fun but simple sketches that I loved! There were mini-album ideas that I could put together in minutes! I was devastated when the magazine ceased publication.

I still pull out old issues of Simple when I want a boost of inspiration. This page is based on a layout in one of those old issues.

Living in the Future

As I have been working my way through the topics in Twelve, the class I have been taking at Big Picture Classes, I have created pages that I normally would not do. For example, I recently did a page about watching television. We do not watch much TV--we even had our cable service cut off recently--but there are some programs that we do really enjoy. So even though we do not have cable anymore, we can still watch our favorites on the Internet, on our iPad, through Netflix, or on Apple TV (or on a combination of these). I was thinking about how our television viewing habits have changed over the years, thus prompting the following layout:

Margaux asked me what the title meant--"Not Your Mother's TV"--and I explained to her that she and her brothers watch TV much differently than I did at her age. I can still remember the day that cable reached our house out in the county. What a day that was! We went from four channels to over twenty-five (including MTV which I and all my friends watched endlessly). I told Margaux that when I was young we actually had to get up, go to the TV, and change the channel ourselves! She said, "I'm glad I live in the future, I hate to have to get up to do anything."

I took advantage of the long Labor Day weekend to spend an ENTIRE day in my scraproom creating pages. It felt so good to be among patterned paper, scissors, glue dots, and cardstock again. I haven't been consistent about scrapbooking lately, so this day was a welcome return to my little creative world.

I took Stacy Julian's class Twelve at Big Picture Classes at the beginning of the year. Although the live part of the class is over, there is an ongoing assignment to continue to create twelve layouts a month in each of twelve different categories ("you," "holidays," "family stories," etc.). I was diligent in getting my layouts done each month through May, and then I got off track. I have thoroughly enjoyed this challenge because it encourages me to create pages and tell stories on topics that I would not normally explore. Here are two of those layouts:

Recently my dad gave me a huge box of old photos, most of them from when my sister and I were little. The box sat in the basement for a while because I didn't know what to do with all of those pictures. I mulled over several possibilities, all of which seemed overwhelming. I couldn't imagine scanning all of those photos or organizing them into albums. So I just started scrapping them. Once I got over the fear of cropping them and adhering them to a page, I had such fun making these layouts. This page is one that I made based on a sketch at Simple Scrapper. Almost all of the supplies I used are from My Mind's Eye.

I normally wouldn't scrap a page about a place, unless it was somewhere we went on a vacation or field trip. But one of the categories in Twelve is "places," and our church is definitely a place that plays a huge role in our lives. This layout was inspired by Shimelle Lane's beautifully layered and embellished pages. Again, I used mostly paper and embellishments from My Mind's Eye.