...Yes... I think I DO like it!...

I finally finished the layout that I'd started on Thursday. I didn't get to it this weekend at all thanks to my laundry escapades, so yesterday I put the finishing touches on it.

I know that some may say that it's too plain (I had a hell of a time stitching this baby at work incidentally!) and that it needs more. I actually caught myself trying to imagine what would be pleasing to the masses. I was going to doodle up the waves and grunge it up a bit more, paint the pictures... then I stepped back and asked myself: Do YOU like it as it is?

The answer was Hell yeah! I love it as is! The doodling was a little hard for me at first because I have been so anti doodling, but somewhere along the way I started flowing across the page! Doodling is not nearly as scary as I thought it was!

This was definitely a liberating experience. It feels so good to let your heart decide when the layout is finished!

Laundry Sucks!

September was Shayne's month to do laundry.

Those words should mean no more to you than if I said the sky is blue. Why? Because they mean even less than that to his highness, the King of absentminded procrastination!

I have endured a large portion of my family room being given over to dirty laundry staging. This is maily because our cat likes to curl up in any baskets that we store in the laundry room and she has almost been washed twice! So I allow the staging of the baskets in an area of the familyroom since it's right off of the laundry room.
Well, all month those baskets have overflowed and we've had a few issues with people running out of clothes. I thought that we were just going through laundry too fast and that poor Shayne couldn't keep up! I lectured Tristan and make a conscious effort to limit the amount of dirty laundry I generated. I figured this would help him get his head above water before the end of the month...

Well, it turns out that Shayne wasn't even at the damned pool, let alone struggling to keep from drowning! I came in on Friday night and started sorting the laundry (stepping on piles of dirty laundry has never been a favorite of mine and I don't reccommend it to anyone wishing to keep their ankles intact). I wound up with 9 loads of laundry, not including the towels/blankets! I uncovered a pair of jeans that I'd worn in Chicago that he hadn't "gotten around" to yet! That was THE last straw! That night, I washed, dried and folded 3 of the loads.

It was amazingly liberating. Who would've thought that being able to see the floor could bring about a pseudo-orgasmic state? I got up on Saturday and forewent washing the truck for doing laundry again! I'm almost certain that if it weren't for Tristan's football game, I would've finished all of the laundry that day, but as it stands, I had to go support my copy and in doing so lost me 6 hours. So I managed to do 4 loads on Saturday. Then Sunday came and I was up at the buttcrack of dawn again...doing what? Laundry! When I finally went to bed I had the last load in the washer patiently waiting dryer attention.

All the whole weekend, Shayne pretty much layed around because he claims his back was sore again! I got NO Scrapbooking done... what so ever. I did manage to run by the library to check my emails though (I had to return some books anyway).

I am so pissed that I gave away my entire weekend for the sake of well stocked closets and a clean family room! I did get Shayne to take care of the 2 baskets that he did manage to get done in the 22 days that the chore was his. The were the 2 baskets of random clothes that he'd washed based on what a particular family member needed at the time, so the baskets had been rummaged through and pilfered of any valuable articles. He did manage to always wash Tristans football uniforms the day of practice or the game... however, they hardly ever had time to dry properly, so Tristan was playing damp a lot (why the boy didn't bring it to my attention until after I'd hung up all of his practice and game jerseys (fresh washed) and returned his freshly laundered pads to him is beyond me!).

Anyway... I'm a bit miffed and feeling a lot cheated!

All of my laundry is just about done though, so I guess things could be worse.

I plan to scrap my head off this week to make up for all of the work I did this weekend!

Ahh... a HOF-er I am not...

So... CK has officially launched it's search for next years HOF winners. In true CK fashion they have set their entry criteria (i'm sure with a snicker right from the desk of LB herself). Once again, a list of requirements that would make your teeth recede have been circulated around the net but this time the air seems to be a bit different.

Are they looking for the next marketable scrapper to pimp to the general public?

Is it worth it?

Why do they want to see our craft spaces?

Should I spend the time and energy to enter?


Well, I can tell you from my perspective, this is just another contest geared towards increasing the drama that exists in our little scrap universe. The very fact that they are looking for the "best of the best" tells me that I'm not too far off the mark with my assumption. Hall of Fame, hmm... just makes you wonder...


Are they looking for the next marketable scrapper to pimp to the general public?
Do people in hell want ice water? Can I knock things off of tables if I swing my hips around a corner too fast? Of course they are! The are looking for someone to come along and set new trends that hopefully we will fall hook line and sinker for! That way we attach ourselves to CK's arse with the same fervor that barnacles attach themselves to the bottoms of wayward ships.
It's already been stated (by HOF-er's themselves) that it's honor and prestige for a quick minute and then you are a has been. That is unless you make it in good with the powers that be.
Whatever happen to Faye Morrow Bell? I saw her book on Ebay for $5 a while ago. Face it, some HOF winners are strapped on to LB's coat tails and taken for the ride of their lives while others are allowed to fade into the background with the occassional mention here and there and frequent publication when CK has projects that require their services. That in and of itself makes me wonder if the HOF-ers who's names become household names aren't the ones that were the shoe ins before they even entered. Maybe all of those ghost HOF-ers were CK's way of covering their tracks..."see we do select some unknowns".

I don't want to be marketed. I don't want to feel that I have to scrap to a certain standard. I don't want to "preserve" the image of CK by embarking on my journey as a product they created. I want to scrap. Plain and simple. If I'm not good enough for them, well, they don't really matter now do they?

Is it worth it?
A wise man (or woman) once said that you get out of life what you put into it. So I guess that if you give up all you have you will get a little bit of CK back. You'll never get all that you give though. 10 layouts, 6 of them geared specifically towards meeting their new fangled marketing interview. 10 layouts that may or maynot be on a subject that would be conducive to your scrapping spirit. The first layout assignment calls for an ORIGINAL and INNOVATIVE idea to be used in your layout. Question is, how much more originality and innovation do you think is actually left? That assignment alone could take weeks of contemplation and exectution, simply because you have to figure out something that is not only cool, funky and hip, but it also has to be an orginal. Sorry guys, this keg is tapped... and as far as original ideas... I'm pretty much fresh out of them.

Why do they need to see our craft spaces?
There is a lot of hub bub going on about this one. Its one of the 3 layouts options that you can choose from, some of the other option sare so daunting that showing off you creative hidy hole is a real reality. The add states that they want to see how your creative flair has spilled over into you scrap space. Well, what if I keep my flair contained and use it on my layouts? Yeah, I could spend tons on pretty things to put my scrap stash in and fancy work spaces to create my layouts...but I don't. I can't afford the snazzy IKEA furniture and I don't have a lot of wall space to put up the obligatory CREATE INSPIRE DREAM plaques. I'm lucky the darned room has wallpaper. So does this assignment serve to further determine if the submitter is cabable of projecting the sophisticated scrap persona? I'm sure that they'd rather have their HOF's in lovely state of the art rooms equipped with all of the storage devices and works spaces that their mag sponsors provide. I'm almost equally sure that they don't want to see my 100 bolts of fabric and the kitty condo that sits in the middle of my floor. My scraproom doesn't tie in well with my layouts. My scraproom doesn't tell you what type of scrapper I am. No, my scraproom tells you that I have too much stuff and not enough nooks and crannys to put them in. It tells you that I'm a no nonsense, everything at arms reach and at the ready scrapper. It tells you that I am about saving all of my scrap budget for scrapbooking. Do I think that my $20 auction win desk/hutch, battered drafting table and $15 auction win rolling file cabinets will be what they are looking for? Only if they are looking for someone to set the next bohemian minimalist trend. Only if they are looking for someone who doesn't believe that you have to look stylish while you create.

Should I spend the time and energy to enter?
The call has just went out. The deadline is February 10th. Good Googly Moogly that's a long time... and you can bet your pickled petunias it's there for a reason! Yeah, 4 of the layouts that you can submit are what you would consider your personal bests that give an idea of what you are as a scrapper on her own turf, but the other 6 are engineered for their interview process.
They want you to complete a layout and to pore over it and to ball it up and toss it away just to start over again. They want you blood, sweat, tears, frustrations, and uncertainty. They want to rake a fine tooth comb through the entire scrap universe and dig out all of the brave talent there is. The want to allow for some to make a name for themselves and to prove their prowess at getting magazines to grovel for their submissions. I don't need 4.5 months to complete 6 layouts. I don't need 4.5 months to many things at all (except to complete Jenn's circle journal, but I think that makes us even). All I know is that it's a lot of work and after pouring yourself into your layouts for that period of time, there is no way that you can avoid the inevitibly crushing blow when they aren't picked up. I don't need that (and my Mojo has been watching me with increased interest to make sure that I remember that I don't need that). As much as I would love to have my work admired by the masses and to reap the benefits of prestige, that prestige carries to large of a price tag.

Don't get me wrong. I am only say that the HOF competition is not for me. If any of my near and dears decides to go for it, I will don the skirt and grab the pom poms with reckless certainty! I want to cheer my friends and acquaintences on and I want them to break the impenetrable CK barrier if they can! I'd love to have one of my friends be a HOF, but not for the reasons that many would think. I think that many of them belong there anyway and if they were to pick up a HOF, well, all I could say is "it's about damned time", because I knew they were worthy of it from day one!

OMG! I'm back! I'm back! I'm back!

I've rediscovered my love of scrapbooking and I'm bursting at the seams with excitement! I know it's been a while since I've posted anything, and I will totally go back and fill in the empty spots with some back logged postings, but I was in a precarious situation that required a bit of
eggshell walking.

You see, I felt the nigglings of my mojo and for fear of scaring it away, I just ignored it; allowing it to sidle up closer to me, day by day. I didn't blog about it..heck, I didn't blog about anything at all for fear something would slip out and alert my mojo to the fact that I was still looking for it. So I stayed silent and then I rediscovered my Xara software.

Xara rocks! It's a 3D animation program that lets me make blinkies. So I started making blinkies for some of the ladies at Scrapbooking Supply Store.This is where it got tricky. I made their blinkies from mini layouts that I pieced together using .jpg images of different manufacturer's papers. So I was doing little digi scrapping but my mojo thought I was making stupid blinkies! Aren't I clever?

Anyway, when I got better at making them, I extended my reach back to Scrapitude (only the best for my girls... and all of that) where I honed my abilities. Last week, I sat down at my desk to do some blinkies and I felt my mojo siddle up next to me. In a flash I grabbed that slippery snot and wrestled with it until it agreed to come back home! I immediately grabbed the layout that had been sitting on my desk (still in the beginning stages) and tore into it! The end result?

This layout of Jenn that I absolutely adore!
I started it in June and stopped after my head got broken.

After 2 months of whining and crying about scrapbooking, of course my first layout would be in homage of one of the ladies that helped me find my way to the end of my tunnel!

So there she is... and I don't care what she says, she's friggin gorgeous... and a dorkfish to boot!


Anyway, so me and my mojo were in talks after that. There was a lot of things to hash out and she was pretty darned ademant about her demands in return for her return.

• 1. No submissions. I promised not to submit for anything, contest, design teams, mags, nothing. I would just scrap for myself and my family.
• 2. There would be no uploading of anything that took more than a day to complete. If my focus wasn't completely pure and free of the desire to please others, I wouln't share it.
• 3. I can't shop for new stuff until I've gone through and used all of my unused stuff at least once!
• 4. No goals. No deadlines (there is an exception to this... I'll explain in another entry). No quests for approval. No trolling for comments.
• 5. If after sitting at my desk for 30minute, I don't feel like scrapping, then I walk away or do something else! No more forcing myself to do something when I don't feel like it! If the inspiration isn't there, or if my mojo is taking a nap, I need to respect that and wait for her to wake up!

So those are the terms that I've agreed to. And you know what? I love them! I feel free! My mojo and I have been cuddles up and enjoying each other's company ever since! I know that I've made the right choice for me and my 2 newest layouts are proof of that!

Here is one that I completed on Friday... and it took... get this 3 hours ( I was watching my daughter and the kittens while trying to piece together the photos for the effect I wanted to achieve). It's the result of an Ad challenge that I've been wanting to do for a while now:

First Halloween

I have been holding on to these pictures for 2 years! I'm pathetic aren't I? I was afraid to mess them up... but not anymore! They are MY pictures... and as long as I worked from my heart, I couldn't mess them up!

I love this layout and I can't wait to do more with the tons of other pictures that I've been saving for a special page!

THEN, last night, amidst a lot of chaos, I found a sketch online (thank you Lenise) that I liked and I came up with this one:

SWING

I took these pictures of Jo during a playground trip and I just love them. I love her smile and her love of life (even if she is grouchy like her momma).

I even doodled a bit on the darned thing! I love this layout just as much as the others and I didn't once ask myself whether I was using things that were outdated or if such and such would like it.
I didn't care and I love the feeling of that freedom!

I tell you what! I can't see what, if anything I will produce tonight!

Am I back 100% I don't know, but I do know that I'm excited! I'm also grateful to all of the women who helped me and encouraged me to take my time. The amount of thanks that I owe to Kimmy (the ultimate big sister) is unfathomable! This woman allowed me to step back and relocate myself ('cause if you're lost, how the hell can your mojo find you if you can't find you?) and well, I just love that woman to pieces!! I am so blessed to be in the company of these women and my one wish for every scrapbooker in the world (except the ones I don't like, hee hee!) is that the all have the opportunity to have a Kimmy, a Jenn, A Carol (with and without the "e"), a Maddy, a Jaks, a Sally, a Becs, a Jaine, a Jane, and an army of countless 'Tudes in their corner cheering them on (but they can't have mine and I WILL kick any ass that tries to infringe on my support squad! consider yourself warned!). I love you guys!