Creative share.....

It has been waaay too long since I have shared anything crafty and creative. And it has been even longer since I have shared some good old scrapbook layouts. I love to scrapbook, but I am not obsessed with it. I am obsessed with art, and doing creative things as often as I can, and getting messy and inky and painty and papery! But, I also love to take pictures and I *LOVE* to write, and scrapbooking combines all of my loves!!!

I am not all about "safe" scrapbooking. I could care less if a product is acid-free. One of the main reasons that all those "safety" concerns don't bother me is I never have just one copy of a picture. When I print pictures I always print at least two copies, and one copy goes straight in to a bare-bones, totally safe photo album or box. The other copy is fair game for creative play. I may just scrap it as is. I tear it. I will ink the edges or paint on it....I will even write directly on a a picture. And that picture may or may not end up on a scrapbook page. It may end up on a piece of altered art, or in a minibook, or in an embellished frame.....or the trash if I messed it up too much and can't think of a thing to do with it!

Besides printing two copies of every picture, I also have digital copies stored in iPhoto, backed up on an external hard-drive, and on CDs. So, yeah, acid-free is the last thing on my mind when I scrap, which I love because it gives me so much freedom. I can use whatever my heart desires....and believe me I save EVERYTHING so this creative freedom to use what I want comes in very handy in minimizing the clutter that tends to build up around me!

I don't really have a "process" I adhere to when I scrap. I know there are a lot of people that approach scrapbooking very methodically and deliberately, then there are others who just kind of do whatever. I am one of those "do whatever" type of gals! Sometimes I will take a really frickin fabulous picture that will just super-inspire my creative muse and I go from there. In cases like that, copies of that fabulous picture usually end up in projects other than just scrapbook pages. Sometimes I will see a great piece of patterned paper that I just have to have and can't wait to use so I will dig out a picture from my piles of unscrapped pics that will work with it, just so I can use the picture. Sometimes there is a particular story I just have to write out and I know I can complement it with pictures and stuff from my stash.

These layouts I have shared here today are some favorites of mine. They kind of show off how my "style" is sort of all over the place. I can do "cute," I can do "artsy," I just kinda do whatever I feel like doing. These were all made at different times over the last year or so. That is another thing about me....I am so not a chronological scrapper. One day I could be scrapping a picture I just took hours earlier and the next I could be scrapping pictures from five years ago. I am not about being "caught up," I am not about the end result. I am about the creative process and the art of preserving the memories. Believe me, I am in awe of those women with the perfectly caught up, organized scrapbooks highlighting every event, holiday, and vacation from year to year. But that is not me. It won't ever be so I don't try to force it. I know me...if I tried that it would no longer be fun for me. And I love paper and ink and pictures and stamps too much to face not doing this someday. 

So I continue to play in my own scattered, messy, artsy, crafty, non acid-free way....and I love it!