Welcome to Wednesday Windings! Cardmaking, scrapbooking, nursery painting, bookcase building…wherever the creativity takes us! Hope you’ll link up one of your recent projects and visit some other inspiration from the list on the left sidebar!
I admit to being a little intimidated by scrapbooking. Ok, ok, a lot intimidated. That 12 x 12 page just seems huge to me. And a double page layout? 2 feet of blank page to fill? Wow, I can’t even fathom it.
I started with cardmaking and it felt much less intimidating. I mean, 4 inches by 5 inches? I can handle that. And now I say “papercrafting” because I’ve branched out into all sorts of gift boxes, tags, bags, even paper mailboxes for my little crew last Valentines Day. Believe me, you can cover just about anything in pretty paper! (Feel free to search through the Being Creative category on the left sidebar to see some projects!)
But scrapbooking appeals to me. Recording history, events, emotions, and our daily life appeals to me. (Thus the very wordy blog, right?) So I tried again. And again. And it’s starting to come to me. (I also discoverd 8 x 8 albums, which went a loooong way to easing me in!)
When making cards or papercrafted gifts, there’s a little tension between creating what you love as an artist (yes, I’m using that word lightly here, as I would be any time I was discussing myself with the term “artist” in the sentence) and creating something the receiver would love. I feel the same thing with gift-giving. (Perhaps I over-think it since “receiving gifts” is my own love language.) I want to find something they will love, but also something that they will look at remember that it was from me and that it’s an expression of my love. (This is why I spend hours hunting up off-the-wall books to appeal to my family members that mostly hate reading!)
I find the same thing with scrapbooking. Do I scrapbook in a style/color/theme that relates to the subject (or person)? Or do I scrapbook in a style that appeals to me since it’s something I’m creating. That top scrapbook page of the Cowboy is a perfect example. I love that paper kit. I love the colors, I love the black and white photo…I just really like how it turned out.
Mr. Fix-It looked at it and said it looked like a “girl page” and had nothing to do with our son. He immediately preferred the one I’m working on now, because he said it “looks like little boys.”
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here. Re-reading my journaling on the back of the black and white one also sort of point out that it’s more about how I feel about my son then about my son. If that makes sense. I’m ok with both.
But what do you think? How do you handle using your projects as your own creative and emotional outlet and as gifts or a legacy for others? Hope you’ll link up and join us!
