It's BACK and I am so excited ...

My desire to just sit and create. It has been a long while since I have had the real desire to sit down and create. It has been a journey ...

January 2008 started off with a bang! Jennifer and I had decided to take over Scrappin Mojo with another friend/member and we were all so very excited about running this great challenge-based scrapping community. Jennifer and I were doing LOAD (layout a day) with tons of other online scrappers at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I was having so much fun creating, playing with my scrappy stuff and thinking of fun ways to inspire the members of our website. We had on-line crops, taught mini classes, gathered inspirations from all over the Internet to help the girls with gift ideas for Christmas. Sure there was the boring daily tasks of deleting all the spammers and making sure the site was running correctly - but the fun out-weighed the effort required to run the site. And while I did not have the same amount of time to dedicate to my own scrapbook pages, I was still able to create some super fun stuff!!

Just before Christmas there was an event - a break-up of sorts and we were given an ultimatum. As much as I loved running that site, there was no way I was going to choose a website over family - and well Jennifer IS FAMILY. Without getting into the details - because they really don't matter anymore - Jennifer and I made the decision to hand the site over to the 3rd 'partner'. And while we miss what we had there - we are OK and the site is doing fine as well. However the whole ordeal really affected me in a negative manner. It was more than just missing a scrapbooking website - it felt like a real loss to me. And I guess I needed time to grieve through it and move past some of the things that were said and the way things were handled. (Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I am UBER over-protective of my friends and family and I will not have anyone hurt them or say things about them.)

Well that grieving process seemed to go on forever. I think I completed about 15 pages in all of last year. I just could not get into it. Jennifer tried everything to get me to do some pages, my friends at A Peek Into Yesterday were missing my pages .... nothing worked. Then I decided to purge my scrapbooking space of extra stuff. Some of the stuff went to recycling, some to the trash but most of it went to my friend Krista who was so excited with all this new stuff. She was able to create some memorial albums for her family as they suffered the loss of several members last year. And it somehow hit me - THAT is what scrapbooking is all about. Creating FOR FAMILY! The loss I had suffered was not that of family but it was the loss of a relationship that had been built on trust and mutual respect. But I still HAVE my family and I can still create for us, saving our memories and have fun while being creative.

During this whole time lots of other life things have happened -- one of the more significant being Jennifer's move back to Wichita. (This brought them to within driving distance ... meaning we could be together for celebrations - always good for the soul!) Jennifer also reconnected with a friend who just happened to be starting a scrapbook kit company. So Jennifer began creating for the kit club and convinced me that I needed to get these kits, that they would help on my road back to the scrapbooking world.

And you know what - they DID create a little spark in me ...Since then, I have moved to Oklahoma City and the house we bought has the perfect space to call my own. Jason bought me a great counter height table, I have fun storage for all my scrappy goodness and I am creating again. In fact when Jennifer suggested that I go out for the design team at Scrapbook Chicks ... I went for it. And I made it on the team - Jennifer said she had nothing to do with that - but I am sure she did not hurt my chances either - haha.

I look forward to receiving my kits each month and I can't wait to get creating with it. The monthly club company has now grown to include a store full of scrappy goodness to play with!!! I created this fun page this week with papers from the January kit and a sketch from Ella Publishing.


I am going to visit Jennifer and I can't wait to get there and just start scrapbooking with my partner in crime - or more appropriately my partner in paper. I can't tell you exactly when the little spark ignited into this flame of desire to be creative - but it did and I could not be happier. Just in time for National Scrapbook Day on May 1, when Jennifer will be joining me in my scrappy space and we will be playing with our online scrappy friends.

Happy Scrapping!!
Amy
xo