Wit before brevity

Blog Challenges continue!

2008-12-06T14:33:00.004-06:00

The blog challenges continue at The Paper Element. Every completed challenge gives you one entry into that month's giveaway! Our theme lately has been "gettin' edgy," not because we planned it that way but just as a result of serendipity -- and the great texture and weight of The Paper Element papers! They're great for tearing, sanding, inking,... just about anything you can think of to distress them. Head on over and see what JJ has in store for you!

Sketchfest at Creative Scrappers!

2008-11-30T09:28:00.005-06:00

A whole week of challenges and games and some great prizes! The DT have put together some great sketches, and really, these events at Creative Scrappers are some of the most organized, best-run online events that I've taken part in. The amazing Kristine even put together a complete pdf of all the challenge sketches, so you don't have to keep flipping through the threads to find your sketches. Mine are hanging above my desk right now... :-)

I think I'll be making use of the sketches to try to finish some more layouts for my parents' long-overdue album about their house... I'm hoping that I can wrap it this year! I finished one this week that turned out better than I thought it would when it was in process. It was one of those I-have-to-leave-this-alone layouts. You know the kind? The one that you stare at for half an hour without doing anything to it, until you finally have to pack it away for a while? Here's what finally happened.

New blog challenge!

2008-11-18T21:09:00.006-06:00

There's a new blog challenge at The Paper Element. Rita Shimniok is the November Guest Designer, and she's got a perfect November challenge: Gratitude. And check out what she did with The Paper Element's Hot Chocolate line... Yummy!

I played with some Paper Element papers myself this weekend, at the CSI crop at A Cherry On Top. Here's some of my results... Isn't this Tinsel Town gorgeous??

And then a little with some older papers... This is TPE's Sugar line.

Blog challenges continue!

2008-11-09T22:32:00.007-06:00

The blog challenges continue at The Paper Element! As a reminder, each completed challenge gets you one entry into the monthly drawing. And this month, we have a guest DT member, Rita Shimniok. That means that there's an extra opportunity this month for the drawing. Our scheduled blog challenges are on Saturdays; Rita will have a special midweek challenge later in the month.

And, for an update on my Photoshop adventures, here's the layouts created with some of the pictures I edited.

Glamour Witch: MME patterned papers and Core'dinations cardstock (Black Magic and Vintage collections); Adirondack dabber paint; AC Thickers and brads; Stickles; Ranger Distress Ink; stickles; misc. bling.

scary pair?: MME and Core'dinations papers (Black Magic collection); Bazzill chipboard and chipboard letters; Prima and Bazzill flowers; AC brad; Stickles; Ranger Distress Ink

I also worked on some Paper Element projects this weekend, but that'll be a later post!

Finally playing with Photoshop Elements!

2008-11-02T17:25:00.008-06:00

I bought Photoshop Elements several months ago and just haven't had much chance to play with it. This afternoon, I finally sat for a couple of hours and tried to figure out a few basic things. I've used Photoshop before in technology classes at work, but I've never used it outside of the class setting... meaning, of course, that I've never made anything that was covered in the classes "my own." So, here's my results... Pedestrian, I know, but leaps and bounds for me. Check out the kids' Halloween costumes!

B/W background to highlight "Hannah the Glamour Witch:"

The Clone Stamp to take out the doorknob and deadbolt in the picture, which were right above and below the Glamour Witch's hat brim on the right side of the picture:

That's how I spent my Sunday afternoon, or at least part of it!

Blog Challenges at The Paper Element!

2008-10-25T08:50:00.003-05:00

The blog challenges are rolling along at The Paper Element. A new one will be posted each Saturday morning, and at the end of the month, we'll do a drawing from all the entries received for a cool prize package of TPE products.

Check them all out here!

Post a link to your completed item in the comments. We've had some great entries so far!

And in other news...

The first shipment of new papers came in last week, and they're more gorgeous in real life! Lisa and Beth are busy getting all their orders out. Lots of boxes! So, watch your favorite stores for those papers to arrive on the shelves! And watch here and at The Paper Element blog for some photos ... I couldn't resist taking pictures of all the papers as I was packing the Design Team kits the other day. Of course, I'd forgotten my own camera, so I used Lisa's and now have to get the pictures from her.

Blog challenges at The Paper Element!

2008-10-17T23:19:00.004-05:00

Wow. I am a bad, bad, bad blogger! In case there's anyone out there who hasn't given up on me, check out The Paper Element's blog for our weekly blog challenges! They'll go up every Saturday morning. And keep watch on the blog, because our new papers are due in soon!

I've managed to scrap about as much as I've been blogging, so no new images to post, either. Bummer! All in all, it's a pretty typical fall here...

Paper Element Giveaway!

2008-08-01T23:48:00.002-05:00

A little birdie just told me that there'll be a giveaway on The Paper Element site tomorrow (August 2). Head on over and see what's up!

Sketchfest results! Using a bit o' Ranger!

2008-07-27T22:16:00.007-05:00

So the Creative Scrappers Sketchfest was this weekend, and I have a few results. I'm still working - we have until the 31st to complete layouts. But let me tell you, the sketches were great, and I think it was just what I needed to get past my fried brains and start creating again. I took the opportunity to play, not to "scrap fast." My friends who I crop with will laugh when they read this. I never scrap fast! I like to play anyway, but this time I did things that take a long time just to do them.

This first layout has a bit of Ranger Distress Crackle Paint as well as Distress Embossing Powder... and some hand stitching helped by my new Tim Holtz Idea-ology Ruler. Love it. The hand stitching did make me wish that I had room to set up my sewing machine, though. Pictures are from our family reunion two weeks ago -- my dad's first cousins on the Haugo side. The brilliant sketch is by Liz Weber.

The next one is another reunion photo, though the cousins in this photo are just a tad younger! The photo is an important one for me, though -- my daughter with my cousin's granddaughter. They see each other about once a year, if we're lucky, but they always look forward to it. You can't tell in the picture, but they were sharing a recliner at the reunion, hanging out downstairs at my dad's cousin's place, watching movies. I crept downstairs to see what they were up to, and this is what I found.

Let's see... not as much Ranger on this one, though the Holtz influence is clear here in the grungeboard, ink, and distressed edges... This sketch was by Cherie Averill.

Sketchfest at Creative Scrappers

2008-07-24T19:07:00.002-05:00

Guess where I'll be this weekend? Well, here at home most of the time, but in cyberspace, I'll be here:

Join us!

News from CHA!

2008-07-21T02:56:00.013-05:00

Check out the Paper Element "booth babes!" I just returned from CHA and have to share some pictures and news. You're looking at The Paper Element's booth, and from left to right, Lisa, Emily, and Beth. (It's always an advantage to be behind the camera... That way, I don't have to post pictures of myself!) I've got a few close-ups of the new fall/winter collection, and I'll post a few more in a couple of days.

Two of our most popular lines at CHA were Tinsel Town (in red, below) and Blue Flannel. Aren't they gorgeous? The altered items you see on the table were made by the creative powerhouse behind The Paper Element and owner Lisa's brick & mortar store, The Keepsake Element: Jolene Graning, Angie Huonker, and Emily Pipkins.

Some other CHA highlights

Check out the Stampers Anonymous releases. Some amazing new stamps from Tim Holtz, and if you check out the right side there, you'll see the fabulous Wendy Vecchi's new stamps! How exciting is that? Read further for a close-up... ;-)

Wendy's new stamps, below, and the artist herself, doing make n takes at the Ranger booth. On the right in the stamp picture are some projects she made with the stamps. Can't wait to get my hands on these! The Stampers Anonymous online catalog has close-ups. I'll be checking Scrapbook Friendz, where she teaches from time to time, as soon as my pocketbook allows.

The most exciting stamp for me is "Ticket to Art," which has a spatter pattern stamp. Wendy got me hooked on a stamp that she used for aging and distressing the surface of papers, and this stamp modifies that design a bit.

Piggy Tales has some new cute lines. I was excited to see a counterpart to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star that had more "boy" colors in it, since I have a Guitar Hero nut at home who wants to start getting real guitar lessons, too. It's called Old King Cole, on the left in the picture below.

Watch for a few more!

The Paper Element Design Team!

2008-06-15T12:12:00.004-05:00

Between the end of the semester and everything going on in my family, I've been bad about posting updates. The biggest news is that The Paper Element has chosen their first Design Team! And the secondary news, though it did take over my life for a few days in the last month, is that I'll be the DT Coordinator. So, a huge welcome to the eight talented scrappers who were chosen for this term. Check out their blogs for inspiration (and a bit of drooling); I've posted a blog roll in the right-hand column using Blogger's new Blog List tool. Works pretty well, and it automatically posts the latest update to each entry. Kind of cool.

The new Paper Element Design Team:

Kimberlee Croucher

Pauline Dirrig

Susan Dupre

Sasha Holloway

Cheryl Kelly-Van Domolen

Susan Lui

Penny Smith

JJ Sobey

The Paper Element now has 14 paper lines, and they'll be releasing more lines for CHA. (Stay tuned for sneak peeks!) I had lots of fun picking out coordinating embellishments to send to the DT with each paper line... as I told them, shopping without having to pay for it myself?! Heaven!

So, watch The Paper Element's website over the next few weeks for the gallery to explode! I can't wait to see what everyone creates with these papers!

My Mojo May Be Back

2008-05-24T09:44:00.003-05:00

The semester is over, spring is here, and I think my mojo has returned... or at least, having time to sit down and play has helped me find my mojo again. I've also finally got all of my Lisa & Becky rails in, and all the pieces are up except the ribbon spool holder... still waiting for that to arrive. Once that's up, then I'll post some pictures of the pit after the overhaul. And, I've also got news about the Paper Element -- but I'll save that for my next post.

Here's evidence of my mojo having returned. I had my kraft paper sitting and waiting for just the right project, and when I realized that I had paint colors that matched Alicia's top in the picture, I knew what the project was. And of course, I had to get out some stickles, too. The title is stamped with Technique Tuesday's Provence letters ("kiss"), outlined in Stickles, with Stickles in the swirls. The frame is painted with one brush dipped in two colors or paint -- one a Heidi Swapp and one a Making Memories color. I wouldn't recommend using two different manufacturers' paints for this... It was a little difficult because the Swapp and MM paints are such different consistencies.

I can't claim the photo credit on this one. The picture was taken by their mom, my niece, and it's been hanging over my desk for months. Those sweet babies are now two and almost four. Time flies!

Oppose the Orphan Works Bills!

2008-05-10T09:21:00.003-05:00

If you post personal photos anywhere on the 'net, you need to read about two bills being considered by the House and Senate. The bills: H.R. 5889 The Orphan Works Act of 2008 and S. 2913 The Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008.

Read Claudine Hellmuth's blog for the specifics. She has a link there to the full text of both bills as well as a link to letters you can send if you wish.

Life is short

2008-04-20T00:03:00.003-05:00

Our family has had a particularly bad week. My immediate family, the four of us, are all fine, but my nephew has been diagnosed with what is probably terminal cancer. He has yet to meet with the oncologist directly, but the initial diagnosis was that it's incurable. I find myself struggling between being very, very sad, and being very reflective.

There are moments when I can take a deep breath, tell myself that we all have to play the hand that we're dealt, and then start to try to figure out just what that metaphor means. Add to that the fact that in my theatre history classes this past week we've been talking about existentialism and absurdist theatre (and my facebook "Which French philosopher are you?" quiz did come up as Albert Camus...), and maybe, just maybe, you might kind of get where my brain is right now.

Sartre rocks my world almost as much as his long-time partner de Beauvoir does. But he wouldn't tell me that we all play the hand that we're dealt. He'd tell me that there's no symbolic deck of cards, no dealer, and it's all about what we do with these choices that we think of as a hand of cards -- cards that we in fact pick up ourselves. If you put that together with this cancer diagnosis that our family is reeling from right now, it sounds remarkably like the message of The Last Lecture. Not that Randy Pausch is an atheist. But he is arguing that it's about what you do with what's left of your life that matters. That is very existentialist -- that your actions create the meaning of your life. I tell my classes that the thing that really jazzes me about Sartre is his absolute insistence that you be engaged with the world -- politically, culturally, socially -- that even when I was leading a youth group and contemplating going to seminary (yes, me), that aspect of existentialist philosophy spoke to me. What that means to me now, thanks to Sartre, in a context like what my family is facing, is that even when the pain is so great that we can't fathom moving forward (which is certainly how my sister and brother-in-law feel today), we cannot and should not withdraw from the world. That is the magic of being human.

It's probably the confluence of a number of things. I'm 40. My parents have crossed into their 80s. My kids have become little human beings, no toddlers left in my life. My dad lost a sister last week, and this week, my 31-year-old nephew is facing the end of his life and we're all realizing through our anger and disbelief that we are going to have to lose him.

I remember holding him when he was a toddler. I babysat those kids all the time, spent almost as much time there as I did at my own home, half a mile down the road. One afternoon when he was about 18 months old, he was so worked up after playing through the morning like a madman that he would not settle down to take a nap. I was supposed to just put him down for his nap. But instead, I pulled him up into my lap, held him against my chest, and rubbed his back until he fell asleep. I was 12. I started learning to parent by taking care of him. I am not supposed to have to tell him goodbye before I die, but somehow, in the fabric of the universe, in the meaning of our actions and choices, what he has meant in my life has at least in part translated into my relationships with my own children, too.

There's an unwritten rule in the universe that we hear and feel breaking when something like this happens, like the string breaking in Chekhov's Cherry Orchard. It's visceral; we feel it in our bodies. I've woken up the last two mornings hearing it, feeling it. In Valency's book on Chekhov, he writes, "Whatever of sadness remains unexpressed in The Cherry Orchard, this sound expresses." And he later notes that the sound of the breaking string is intimately associated with the passing of generations. But it's really not a rule, Sartre would say. Humanity has made it seem like a rule, to make life feel safer, more ordered. The existentialist universe is unordered, irrational at times, only because it doesn't obey the rational rules that we humans want it to obey. Life is ruled by chance. Scary, frightening, unpredictable chance. Every moment, every choice, every action matters.

CKC - St. Louis

2008-04-13T17:03:00.004-05:00

I went to CKC last weekend in St. Louis and had a blast. (I won't talk about the part where, in a desperate attempt to save a little $$, I stayed at a lower-end hotel than the Drury Inn that was the conference hotel, learning that in my hotel, where I was in a room on the third floor, there was no elevator! Needless to say, all my heavy scrapping supplies were stored in my van for the weekend when I didn't need them.)

This was my second CKC trip, and as I try to explain to my family, it's the one getaway that I get for myself each year. The kids don't quite get that, because Steve and I both travel a bit for work. All they know is that we're gone, we come home, and we pull something out of our suitcase for them.

I met a new friend who lives only about 45 minutes from me, perhaps less, and hopefully will get to crop together once in a while in town. (Hi Mary!) And of course, I took some great classes and did more than just a bit of shopping. Honestly, I don't think I spent as much as I did last year. I had a little birthday money to burn, and I burned through that pretty quickly, believe me!

The Paper Element had a few classes taught by Jolene, and I picked "Looking Thru Clearly," which was a great home decor altered project. Jolene's husband creates wood pieces for her designs, so they're really stable and durable. This was a set of three frames in graduated sizes, using transparencies in the middle of the first two. I still have to finish mine, so I'll post a picture of that when it's done. (Check out their new 2008 paper lines here! My favorite is Isadora.)

Scrapbooks N Stickers had another class this year with Junkitz products. Can't say what it was, because it's a gift for someone! But it made me kinda sad... No more Junkitz... Kind of makes me want to buy it all up like mad so that I won't ever run out!

Oh, and, I can't forget to mention Piggy Tales. They've gone green with their new lines, and they're great! I'm so happy to see the scrapbooking world begin to try to go green. While I love this hobby, personally, I think we're pretty darn wasteful. As consumers, we buy tons of paper that we can't ever use up, driving the manufacturers to make more and more... Not exactly a green industry. But, at least Piggy Tales is doing something. The new lines are all printed on recycled paper with soy-based organic ink. (And that Twinkle Twinkle Little Star line is darn cute!) I spent enough to get a blue spruce seedling free, if that tells you anything.

2008-03-16T16:32:00.004-05:00

OK, I was tagged a loooong time ago by my good friend, Tricia. Here's the low-down. It's the middle-name game.

1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.

2. You must list one face about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don't have a middle name, use a maiden name.)

3. After you are tagged, you need to update your blog with your middle name and your answers.

4. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged and that they nee to read your blog for details.)

At least I don't have a long middle name!

M: married

A: artsy

R: resilient (most of the time)

I: Illinois resident

E: English major (and theatre!) in college

I'm tagging Keela, Kim, Linda, Shari, and Jodie.

2008-03-14T11:32:00.002-05:00

Spring Break! Lots going on -- home renovations, kid activities, a couple of chapters for books.

The saga of the pit continues. I'm now pulling out my wire cubes and replacing them with bookcases, and I'm also going to use the Lisa & Becky rail system. A local LSS had some of this in stock, and they're using it in their classroom. Looks great, and since I have a small space, I can use two rows and build it up the wall.

I registered for CKC-St. Louis again, and I might have overdone the whole class thing... I'll be exhausted by the end of the weekend, especially since I'll be getting in from L.A. on Monday and then leaving for CKC on Thursday night... Won't make me popular around here, either. But it's Mom's turn to play, I guess.

Since it IS my spring break, I took a couple of classes this week. We have a new LSS in town, The Keepsake Element, and I took my first class there on Wednesday from Jolene. A cute little Easter album in a box, using the Imaginisce For Peep's Sake papers and embellies. Lots of fun, a great workspace, and it started to get me in the swing for Easter. With all of the plaster dust and piles of boxes around my house, I haven't even bothered to decorate yet.

And on Saturday, I took another class from Ranger U grad Wendy Vecchi at Scrapbook Friendz. We played with grungeboard, stamps, and ink. What a blast! I haven't taken pictures of my projects yet, but they're here on Wendy's blog, Studio 490.

Three days left of my break!

2008-01-06T09:53:00.000-06:00

After a very busy semester, I’m hoping that I can actually get back to some scrapping, crafting, and memory-keeping. But first, I have to tackle ... the pit. The pit is of course my little, tiny corner of the world where I try to create. And right now, it is a pit. It’s supposed to be my “secret haven,” or at least that’s what my framed primitive embroidery art calls it... I can't bring myself to put the frame on the wall until it feels more like that. It’s not much of a haven right now. Perhaps a hovel?

Took two great classes yesterday from Wendy Vecchi at my LSS, and I do mean great classes. Wendy just got back from Ranger U. Need I say more? Check out her amazing blog here.

Hoping to take a class from Linda Cain at the same LSS. A great framed piece of collage art. So I hope it fits into our schedule! Check out Linda’s equally amazing blog here.

Just having a few hours to sit and play yesterday made me feel like tackling the pit. So that's where I am today. Tackling the pit. I can't even bring myself to post pictures of it's pitlike qualities right now. When it's over, I'll post "after" pics. And then I might just have to sit and play with some distress inks and crackle paint and try out the ideas from Wendy's classes...

One-inch frames

2007-11-05T09:07:00.001-06:00

Back to Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird. Remember her?

In the chapter “Short Assignments” (pages 16-20), Lamott reflects on the one-inch picture frame she keeps on her desk. The frame is a reminder for her as she writes that she shouldn't always focus on the big picture, but at each moment in the writing process, focus instead on the small "frame," the bit of the story that she is telling at the moment.

Lamott writes, “I remember to pick up the one-inch picture frame and to figure out a one-inch piece of my story to tell, one small scene, one memory, one exchange.” Thus rolls out the title of the book, as she recalls her brother sitting at their table at the age of ten, surrounded by materials on birds, completely overwhelmed by the project of writing a long report. Their father, a writer, put his arm around the boy and coached – just write it “bird by bird.”

I like this passage because it resonates for scrapbookers in a number of ways. We often start with a picture that tells its own story, after all. Many of us are moved to scrapbook by our pictures – the images from our lives that we want to showcase in some way. A commitment to journaling our lives (or others’ lives, if you’re doing it for someone else), however, requires that you write down something about the picture.

The idea of that one-inch frame serves as an important reminder to me. I often find that I have too many ideas circulating around my head for just one page and one picture, and I need to take a few minutes and think about my “frame.” Why this picture on this page?

I wanted to pull out an example to explain what I mean. Not because I think this is the perfect example or outstanding layout, but at least that it illustrates some of my point. I sat for a long time with this picture, trying to figure out what to say about it, what it most represented to me. It was taken when my sisters and I were all together for my mom's 80th birthday, along with my niece and her daughters from out of town. We had never all been together in the same place with our kids. It was the first time that my sisters' granddaughters had met each other, and the first time that one set of those kids had met my own children. In short, I had a lot to say about every picture I took on that trip.

The danger in moments like these is that I might give in to the haze swimming through my brain, give up, write the date and a short phrase, and move on… What I finally settled on for this picture was the fact that the girls had just met. It's not overly sentimental, just kind of the facts, but it communicates what the picture meant to me, at that moment.

Itasca State Park, Mississippi Headwaters. McKenzie and Sydney's last evening in Minnesota, heading down the trail to the headwaters, hand in hand with the second cousin they've only recently met, Alicia Rae. Family matters.

The truth is… Our writing isn’t going to culminate in some grand opus. Most of us aren't Charles Dickens, who wrote his masterpieces piece by piece in serial form. Our writing is a series of small (sometimes really small) stories that will roll together. One-inch frames that like a film reel will tell a much larger story.

I've been tagged!

2007-10-20T12:31:00.000-05:00

Long, long ago, and because my blog is so sadly neglected, I'm just doing it now!

So, the lovely Terrie tagged me, and I have to list 7 random facts about myself and then tag 7 other people by leaving comments on their blogs. So, here I go.

I'm a country girl, born and raised, transplanted to town life.
I play piano.
The piano I own was my grandmother's, the one that she learned to play on. (Hmm. I need to do a layout about that.)
In a previous life, before I had two children, I worked with a local sheltie rescue. Check them out here: Central Illinois Sheltie Rescue
Some of my ancestors have been in the country long enough to qualify me for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. I've never joined.
I'm a great-aunt four times over.
I'm married to an avid bow-hunter, a fact which tends to structure most of my life from October to January.

Now, off to tag a few unsuspecting friends!

Audience...

2007-06-16T09:52:00.000-05:00

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Hamlet, Act III, scene iii, lines 100-103

(Quick little note: posts and musings about Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird will start later in the week.)

I have a little issue with all of this online posting that we do. It’s fun – to see our own creations online, to see what others think about them, to see what others have created and then to have the chance to respond to them. But, here’s the deal. I also see people who are great scrappers, in my humble opinion, post about how nervous they are to journal because they’re afraid that it will sound silly, childish, whatever.

Let’s unpack this for a minute. Who are we afraid of sounding “silly” to? The kids whose pages we’re creating? These, after all, are the creatures whose butts and noses we’ve wiped, and who aren’t at all afraid (if they’re like mine) of mooning their parents with the living room shades wide open. The sister who at the age of 80 picks up your scrapbook because she desperately misses you?

I think we’re afraid of sounding silly or goofy or childish to the wrong audience. And so I want to talk about audience a bit.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re a scrapper who spends a bit of time online. (Or a lot of time online. But I’m not pointing any fingers here.) You probably post your layouts, cards, and/or altered items on any of the hundreds of online galleries that are out there, you may have your own blog, you might be on a design team or be interested in being on one, and you might even be interested in publishing your work.

So, who is your audience?

In most of the publications about journaling that come close to talking about “audience” as a writerly term, we always assume that our “audience” has something to do with heritage… that we’re creating what we create for our kids, for our family, for us to look back on or be remembered through… Simple enough. My simple answer to the question, “Who do you scrap for?” would be, just as simply, “My kids.”

But I don’t think it’s that simple. If I’m creating a layout for an online forum’s challenge, it has to be in my head as I’m working on it, even if I’m thinking at the same time that it’s going into my son’s “Age 9” scrapbook. If I’m scrapping that way, my audience is NOT just my son. It’s everyone that I can imagine reading the journaling, from the owner of the site, to the DT, to regular members, to the many surfers and lurkers who browse through galleries where we’re not members.

Now, I’m not saying that’s bad. But I do want to point out the disparity in who we SAY we’re scrapping for, and who we’re really scrapping for.

No matter what kind of product that a writer produces, whether it’s a cookbook, a short story, a play,… one of the first questions that that writer tackles is, “Who is your intended audience?”

Note that word there. Intended. Who do you want to read your work? Who are you pointing it toward? Who do you imagine sitting at the other end of the creative process, reading what you’ve produced?

I think that as scrappers who have an online audience, we have to do some hard thinking about this audience question. Be honest. Are we really journaling for ourselves, our kids, or whomever we imagine reading this creation fifty years from now? Or, when we say that we’re nervous about journaling, afraid of sounding silly or stupid, are we really saying that we’re writing more for our peers online than for those who are going to care about what’s there on the page fifty years from now?

Exeunt, pursued by bear.

Didja get the book?

2007-06-10T12:41:00.000-05:00

Just checking in. I'll do a real update later today or sometime on Monday, with some thoughts about audience. But I wanted to check in and remind y'all to look for Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Grab a used copy from an online seller or a local bookstore. If you're in a university town, I'd lay odds that you can find it at a larger used bookstore near campus, too. And most large book retailers would either have copies on hand or could easily order them.

A word of caution: if you're buying online, make sure that you're buying the book and not the documentary film made about Anne Lamott. They have similar titles.

Exeunt (for a short time) pursued by bear.

birds

2007-06-03T23:28:00.000-05:00

I have some extra time during the summers – or at least I have more flexible time. So it’s often the time that I try to catch up on “fun” reading. For me, fun reading includes anything that I don’t have to prepare to teach, whether it be a novel that I’m dying to sink my teeth into (like James Patterson’s latest installment in the Women’s Murder Club series) or some recent scholarship in my field that I haven’t had time to read. As I scanned my bookshelves the other day, I saw a book that I’ve had a love affair with for a long time.

A few years ago, I took a teaching job that required me to teach, among other things, a general education course that would have a heavy emphasis on writing. I’m not a stranger to thinking about writing or even to thinking about teaching about writing… I started graduate school in an English program, taking courses in rhetoric and writing studies. But I switched fields before I had to actually teach a writing class. So, in my anxiety about having to actually teach units on writing or devise assignments that would help students develop their writing skills, I asked a writer friend for some recommendations. Her first suggestion was Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Lamott wrote the book as a reflection on the art of writing, from the perspective of a published writer who now has to teach students the skills they need to become “good” writers, if not published writers. Toward the end of the book, she riffs on what passes through her mind on the last day of class, what she would really want to leave her class with:

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.

Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don’t be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.

If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about being sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act – truth is always subversive.

OK, so “subversive” might sound a little scary. It’s hard to think about a scrapbook page being subversive, I suppose. But the heart of Lamott’s observations relate pretty directly to how we journal or why we journal. Writing from a place of insight, of simplicity, of “real caring about the truth.” She points exactly to how I hope I can learn to write. I’m not there yet.

So, I have a little suggestion, and I’m curious to see how many of you might be on board with me. I’d like to put Bird by Bird back on my summer reading list. And I’d like to pull some sections out to refer to here in my blog, to draw connections to how we journal and why we journal on these creations of ours. In case you want to read along, I checked the amazon.com prices … you can get it used for as little as $4 or new for a little over $11, and it’s pretty easy to locate new copies in brick & mortar stores. And really, it’s a great read, full of her own insights about how she has lived her life – or how she hasn’t lived it, for that matter -- as a mother, daughter, friend. I’d advocate for putting it on a summer reading list even without the journaling challenge.

So let me know what you think. Are you on board, want to ride along?

Coming next week -- talking about audience. How do you decide who you're journaling for or to?

An added note: Check out the challenge forum at Creative Scrap Shack, where DT member Terrie McCoy Pieper has begun posting journaling challenges!

Hmm. Page One. Entry one.

2007-05-26T02:37:00.000-05:00

Once I made the leap to start a blog, I decided that I wanted a theme for it, beyond just the obvious – scrapbooking and other paper arts. So, to begin, here is a bit about me and a bit about what you can expect from this little corner of the web.

I’m a historian by training, a cultural historian really, as my degree was completed in a theatre history program. (And that also explains all the Shakespeare and theatre references peppered throughout the blog.) So I come to this scrapbooking hobby (obsession, really) with a particular interest in what historians refer to as “primary” documents. In academic lingo, this means simply that the source you’re reading or analyzing has not been filtered in any way through another party. Typical primary source documents are letters, journals, diaries, and in literary history, the poems, dramas, and fictions in their original form.

So, what does this have to do with scrapbooking?

From my historian’s perspective, no matter how much bling, flower power, or patterned paper we glue on to the page, today’s scrapbooks are all just a few steps along the evolutionary road from (mostly) women’s diaries, journals, letters, scrapbooks… throughout history. When a historian looks back to the 19th century to try to understand what an average woman’s life was like, some of the best sources we can find are those that may have been penned in her own hand – a diary, letters to a sister halfway across the country or across the ocean, or even, sometimes, if we’re lucky, a very consciously created memoir for her children. And they’re “good” sources for a few reasons. They’re primary sources – first-hand accounts. But they’re also incredibly exciting for a historian to find and read. To simply hold. They are a direct link, a conduit.

I was on the phone with my father yesterday, and the story he related to me got me started thinking about this again. My aunt (his sister) apparently has at least one of their mother’s diaries. My grandmother was tough pioneer stock, raised in a farming family in southern Minnesota before moving to the North Dakota prairie to start her own family, just before the Great Depression and Dust Bowl years. I had no clue that Grandma had left any diaries or journals, but as I think about it, it makes sense. She was college-educated, having studied to become a teacher before marrying my grandfather, and she was inquisitive, interested in the world and the people on it, through her entire life. She was a letter-writer, and I’ve saved many of the cards and letters that I received from her over the years.

As my aunt sat reading her mother’s words, in her mother’s own hand, she suddenly began to realize what life must have been like on a day to day basis for her mother and father, as they joyously celebrated the births of (eventually) seven children, and then toiled and worried and cried as they fought to feed their children. My grandmother, in the pages of her diary, recorded how much money she had earned doing extra work, or how much money my grandfather had earned on odd labor or livestock sales.

After reading several pages in Grandma’s diary, my aunt called my father, and as they began to talk about those very lean years, and about how little most of the younger children knew about just how hard it was, my father (the oldest child) and my aunt (the second to the youngest) together began to put the pieces of their histories together. The conversation may not have happened, or at least would not have happened in such a pointed fashion, without that diary, without that very tangible connection to my Grandma’s life as wife and mother on the North Dakota prairie.

As a historian, but also as a granddaughter, daughter, and mother, I’m deeply connected to the genealogy of journaling and scrapbooking as I sit down to work on one of these highly crafty pages that we seem to be producing today. What I desperately want to retain, even among all the product and color and interest in design, is that sense of a primary document that my children can hold when I am long gone. It’s not simply a “memory” that I am recording, in other words. It is my legacy, my record for my children of not just what happened, but how I experienced it, or how I saw them experience it. I’m not an overly emotional person in my writing (though in my daily life, it’s another story!). So my own journaling doesn’t tend to get incredibly mushy. Sometimes, it’s simply a story, a story that I could imagine myself wanting to tell one of my kids in 2030, when she’s expecting her first child, or in 2045, when I may be long gone.

While I’ve been consciously aware of how I write and why I write in my own layouts for a while, I only recently began to notice that the industry itself talks about “journaling” in pretty limited ways. I have yet to read an article, for example, that connects our modern scrapbooks to the history of women’s journaling and correspondence. And I have yet to read an article or series of articles that uses “writing pedagogy” – that is, tools to learn the craft of writing – to help scrappers approach their journaling.

I’m not saying that we all have to become great writers. But I do think that learning some very basic writing strategies or tools could help. So, while I retain permission to write about just about anything between these margins, one of the strongest focuses of this blog, at least for the first few months, will be journaling.

If you’ve found me in this first week, I hope you check back!

Exeunt, pursued by bear.