Can you guess what starts with S?

I made this for my scrapping desk ... well okay I paint and papered it!

Geez, with that title I almost think I should have written about Suess, as in Dr. Suess … who’s books I had memorized at a very young age … who’s “Grinch” is an annual must see, and who has authored some of my favourite quotes … but I’m not …

A layout of Honey ... in the garden ...

I’m writing about Scrapbooking of course … gosh I love love love scrapbooking … it is such a fun hobby/craft that involves the people I love, the family history … going way way way back … the family present, friends, and pretty papers to boot! And who doesn’t love pretty paper!

Honey details ... I cut out the little puppies from the paper and covered them with glossy accents to make them all shiny!

I have been scrapping for 5 years now … it all started accidentally when my daughter lost a good friend at the age of 13 … my daughter was having a difficult time … and I had remembered seeing a “scrapbook store” so one day I wandered in with my daughter … we had no idea what we were doing, but we found some pretty papers and stickers and stuff we didn’t quite understand as well as an album and we put together a Memory book of her friend … so that was it for about 2 years … I had no desire to go back or start scrapbooking, I wasn’t that enamored with it … and hey, we had been dealing with grief while doing it so …. yeah … I didn’t feel a need to do it again.

I don't always use a lot of patterned paper ... sometimes simplicity works best for me

About 2 years after that my Mom showed me some massive family tree charts that she and my Aunt and relatives from England and Australia had put together … something in my brain clicked and I started thinking about putting the charts on pretty paper … My mom also mentioned that she had driven by a different scrapbooking store so I took a little drive, walked into the little store and OMG haven’t looked back. That store had such pretty pretty stuff … and beautiful classes, such amazing papers …

and I sometimes scrap the same subject twice ... only from different perspectives ... just because

My other crafts … with the exception of soap making (another S) have fallen by the wayside … unfinished quilts languish in my bedroom closet … half done cross stitch projects lay in a drawer waiting for attention … in fact they call to me when I open up the drawer and take some of the beautiful cotton threads to add to a scrapbook page … It’s just all about scrapbooking now …

It's not every day my daughter climbs up trees ... ropes courses ... sometimes, but trees, that's a rarity ... I used older paper and products on this layout.

I could go on and on about this topic … but I think it’s safe to leave it here … just know that is a hobby/craft that lets me feel like and artist and a storyteller and a historian … and it lets me be me.

Silly daughter in a frog hat ... I just love her goofy side

This post has been brought to you by the letter S and Jenny Matlock’s incredibly fabulous Alphabe-Thursday meme … go visit her blog links to some interesting and amusing S posts! This week I am also linking to The Inspired Scrapper, who posted and animal challenge this week.

I love this new IOD paper for Creative Imaginations ... so cute!!! i cut out the little lady bug, coated it with glossy accents and stuck it in the handmade flowers. More handmade flowers are shown in yesterdays post.

Peace, Love & Paper … Jo