Manifesto: Noun. A declaration of one’s intentions.

Starting December first, I will help my husband keep a Christmas journal. In it, he will write something every day to reflect on the holidays of our past, enjoy the holidays of the present and dream about the holidays of our future. To some, this will be a stack of (digital) papers and trivial scribbles, but not to us. We are taking back our Christmas, and we are letting it be something we both relish and, most importantly, we are giving at least fifteen minutes every day to ourselves no matter how crazy this season becomes. We hope you will share, encourage and understand as we make something with our shared thoughts, and our own hands, our own words and our own memories.

I may post some of our entries here. Other artists are doing this with me, and you can see their work here. Or you may join us.

Above all: Enjoy the season. I will.

Michelle

Note: the above screenshot is a simple sample of my planned intentions in forming the journal. The theme and colour scheme were chosen by me, but approved by my husband for his more defined album this year. Last year I created an album for Shimelle’s Christmas Journal class which is acceptably higgly piggly in format, and I absolutely love it.

 

 

I was reading the latest edition of Creating Keepsakes (January 2007 - good grief - it’s still November!). They have a digital scrapbooking insert in there this time, but that’s not what amused me. On Page 120, as part of the article entitled “The Shopper’s Diet” by Brittany Beattie, there has been included a Scrap Guide Pyramid, promoted as a way to enjoy a balanced diet. The article is towards cutting down on spending for all that stash we scrappers buy and accumulate.

The Balanced Diet pyramid from this article looks like this (slightly poor scan below) -

 

It’s obviously focussed towards the traditional paper scrapper, and I well remember my own enamour with basic cardstock - you could never get enough of the stuff. But it got me thinking about how this might apply to a digital scrapper like me facing some budget restrictions. And my theory is that the Balanced Diet Pyramid for Digital Scrapbooking is pretty much the opposite of that of the traditionalist. It might look like this -

 

My theory is based on the following -

• Plain Papers are easy. Once you have a few you can simply re-colour to your hearts desire, or even create your own backgrounds very easily with exact colour matching to your photographs.
  
• Patterned Backgrounds are another matter - we don’t really buy up that many backgrounds as separate packs, because we get a lot of them in our kit expenditure.
  
• Must-haves for us, the things which complete our own designs, and should have the most money spent on them (outside of the basic stock of a matching must-have kit, which comes with many of these) is the Alphas and Element packs.
  
• All of it is re-usable, of course. Bonus! 

No one in the digital scrapbooking world can have missed the huge increase in Christmas kits coming out lately - compared to this time last year. Unfortunately, I want most of them. But then I get a little practical - just how many Christmas pages am I going to be making this year? Is this like the Christmas Party season where you have to have a nice new party dress to attend anything? Or like shoe collecting? (neither of which I’ve ever been accused of, but perhaps I could be for digital stash collecting itself). Do I need a nice new kit of Chrissy papers and elements for each of the two (if I’m lucky) pages I may create?

The other theme going on is the 2007 calendar kits. Every design store and many individual designers seem to have them this year. With good intentions, I have bought a couple a few months ago, in the earlier pre-Christmas haze, but have not managed to use them. So much for handmade gifts of calendars this year. I did use a mini-card calendar quick page from  Lie Fhung - printed out and all, and ready to be distributed to a select few in their (digital) Christmas cards this year also.

But you pretty much know that this is a fundamental trend when others new to the market pick up on it. Like Club Scrap…

 

I’ve had a busy weekend, focussed mainly on family, and trying to forget work for a little bit. Christmas Shopping today - we went to a big Toys R Us store, where apparently everyone else decided was a good idea too. With 6 cousins of my daughter, it’s easier to purchase from the one mega-store. Besides I saw lots I wanted for my daughter (me) also.

Yesterday my hubbie spent the day supposedly watching the big England / South Africa rugby match, but pulled there for more work. I’ve been dreaming work lately - can’t get away from it. But as I had a hair appointment that morning, I ended up entertaining my daughter’s grandfather -slash - babysitter for half of the afternoon also.

Digital Sales

All-up, it’s left me very little time to catch up with all those great digital sales going on this last few days. I managed to catch hold of only one Black Friday sale on Friday (somewhat confused by how the Americans are calling a non-Friday 13th a Black Friday), and only a few yesterday, one today. The ones which had weekend sales are a little easier, plus those that have issued coupons for Thanksgiving have drawn me in. As I’m on a very much reduced digital budget lately, the opportunity to gather stash at substantial reductions has been greatly appreciated.

The ones I most enjoyed were found at Scrapbook Bytes (offering 30% on a Black Friday sale) - although downloading all the bits has taken me literally hours into the evenings, and Pickleberry Pop - where Poppy Monkey Designs was retiring her stuff at $1 - that’s Aussie $1, making them a real bargain for myself. I also fell in love with quite a few other designers at Pickle, including Annette Farrelly - now that woman can really design, Anita Stergiou, and of course Deb F. Several others got my attention also, and because of the great cost in paying with Aussie dollars, I also bought the team mega kit, called Brand New Day - this is in some lovely greens and purples. Part One of it is shown here.

PickleBerry must be awarded my great customer service award (pipping Scrapartist just at the post - see below)- the first download of mine came through blank on My Account, but because it had only cost me a few pence, I couldn’t be bothered notifying them. But the next day, Kate Fairlie (check her stuff out too - I’ve got some of it!) emailed me saying she’d noticed this anyway, and had loaded it up for me.

On Friday I also jumped across to ScrapArtist which was offering for a brief time, the fantastic Simple Pleasures Mega Kit - completely free. This was originally available through a special edition of Scrapbook Answers magazine - but was made available for this weekend. A good thing too, as the U.K. never got hold of that special edition as far as I was aware. More on Scrapbook Answers below.

I ordered more than the free kit, of course, although not much. But on returning from Paypal, I struck problems with my order. Thankfully Nancie resolved this for me the next day, and of course, I then had to go and buy up just a few more.

Where Else? Well, I’ve bought from Natural Designs in Scrapbooking this weekend, and at Altered Scrapbooking today, where JoDe Lawrence I see has completely altered the look of her store, and was offering a coupon for some die-hard fans. It’s worth signing up for her newsletter there - she often includes little freebies for fans.

Scrapbook Answers
As usual, at my hairdressors, I take the opportunity to catch up with some reading on scrapbook magazines. I had the last copy of the now defunct Scrapbook Answers, which had probably arrived well over a month beforehand. This was the final edition November issue of SA, and I was surprised on reading it to find that it made absolutely no indication that it was in fact the last. Actually, it was asking for readers to send in all sorts of things, just like normal. I was lucky enough to know that Scrapbook Answers had been wound up, after the October edition, and November would be the last. Unfortunately, my subscription service here in the U.K. (My Favourite Magazines.co.uk) also didn’t seem aware of this. How difficult would it have been to place an insert into that plastic sealed magazine and disk, when Future Publishing actually did up that last edition? Thankfully at this date, My Favourite Magazines has taken Scrapbook Answers off it’s listings. The other Future magazine - UK based Scrapbooking Inspirations is available for subscription here, which would make a nice gift from my hubbie if he were reading this - hint hint.

I blogged previously of having a re-subscribe letter sent to me by this subscription magazine company, only four days before I learnt of the wind-up of the U.S. magazine. But only a week after receiving the November edition from them, in my mail I found another letter from the My Favourite Magazines - again suggesting I should re-subscribe from the December edition. Someone didn’t get it?

Other Mags
I had a couple of Aussie mags to read also. For Keeps has a great design team, and a travel mini album managed to give me the design colourscheme for an upcoming Christmas Album of my hubbies.

The Mixed Media mag, Cloth Paper Scissors has an interesting article on the use of Tyvek paper. This was the stuff that a group of 2Peas peeps got into as a trendsetting exercise (I think). Although I find the paper interesting, it was the glorious green inked colourscheme and sample page that really got me wanting to play again with my inks and things.

At the hairdressers, I also had a very old edition of a U.K. magazine, Scrapbook Magazine. I’d picked it up by mistake, thinking I hadn’t already read it  - but was glad to - the article on Art Journaling, by Katie Shanahan-Jones took me back. In fact, Katie’s sample journal pages show one which has a theme of home, which I recall being a theme found also in Shimelle’s wonderful art journaling class I took a while back (just as I was making a move into digital - although the journal is a hybrid between digital and traditional, and includes paints and markers amongst other mixed media on the digital pages). This movement into hybrids seems to be very much a trend of digital at the moment, or perhaps a maturity. Look at me - I took five magazines to read during the time my hair dye (I’ll tell you about my skunk stripes at a later date) was “taking”. None of them were for digital scrappers - all of them are applicable to my designs and impressions, and creations.

Digital Artist Magazine
Whilst looking around some digital storesites, I couldn’t help but notice that many are now offering Digital Artist Magazine for download, at $6 from the store websites. I haven’t yet picked up the latest November issue, but it’s convenient when you see it being available through online stores in your shopping basket also. That’s good marketing.

Celtic Thinkings
I got an email from a Celtic blogger and newbie digital designer Catriona (she’s giving away a felt freebie from her blog, and her first one is a Celtic inspired one - Full Moon Crazy). Catriona doesn’t sell anywhere else, so support her freebies through her blog, and she is also asking for requests for those celtic digital kits. She was the final encounter in my current set of Celtic thinkings. Previously, in (very quickly, I must admit) looking around the web for sales this last few days, I found some great offerings in Celtic brushes and knots.

I also found a great Polynesian kit. Both I collect - I may be 1/4 New Zealand Maori, but I’m also Scottish and Irish by my grandparent’s heritages. The Polynesian designs and Celtic designs have a lot in common when you look at them. Take a look at some of the moku motifs and straight lines found in both pacific, tahitian / hawaiin designs and you can see the curves, and swirls also found in Celtic knots. It’s interesting how it all works together, and certainly has me thinking about ways to incorporate both into my own daughter’s designs, to show her the many similarities of her worlds, and heritage.

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Today I've spent 9 hours in one meeting room, with 20 other people, half of my own team, and various too-warm, too-cold temperature options, and various human smells. Thus is my working life. I came out of that meeting with the recognition that my precense accounted for very little, because overall - our joint decisions and initiatives don't count for squat when our manager comes in and overwrites them. Thus is my working life. Not unusual, just often wasteful. I've not had a chance to browse any forums, or my blog for that matter, and don't have the inclination at the moment to do so. But...

Clearing out my inbox at home,thanks to Promos4Digis, it again began to feel just a little like Christmas. Have you noticed the interesting colour-ways coming out in all the Christmas digital kits lately? Soft pastels - we had a few of them last year also, the normal greens and reds, we still haven't had that many purples and golds (perhaps we've gone off these this year?) but I've noticed a lot of different green colourways lately - different greens in the same kit, and then add a lovely icey blue into many of them. Green and blue seem to be the 2006 Christmas selection.

Feeling in the wishing mood, I've been to take a closer look at some of these, at the websites involved. And this is where I also begin to remember how few wishlist functions there are out there. Out of all the many digi sites I frequent, I've only managed to (so far) fill out a wish list at Designer Digitals, Scrapbook Graphics, Digital Scrapbook Place, Scrapbook Elements and Plain Digital Wrapper. I don't get to do so at Scrapbook Bytes, The Digi Chick, Digi Scrap Shak (where I'm sitting admiring a couple of those new Chrissy kits), and can't see one at Scrap Girls, Natural Designs in Scrapbooking, A Cherry on the Top and several more (feel free to point me to where it is, if I've missed it - quite likely). Some of them don't even offer a gift voucher system - so unfortunately they won't be profiting from my hubbie this Christmas - I'm giving him my orders already for pursuing my wishlists and at second best - give me a voucher. All are not particularly easy to parcel up and sit under the tree, mind you. Hopefully I will get a box of chocolates.

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