This layout is for the first week of the TAW Book Club I am participating in. The layout itself includes the contract we must sign to commit ourselves to the 12 weeks, and three quotes which are my favourite from the book itself - including one from the author, Julia Cameron. The quotes are listed for my benefit below.

I think of this particular layout, whilst creating it, as “The Artist internal” as it’s all about growth.

Every Blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow” - The Talmud

What we play is life - Louis Armstrong

I learned to just show up at the page and write down what I heard - Julia Cameron 

Credits for those interested -

Most elements by Amy Cheeseman
Owl and mouse by Dawn Inskip
Paper flower - Nicole Pols

 

1. I promised myself in my Morning Papers just now that I would not blog today, unless I get a layout done. I’m already breaking that rule, but thought it okay, if I got in and out quickly. Like you kinda didn’t notice, right?
2. Decided I am having artist’s dates all the time with myself anyway. I have a good six hours of peace every single day, interrupted by dog abolitions, arranging dance classes etc. But I’m pretty lucky at the moment. That might alter if we are lucky enough to adopt a toddler or something - but at the moment I’m pretty much dating myself every day.
   
3. I want to do it a bit more creatively, though. I miss people watching, and gifting. So I am going to do up some altered artworks - bookmarks and things, and RAK them to people by leaving them at cafes etc. That’ll give me an excuse to go into Starbucks and sit down to watch people too. Aha! Two artists dates in one!

 

Music

I’ve been a bit melancholy lately. Lots going on in my personal life. Lots of things taking me out of my comfort zone. An overdue period, plenty of hormones, and a few tears. Which might explain why I’m typing this to an itunes playlist I’ve called “Sad Goodbyes” and yet I am actually enjoying the harmonies and significance of the lyrics. (I promise, the next playlist is all about summertime, and much more cheery).

I once started off this personal playlist  because my husband and I were discussing what songs we might want played at our funerals - heaven forbid that this be soon. But we wanted to go out in style. So, I wanted some lovely but slightly sad songs, and this is the playlist I came up with. Am I missing any beautiful but sad songs on this list? I’m sure I must be.

• “Goodbye” by the Spice Girls
  
• “Who Wants to Live Forever” by Queen
  
• “Don’t Cry” by Seal
  
• “Why Does My Soul Feel So Bad” by Moby.
• “Porcelain” by Moby
  

 Now, I really must go and do that TAW layout.

 

Jen Strange started a thoughtful thread on Digishop Talk asking to discuss any new approaches to scrapbooking with the board. She has many worthwhile ones herself. Although slanted toward the digital scrapbooker, many are equatable to traditional scrappers, and although she’s termed it - “new approaches”, others through the years have equally used terms like Scrapper’s Resolutions or intentions.

For the last month or so I’ve already been discussing what new intentions, no, working plans I have for my own scrapping. Most of these can sit under the flagship, “Simplify” and have already been incorporated into working practices, nay mindsets which have seen me accomplish a good dozen layouts for my 2007 chronological album, which is now complete. But Jen’s thread also brought up many subjects which still remained muddy around my own thinking. They also led to a link back to Christine Smith’s blog where she has two entries  for her Digital Scrapbooking New Years Resolutions, and these are written extremely well.

After reading everyone’s ideas I wanted to attempt to document my own thoughts also, and would encourage you to also think about what lessons scrapbooking over the last year have been taught to you, and how this can make for a bigger and better 2008. Some of these resolutions or approaches are borrowed from others - on the thread linked to above or from Christine, but always customised to work with my own approach and belief systems.

Michelle’s Digital Approaches for 2008 

1. Simple Layouts

I have this approach already - in the keyword borrowed from Simple Scrapbooks - “Simplify”. The simple multiple-photo arrangements of most of my later layouts have worked out well for me. They may not be award winning, or you may not even see them. But they allow me to get those photographs off my hard-drive and onto a layout.  

Jen Strange voiced it like this - ” it’s ok if many of my scrapbook layouts amount to the album being nothing more than a glorified photo album”

I have previously suggested that the normal more simplified approach doesn’t naturally sit with me - I am much more a kitchen-sink, throw everything on the page type of person. But those layouts - including the competition layouts of last year - were at the detriment to my family actually having some physical pages of their photographs.

There’s nothing wrong with glorified photo albums, and Jen knows this too. My five year old daughter can’t even read all the journaling I’ve laboured over to provide on that one fabulous layout. She just likes pictures, afterall. In fact, if you take a big realistic look at my other family members - the grandparents and occasionally aunts and uncles - who do enjoy looking through any scrapbook albums or photobooks I happen to have left on the coffee table for their visit - really, they just look at the photographs. They don’t like to read into the detailed journaling, it makes them feel like they’re prying. It’s the photographs, particularly including them, or my daughter’s little cousins in some family event, that they get the most pleasure from. As far as many of them are concerned, what I do is basically a glorified photo album.

I will, no doubt, revert back to my natural style for some feature photos or themed layouts - most probably this week sometime when I get that layout about me done for the Artist’s Way first week’s challenge. It’s nice to give yourself a pretty kitchen-sink page to sit upon, afterall.

But mainly, these layouts are my way of connecting - with myself, and with my immediate family. And to connect, all that is needed is often very simple indeed.  

2. LESS POSTING COMMITTMENTS

Jen, and several others speak about not posting so many layouts up at galleries. Many speak of their CT committments meaning they don’t have time to use their private stash. Part of these CT committments is normally to have to post up the agreed amount of layouts onto at least two if not more galleries out there.

For me, this doesn’t work out. Last year I accepted a position on a CT for a designer I have much respect for. And I crumbled at the first task. I designed a layout, which took me all day to do so - and then spent an awful three hours that evening, stuck in front of my PC when I should have been spending the time with my family, registering with galleries which had long since deleted my user account from non-use, then getting frustrated because one gallery accepted smaller images than the others, and I had to go back and re-do the image. Plus one had a strange gallery upload process which took three pages to get through.

All that, and I’d forgotten to post the layout onto my blog. If only there were one central place where you can post the one layout in a standard way, and check  a bunch of choice boxes to fire the layout off to all those other obligatory galleries peppering the net. Ah yes, there is  - it’s called my blog. Except I don’t get to send it elsewhere. Or then, there’s always Flickr, but the galleries don’t use tools that allow you to pop Flickr images into their galleries, and certainly not mechanically and automatically.

But really, the benefits far outweigh the cons on this one. I used to post to galleries, up until over a year ago now. I don’t know why I stopped, other than the whole comments business with people asking for layout love, and some galleries suggesting you must make comments on a certain amount of layouts before posting one yourself - well, it kind of took the joy out of the whole business. I don’t judge anyone who does post to galleries. I just prefer to simply post up here, onto something I consider more personal. It’s my own way of telling myself - look, I’ve achieved something. It’s my own personal celebration. Once I’ve completed a layout, I quickly have that thought - I can’t wait to really complete it, by posting it alongside of my writing. That indeed is complete.

But I feel guilty if my gallery here doesn’t include a layout I’ve completed. So that’s a little wrong in itself. That’s a self-inflicted pressure which doesn’t actually benefit me. So, my new approach this year is two-fold -

• Less Blog-Posting pressure from myself (not all layouts will be posted up here, and the full galleries need a huge clean-out as I’m about to run out of storage space).
  
• Don’t accept posting committments elsewhere if you know you are likely to reneg on these. This included CT memberships, contests, or other challenges). 
  

3. BUY LESS (in a quantity perspective) but MORE (in a focussed perspective) STASH

Jen and others have half of the above as their own intentions. They mention that they want to reuse their current digital stash. If they are only half like me, then that’s several hundred megabytes worth of accumulated stuff.  

I already stopped buying quite a few months ago. Going from being a fultime and reasonably well-paid person to a stay at home mum with no spending money was the obvious reason, but another remains with the digital design for other’s business. I buy now with a focus on spending my extremely limited budget on something of great value to me - whether it’s some help in learning Photoshop, or commercial use or scrap for others licensed products which allow me to continue along these lines.  

4. Simplify inspirational sources

I used to be a bit of a scrapping snob about the use of templates and quickpages. This came, again naturally, due to my overall style-leanings. My eclectic approach was just not do-able using somebody else’s styled template or pre-designed quickpage layout. But now, with the less is more simple approach to getting the photos onto the page, then any and every tool is of value to allow me to do this.  

Not just templates and quickpages, though. I’m into creating a quick thumb-through file of the projects which appeal to me, and that I want to recreate, out of scrapping magazines. I used to keep huge piles of these magazines. But I got sick of these piles several years ago, and got rid of them. Now, scrapbooking magazines come into my house, get read, then get recycled just like the local newspaper. I’m not precious about their contents. I just need to find a way that doesn’t involve a dust-covered ring binder which I never go to, to keep the ideas I do like out of them.

I think a simple container on my desk will do the trick - a basket or plastic file tray. Something where a pile of wripped out magazine projects can simply be rifled through occasionally, and applied to my own ideas.  

Inspiration can be found in many places of course, and I don’t want to cut myself off from the possibility of finding it (see the third point in the anti-discussion below for further examples). So a keyword for this inspiration organisation is Focus.  

5. Printing and Storage 

This is another approach / resolution shared with many other digital scrapbookers. I am a chronological scrapper, and due to a lack of quantity enforced by my previous life committments, I found until lately that my full family layouts - including any miscellaneous About Me layouts, non-event layouts, competition and creative team layouts - fitted into one regular old album for the year. I rarely got over the 50 page mark in any one year, and simply stuck them all in together.

Over the last three years, no - four years of being primarily digital in method, I have located printing companies which it pays to await a sales or discount timing in getting bulk quantities of layouts printed. Printing 12x12s is exorbitantly expensive. So my album ended up sitting as individual images on my hard-drives for quite some time - several months if not 12 months for some, before they ever saw the light of day.

Last year I discovered photobooks, in particular Shutterfly’s services. The first photobook I tried from Shutterfly cinched my efforts. I had my Christmas Journal at the time printed out into an 8x8 photobook within two weeks of having completed the album itself. Not exactly instantaneous gratification, but a huge celebration never-the-less.

Obviously doing this as soon as possible helps. But it doesn’t apply to my chronological methods - there are 40+ pages for my 2007 Family album, which has just been completed off with the last of the layouts. I am complete on documenting the many events of that year. The album also contains lots of miscellaneous pages - ones done for competitions, about me, or other feelings type layouts. It is shortly to go off to the printers, also. However, some of those layouts have not seen the light of day for many months also. The photographs are long forgotten by my husband and certainly by my daughter. They will be quite surprised once the book comes back from the printers.

But I don’t want to go down the reverse route of printing out individual pages and inserting them into a standard scrapbook album. It’s very costly page by page, and also after nearly ten years of scrapbooking, I have amassed entire rooms full of scrapbook albums - all piled up in ways they shouldn’t be, and mostly not opened by family members either. Although digital is certainly flatter than traditional, the albums are still substantial in size, mostly with padded linen covers, and they require copious investment in space. Photobooks are smaller, and having a library of books containing our lives seems better for me at the moment.

For a bit I was perplexed, but Jen in her thread led me down the route of something I needed here. And I’ll document this as a separate ultimate plan below.

6. Living Albums 

In the DST thread, Jen mentioned Big Picture Scrapbooking itself - the book, not the website. The book suggests a system of albums which aren’t chronological. In fact, BPS (website) has just started it’s longterm class again called “A Library of Memories”, which suggests ways of doing these albums and catergorising the photographs in particular.

I am not using their system, of course - that would go against my own character, but I’m sure I’ll use some ideas from it - which is probably all they ever wanted anyway. But what I would like to do this year, is create a set of rolling themed collections of layouts which can be combined into specific photobooks. The layouts may or may not go into the 2008 Family album photobook also - we shall see. I have in mind a need to create a one-book documentary for my daughter. And perhaps one documenting my husband’s history, incorporating information and old childhood photographs which would otherwise be lost to time if not done now. My daughter, at the moment, must rifle through all the family albums to find her growth through the years. But it would be nice to present her with one album one day - perhaps when she turns 21 - which shows each year of her life, and all major events out of it - all within the one book. A This is Your Life. And while we’re at it - perhaps one about me, where all these challenge layouts, About Me layouts and pleading with my husband to finally get behind the camera and take photographs of me - my history too, before it gets forgotten. And maybe one about the adoption thingee too. 

The blatently good thing about digital, and the fact I never get rid of the originals, is that I can put layouts created years ago into these album packages. Unfortunately I was a traditional scrapper when my daughter was a baby, and her first important year of growth would need to be recaptured in fresh digital pages.  

Magazines etc might contemplate many of the ideas above as best being done in a mini album. Done and dusted. Dusted might be the operative word with me - if only I dusted this house in the first place (I plead childhood asthma as an excuse). As a traditional scrapper I have plenty of little mini albums. I’ve made and gifted many people with these in my time also. And I still thrill when I might spot a particularly appealing one in a magazine. But the fairy album, the about me mini project, and the other about me album - even the one which sat on my husband’s work desk for a year? They are still point of time, and finished. In fact, they are so finished that they are currently gathering dust along with all the other albums over the years. And different-sized mini albums, with jutty out mixed-media bits, spirals, covers, ribbons apenty? As much as I love the hybrid movement which is taking digital scrappers to new places with hands-on glue and bits - well, these mini albums are, quite frankly - a pig to store properly. I could get ten photobooks into the space that is currently taken up by a mini album made between a pair of thongs/jandals/flip-flops which sits beside an equally space-demanding album made of an altered paint-can.

I don’t regret making them. It’s in their making that the thrill lies. And for some time, they were worshipped as family favourites. But we’ve all moved on, and these movements are captured in growing, living albums.

Somehow, I want my non-chronological albums - to be living, breathing and growing.  At least until they are so fat and giggly that it is time to tickle them onto the printers.

This doesn’t actually help the problems with waiting for years to see some old layouts, though - does it? But perhaps it will - it surely depends on what the albums are. Some might be quite small, afterall. And some - like the one on my husband, might well be completed off up to a certain period of time (like before our marriage) within weeks - and that’s far better than not being done at all.  

What Aren’t Michelle’s Resolutions this year

You can tell a lot about priorities and mindsets by what is left out of the lists also, so I thought I’d share these briefly with myself too. These are not intentionally suggesting that those scrappers who do have these resolutions for this year are somehow incorrect, mind you. They are just not priorities in my own scheme of things, and I’m going to discuss my current thinking as to why.

1. Organisation and Storage

Just about every year I have a resultion to get more organised with my stash. This resolution is shared with many people on Jen’s thread, and in a couple of messages within Christine’s blog. Last year I even went to the point of starting tagging with ACDSee.

You know what - I gave up. I gave up because I’d spent days and chargeable hours tagging all my stuff, and only got to the D’s and just began to realise that all that organisation meant I actually wasn’t doing any scrapbooking.

I already had a functional method of organisation. Yes, I didn’t know - and still don’t - where to find that element of a mouse with a blue tail I have a feeling I possess, but so what? The layout can do without it - and I can do without the feeling of guilt I suffered from for not continuing with what is recognisably a good and worthwhile idea.  

Others also have a related intention towards backing up. For a digital scrapper (and anyone who holds digital photographs on their hard-drives for that matter) this is a very royal and needful intention. I’m not putting that down at all, as I read with horror those people who have suffered a hard-drive failure and lost all their possessions.

But can they seriously tell me - those scrappers who do spend hours buring to DVDs etc, that if there was a major disaster like a house fire, that their DVDs are all stored away from the fire - in a fireproof cabinet somewhere that is also waterproof? I am not trying to be scathing of these rudimentary and very worthwhile intentions. Backing up must be done, but to what level is sometimes perhaps at the whim of your own fortune. Traditional scrapbookers live with the knowledge that if their house burns down, their photographs and scrapbook albums will probably burn down with it.

I already have many working plans  for my own backup. I work with large EHDs, regular backup executables, DVDs and CDRoms. I therefore don’t think I need this particular resolution for myself this year - I am doing the best possible and invested as much money as possible into equipment and processes. Until such time as some company provides free online storage for 1000gigs of data and a lifetime of memories perhaps.

2. Catching Up

Being a chronological scrapper, getting the 2007 album all complete should be something I celebrate. I am caught up. Hurrah! Except in doing so, you miss out on some of the creative juices that form around working with older photographs, or putting two seemingly incompatible photographs together - which don’t belong in those years - and seeing what pops up in your mind.

So, I’m not going to pressurise myself with being caught up this year. I don’t think that memories should be caught up on, not for this year. I just want to see what happens.

3. Cutting Down on Internet Browsing, Forum and Blog-Reading, What-Have You…

Both Christine and others have a good point about the often wasted time spent on internet browsing, instead of scrapping. Some time ago I came too to this realisation, and cut down on my own copious blog reading. I still have a reasonably large set of forums and blogs that I do seek information from, however. And yes, this is time not spent scrapbooking.

But for me, it’s time in defining my ideas, which allows me to add content to this blog - and to feed my mind. And that overwrites any scrapping needs I might have. And thankfully with some lifestyle changes I am still more prolific in creating scrapbook layouts than before anyway.

So, rather than cutting down, I might just add to my resources. I have other areas of interests which accompany the scrapbooking element of myself. Such as writing. So maybe this year I will add to my arsenel of web-browsing. I think the keyword is to focus this browsing habit, but not to such a structure that it stops the creativity of finding an unexpected and inspirational resource. Afterall, we all can’t simply become automaton scrappers, pushing out layout after layout like a production line. There’s so much that the internet and forums can give us that not only can enhance our scrapbooking when we do come to do the layout, but effect other areas of our daily lives (admittedly sometimes to their detriment).

And my virtual habit - if you are incredibly truthful about it - is one of the few ways I have with connecting with people. And with myself.  

In Summary

There you have it, my 2008 Approaches and Working Plans to better my scrapbooking. I know they work for me, and they also subscribe to some personal and family resolutions for the year.  I know nothing is coincidental in the grand scheme of things, so I’m going to remind myself in simplistic terms just what this year is all about - both for my family, and for my digital scrapbooking apparently. They appear to complement or perhaps even meld with each other.

SIMPLE

Focussed 

Connections

 

 

 

 

 

Day two in the big brother house. Michelle wakes up, full of despondency from a dream about returning back to her old workplace. There is way too much going on with her mind lately.

I’ve not even finished my reading assignment mind you. Another hour spent, and I still have two pages to go. This reading is hard. Like the author suggests, through the first few chapters the reader will probably go through a period of defiance.

Defiance? I would call it utmost resistance. I’m not even sure I understand totally all about the two basic exercises. I have a thousand questions even about them.

But I did try the morning pages - write three pages of longhand - this morning. It was three hours after I’d gotten up, mind you. And they have been called morning pages, but at the moment, they appear as mourning pages, maybe even moaning pages.

I’m going to have to go ask my fellow bookclub participants whether I’m on the right track here.

And as for Artists Dates - when the author puts these down they seem plausible. Go spend a couple of hours each week, just with yourself. Go to the aqaurium, the beach, a long country walk….

Despite both I and my husband spending some considerable time trying to work out what I could do for an artist’s date with my own self, we are still a little, well, rubbish at it. I live two hours away from the nearest beach, and an hour’s drive away from any wildlife sanctuary or zoo. Even the parking at the beach or zoo is too much for my miniscule budget anyway, let alone the petrol for the car. We don’t have aqauriums in these here parts, but we do have a lot of country.

I live in the Fens - people from elsewhere in Britain upon reading this will have a bit of a giggle. The Fens is a huge sky country where there are no hills, but lots of farmlands. No woods or forests much either. It has an undeserved reputation of being known for it’s in-breeding I’m afraid.

Long country walks I can do for TAW - except I take one every single day - along with the dog. The book states we should be alone, and discounts the distractions of family members like children. I presume this also means the dog himself. He is distracting - our walks involve my wading through mud in my new Christmas wellys, and shouting at him to stop bothering the other dog running in the same fields. It’s not all together a relaxing experience on most occasions.

If I were still living in Wellington, New Zealand, I know exactly what I might do for my Artist’s Date - I might train down to the city and go to the big library there. I fondly recall my lonely trips to that big library, snuggling down into a reading chair with some old magazines from the racks, or people watching (my favourite hobby ever) whilst sipping coffee at the library cafe (accompanied by a huge slab of carrot cake too). You could look down onto the lower levels of the library itself from that cafe. And watch as varsity students crammed over some text, or children selected from the children’s book area. Or simply watch the masses of people walking around the harbour parade outside the library itself - across to Te Papa the national museum.

My village does have a library - run by volunteers. It’s tiny, and doesn’t feature seats to sit in. My local market town too, has a small library, but no cafe. In fact, there is no such thing locally, of cafes where you can sit down with a cake and a decent brewed coffee. The nearest Borders is in Cambridge, and I can’t afford the petrol or parking fees - £15 for two hours! - so that one is out.

The only thing I can remotely think of is Starbucks. My market town has just opened up a starbucks, so this must be the message I was needing perhaps. Of course, this would not be a weekly date - I can’t afford the parking and cost of the mocchachino I might want. And I don’t think they’ll accept someone sitting there without a coffee for two hours, even if she did mutter something about a date, and being an artist.

Artist’s Dates in the summer might be easier - I could try to call my reflective time sitting out on the garden bench, listening to the dizzy bees and birdies, as a date perhaps.  

Sample Colors of Multicultural Crayons

This link above will take you to Beth O'Malley's website, where she provides a regular newsletter on Lifebooks for Adoptees. As I am currently about to go through the adoption assessment process, I've long had an interest in the subject of lifebooks, hence my enrolment with Beth.

In the latest newsletter, Beth links to this page on her site. She has put up samples of the Crayola multicultural skin colour range. Instead of just black and white for skin colours, the world can now truly document our wonderful range of skins. I hope these make it to England soon.

Personally, I'd say that my skin - in winter, is basically white with a hint of peach. But in summer I'm more like a Burnt Sienna. That will be the Maori blood coming out in me!

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