From the He{art}

Woo Hoo! I actually did it, I said I wanted to finish 3 LOs at yesterdays crop, and that's exactly what I did. Just to give you an idea of how monumental of an achievement this was, our meetup's organizer, Cheryl, posted the following comment on our message board:

"Many people were very productive including Ellie who - sit down for this - finished 3 layouts...and before 2am." I guess my reputation for being a scrapper slacker proceeds me.

Before posting my LOs, I would like to state for the record that I have not been able to perfect taking photographs of my LOs - so any tips on how to do it better would be greatly appreciated. I always seem to be just slightly askew so that I can't crop my photos to a perfect square. I have been coveting a large format scanner for a long time, and I going to ask Santa for one, but since I don't see making a $2500+ investment anytime soon, I suppose I will just continue to go through life with slightly crooked pictures of my LOs. I have, however, heard a rumor that our new LSS, Portrait Bug, is going to have a large format scanner available to their customers, so I am waiting patiently with crossed fingers for them to have all aspects of the store up and running (they have their shop and their portrait studio open for business, but the rear of the store that will be for classes and tools for customer use is still under construction).

The first LO I finished last night was my contribution for our meetup's November sketch challenge. This month's LO was based on a sketch provided by Julie Balzer:

And here's my interpretation:




My next LO is of my son and my BF. The pictures are a few years old, but since I don't scrap in any type of chronological order, it really doesn't matter to me. I used to stress out over catching up on scrapbooking over a decade of photos and preserving every tucked away memory for future generations - I've since gotten over those ideas and it was quite liberating. I've given myself permission to scrap what I want when I want, and although I do want to have a record of our lives, I also want scrapbooking to be an enjoyable creative outlet. I don't want to be constrained by a timeline or feel bogged down by something I love. I am just going to go through life scrapping whatever suits my fancy that day, and if every last photo I have doesn't make it into a book, I still think I will end up with a decent representation of our lives together and I will have enjoyed the process along the way.
By the way, there is no white paper backing this LO. The "paper" is actually a clear, rubbery sort of material from KI Memories new line, Sheer Delights.

The last photo is a tribute to a friend that I lost in a car accident three years ago this January. We were friends for 18 years and it was a huge shock when he was killed. I don't believe in scrapping only holidays, birthdays, vacations, and the other similarly typical "happy" events that we usually scrapbook about. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think that these events are unimportant, and I do scrap them as well, but life is not a series of joyous events and fond memories. I think that it's important to document the parts of life that a crappy - that includes everything from bad hair day, horrible bosses, and broken washing machines to deaths, divorce, and other times of heartache. The good and the bad is what represents our real lives and our whole selves, and that is what I want my scrapbooks to represent. I also think this leaves a better representation of ourselves to future generations who will look to our scrapbooks as a way to get to know us even though they will never get to meet us in person. It also sends the message that life can be rough sometimes, but we got through it, and so can they.

What do you normally scrap about? Do you ever document daily life, unhappy occasions, something else that would be considered nontraditional?