Monday, August 30, 2010

The Philosophy of Scraplifting

I had an artist from the gallery up the street from us, come by and ask me what "the deal was with scrapbooking".  I gave her my usual concise answer.  "It can be whatever you want it to be, it can be as simple as putting the pictures in an album, it can be a journal with drawings, scraps an odd and ends, it can be an elaborate collage of paper, ribbon, buttons and anything else you can conceive to include in the page.  It has expanded so far beyond just archiving photos and memories."  We got to chatting about art and all kinds of stuff.  She's a photographer and was thinking about trying scrapbooking as a way of putting together a portfolio, rather than just slipping the photos in sleeves, which I thought was a pretty great idea, and would make her unique.  But what she said that I loved most was, "I guess it's just like any art form, it's just a question of learning how to use the tools, and how to begin."

I think the same is true of techniques and ideas.  I personally love sharing my ideas and sneaky tricks with people, to me that is the purpose of having classes, to share secret tidbits and new ideas.  To me, creativity begets creativity.  My goofy idea, gives you a whole other goofy idea, and so on.  I love that!  I love that about the scrapbooking community, the gloating over what you created, and the sharing of how you created it, is as thrilling, relaxing, and inspiring as the doing of it.  I love the term "SCRAP-LIFTING" especially because it is completely legal, yet feels sneaky and wrong, yet is a bonding social experience all at once!

So we will continue to bring you whatever great ideas we come up with, come across, morph into our own thing, and more!  Feel free to share your ideas, tricks, shortcuts, etc. with us too! On here, on facebook or in person. That's what community and sisterhood is all about!!  And I have seen your ideas, they are pretty incredible!