Scrapbooking

In a past life I did marketing for an industrial holdings company. I did all the artwork, design, and maintenance for 5 company websites and sales materials. When I became a stay at home mom, I didn't know how or where to find an outlet for my creative side. I tried my hand at painting - thought I could make money doing fantasy art but never ended up finishing the paintings. For one thing, in researching it, I found that pictures of women sold the best. I discovered that while I could paint them and do it well, I didn't have a 'passion' for it (how I had passion about industrial machinery and concrete stuff I have no idea LOL).

So, I floundered around until my friend Dawn invited me to a scrapbooking party. Wow! There was something I was passionate about - pictures (my first job was a fotomat booth lol) and my family and pictures of my family! So, many years and, I'm sure, many thousands of dollars later, I've decided to try my hand at digital scrapping and designing my own materials. I've been talking with a couple of people about joining forces and creating an online business of digital scrapping stuff. I'm really excited about that! One of the women I have been talking to is an amazingly talented scrapper named, Liz. I admire her work so much and she is such a beautiful person - both personality and looks. You can see some of her work and read her blog here: E-Squared

Anywho, all that to explain the above picture :) I've also found scrapbooking to be healing as well. There's something about the act of creating a layout - the careful consideration of pictures, the journaling or telling the story, the transformation of memory into reality, I guess... The above layout was very therapeutic for me. I originally did it just to test out my new paper designs and it doesn't have the detail I normally put in my paper layouts (I haven't quite mastered that digitally yet). but, I do like the simplicity of it.

Here's a link to my gallery at scrapbook.com if you are interested.