I've Got A New Home!

This blog has been moved to http://traceyjean.blogspot.com.
Please update your bookmarks and come join me for some crafting fun.

Friday, December 19, 2008

My Scrapbook Experiment

The pageant experience introduced me to the world of scrapbooking. After learning I was required to keep a scrapbook documenting my reign, I bought a couple of magazines and took the plunge. The reading materials I purchased lead me to the realisation that this was an amazing creative outlet which was limited only by my imagination. Soon my home was decorated with punches, ribbons, stickers, and paper of every imaginable colour. Yes that's right, I went completely overboard. But it was all necessary if I was going to create the most beautiful pages known to man. Right? Before long I had fallen behind; the perfect embellishment to finish off the page was an absolute necessity. I was never done. All too soon, my year was at an end and I had only 6 pages of "fun times" to show my prospective successor. What was I to do? Help!!! I tried to get some friends together, get an assembly line going, and churn out some lovely pages. No luck. So I decided to proudly display what I had, and wouldn't you know I was the only queen to have taken such time and care with her "art". Everyone wanted to me to work on their scrapbooks. Aaaarrgh!

Luckily, I've found I really enjoy planning and designing my perfect scrapbook, so I'm taking my time and getting it done right.

Of course it wasn't long before I found the world of digital scrapbooking. Reusable supplies, planning and designing on the computer (my fave), and the means to share my life with family members far and near. I got Corel Paint Shop Pro X1 with my new camera and I am really loving learning how to use it for creating scrapbook pages. It's a big learning curve for me, since I keep assuming that all the terms mean the same as the words would in English. I'm learning a whole new language here. It's kinda fun.

So in the coming months, I'll be posting my little experiments. Thankfully, there's tons of help from this fantastic community known as the worldwide web, and I'll be taking advantage of them at every turn. I would like to say thank you in advance to that wonderful online community for giving me the tools I need to take my creativity to the next level. Thank you so much.

Here's one of my first attempts. It is based on the Pink Gavey tutorial found on Kay's tutorial blog. Kay, whoever you are, thanks for helping me with these baby steps. My gratitude also goes out to the writer of the Created by Jill blog for the beautiful digital paper and embellishment kit.

Here goes nothing...


Monday, December 15, 2008

Christmas Cleanup

Smart me, I took a couple days off work for some rest and relaxation, and instead thought it would be a great time to give the place a good cleaning in time for the holidays. Of course those who know me realise that means the house is an even bigger mess than when I first started. So now, instead of straightening things up a little, I've got to clean up this new mess I've created. It gets worse before it gets better and all that jazz. It would appear that my lovely home can be likened to the current economic situation - gonna get a whole lot worse before it gets better. I'm just trying to prepare as best as I can for what comes next, doing what I can to control my personal finances and support my family in any way I can. If we just hang in there and look out for each other, we can make things better in small but important ways. Hey, if nothing else, at least I've got clean floors. Come on over and eat off them sometime.