Confession time

I have been asked in the past why don't I post pictures of the scrapping layouts I have done.

Apart from the fact that I haven't actually done any new layouts in over 6 months and therefore have nothing to post anyway, it's due to me feeling that my work was not as visually appealing (and therefore not as good) as others' work or was boring because I'm not into all the flowers/ chipboard/ stamping/ inking/ sanding/ etc. I'm a very linear person (despite all my curves!) and like things to line up, be straight and balanced .. no randomness allowed!

I looked at work done by Debbie, Lita, and some of the people in their blog lists and felt that mine was just not on the same level of creativity. My pages all seemed to be lacking something when compared to other people's pages and I wasn't comfortable with putting anything less than my idea of 'perfect' on show. It made me feel vulnerable and I don't like not being in control .. what a surprise huh?

And then I realised that all of that doesn't matter one bit. It doesn't matter:

• if I'm following the latest fads or ignoring them completely,
• if my pages all start to look the same,
• if I prefer using plain cardstock to patterned paper,
• if I can't bring myself to write/paint/stamp on the surface of my photos,
• if the idea of using 3D non-photo safe stuff on my pages makes me cringe or,
• if a page takes five minutes or five days.

What does matter is if I like my pages and my family enjoy looking at the albums I create for them. After all, isn't that the reason most of us start scrapping in the first place .. to help preserve the memories?

So having freed myself (somewhat) from my self-imposed restrictions, I am going to start scrapping again, using Lita's first sketch as inspiration and hopefully posting some pictures of what I manage to complete. Wish me luck!