Author: Helen

A long debated post on Scrapbooking or should I call it crapbooking, because scrapbookers suck. This post has swirled round in my brain for a good couple of months now.

Scrapbooking is something that has been part of my life since mid December 2001, when a friend showed me how to do a CM page, her mum was a CMC and my journey began. Buying supplies, doing pages etc, etc. I was happy, I was on a message board with other CMC’s and other customers, we had fun, we chatted, there was never any negativity, there was no burden of getting published, it was just about the photos and the story they tell.

Somewhere after my end of school trip in 2002/03, I was no longer satisfied with CM, I was spending time on 2peas, shopping local sales I was having fun, but even then looking back on it I was relatively unsettled in my work, always going was it good enough, was it hip enough? I wonder sometimes if it was because I was comparing my work to that I saw on 2peas, in the magazines. When I was CM I never questioned my pages. 2peas changed my outlook on Scrapbooking.

This afternoon I was working on some projects for a magazine that I have to have in before I leave for Iceland and I was angry, with the fact that my samples were not playing nice and working out properly. Angry with the world for random minor stuff – possibly due to lack of sleep the night before.

I have come to think that I need to refocus. I am no longer going to chase commissioned work, I will no longer submit to those random calls which are rare even for me to submit to now. I am not going to look at the gallery each day, I will look randomly every so often. I will keep on enjoying my monthly Aussie Pea thread but that may be about it. , I will keep not reading scrap magazines, I question if I will put my work on 2peas or just post the layouts here for my family and friends plus the occasional random who stumbles on to my blog searching for “blood donation fainted” “lee kwan yew quotes” “helen is silly” “skonsur” “australian secret intelligence service blog” “shiney”, “hide and seek imogen heap” plus a good stack more of weird search phrases.

Out of all of my what 16 or so published or to be published works, 2 of those were from submissions, I know I am hell lucky to have had the chances I have had, but I wonder if that ratio has influenced my view on publishing.

For a while now I have stressed the importance of being real in my scrapbooking and I am happy to see others now who are “getting real” in their scrapbooking, because sure I do like getting affirmations (praise) on my work but really at the end of the day do I a give a flying xyron what they think? My work is for me and those I love. It is meaningful for us, they would not give a flying hoot if I haven’t used the latest supplies, hell they probably wouldn’t even notice if it was a CM style page or not. They purely like seeing my photos and what I write. That is it, I could share my journal with them which has random photos and my musings in, just a white page, a photo and a pen and they would enjoy it.

What brought this outpouring on? I am starting to realise my self and what I want or don’t want. I don’t want to see to others get tangled up in a web of publishing and is my work good enough. I wanted to go public to express the conversations I have often with other girls. Below are some random comments from a chat I had with Barb today.

Helen says:
I just am disorientated with the idea of scrapbooking and what it means
Barb says:
I think you do it perfectly helen and I think doing it for money sux
Barb says:
that it is not about being in fashion but about being real? and scrapping like a mess if you want
life is too short to scrapbook to please anyone other than who is in your family (that includes sean)
Helen says:
because my family doesn’t care what I use on a page, in fact they probably don’t even care it is a CM page – they like seeing their photos, they like seeing what I have to say
Barb says:
chris just likes looking at the photos in my pictures on the computer, he couldn’t care if there are mm rub-ons, he just wants to play with my paints lol
Helen says:
exactly

I ask if there is any reason to this post, do others want to see what goes on in my mind? Then I say this is my space on the server, if one reader leaves here thinking about what they do and why they do I will feel content.