Welcome all you blog hoppers! And any random non-blog hoppers out there. 😀

Hopefully you’ve come from Gayle’s blog on your trip through LOAD-world. If you haven’t, start with Margie, and make your way back here. 🙂

First, if you want to know what I think you need in order to successfully complete a LayOutADay, check out this post from last year. And! The post immediately before it talks about the first time I did LOAD, so it might help you figure out what to expect if this is your first time attempting LOAD. But that’s not what I want to talk about this time around. This time I want to talk about how, by doing LOAD, you become a better scrapbooker, and you discover your own strengths (and weaknesses) by committing to a month of dedicated creativity.

It’s true. It really is true.

Have you seen this poster?

I saw it on Pinterest a few months ago. And then, Stacy Julian linked to the interview with Ira Glass that this quote comes from, and everything clicked.

Do a lot of work. On a deadline. Create a volume of work. As you make more, and learn more, your output improves, until it meshes with your own taste and style.

That’s LOAD!

LOAD is how you find your creative style. Or one way to find your creative style. There are other ways to commit to a creative life, but this one works for me.

So this is what you need to do. Commit to making a page every day for the month of February. Don’t allow yourself to make excuses. No “I’m tired, I’m sick, I’m too busy,” excuses. If you really want to scrapbook, make, no scratch that, TAKE time to do it. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time. In fact, having too much time can get in the way of finishing a page. Just make a promise to yourself to do it.

Of course there are things that can get in the way of finishing a page. Important, life altering things. Only you can decide if the excuses that get in the way of creating are important enough for you to walk away from the crafting table. But everyday life? You shouldn’t let that stop you.

Listen to Lain’s prompts. Do they speak to you? Do they inspire you? Then work with them. If the prompt isn’t working for you that day, work on something else. A project you’ve been working on for ages. A story that’s just begging to be told. A photo that just grabs your heart, and you need to showcase it. Do something. 

Some days you will love, love, love, what you have made. Other days, it will all seem to fall apart as you go, and you’ll be disappointed in the final product. Don’t second guess yourself. Just move on to the next page.

Keep everything you create in one place. Make a big pile. Keep it in a binder for your brand new pages. Your pile of pages will grow. You might even make a dent in your stash. (I’d have to do hundreds of pages for that to happen.)

And at the end of the month, look at what you have done. What pages are your favorites? Why? Do you have any pages that you dislike? Again, why? What are the common threads that run through your pages? How are they alike? What makes them different?

By answering those questions, you will discover what kind of scrapbooker you are. Are you a story teller? A technique lover? A fan of color or monochrome?

Only by creating a body of work, and then going back and examining it, will you be able to find your creative process and style. Only by committing to creating do you build a body of work.

If you haven’t signed up for LOAD 212 yet, what are you waiting for? This is the quickest and easiest way to build a body of work.

So commit. Create. Explore. Find yourself.

Next stop? Gina!

And here’s the links to everyone’s blogs, so you can hop and skip among them if you’d rather.

Margie
Kelli
Jennifer
Lisa
Monica
Kimberly
Eileen
Danielle
Pam
Katrina
Cate
Gayle
Heather (that’s me!)
Gina
Kristie
Janet
Lydia

December is right around the corner, and I’ve filled it up with lots of inspiration. This is the fourth year I will be doing a December Daily, and I wanted lots of different ideas to keep myself going and inspired this year.

First of all, if you have no idea what a December Daily is, check out this post from Ali Edwards, who is responsible for me starting this project originally. My kids are responsible for me continuing to do this. They LOVE the books I’ve made, and are disappointed if I even consider not participating each year.

The thing about great ideas is that they are fun to share, and modify to make your own. Ali’s project was originally inspired by Shimelle Laine’s Journal Your Christmas class, which she has been running for years. I will be joining in for the first time this year. I am so looking forward to it, since my favorite part of the December Dailies I have done previously was the words. Shimelle is wonderfully inspiring, and if you haven’t explored her blog, please do. She’s got so many great ideas.

I will be getting more inspiration and instruction from Katrina Kennedy’s Capture Your Holidays Through the Lens. My photos throughout all my December Daily books are okay. Some are wonderful, some are horrible, and some just are there. I’m hoping to improve the overall quality of my photos, as well as come up with some different ways to photograph the holiday season by taking Katrina’s class. She’s taught at the TrueScrap events, and her instruction is always enlightening.

Last but not least, I will also be taking BPC’s 12 Days of Christmas. I love the idea of spending the 12 days before Christmas gathering photos and ideas and product and then turning it all into pages beginning on the 25th. This is a great introductory class for people who have never taken a BPC class before, since twelve different instructors will be running the class.

In addition to these classes, I will also be following along with Tim Holtz’s twelve tags of Christmas. Each year he introduces new techniques and projects that are a great supplement to any holiday crafting project.

Wow, you say? How can I manage to fit all these classes into the normal craziness that is December? Well, these are all classes that will help me complete my December Daily project. There will be photo ideas, journaling ideas, and technique ideas. Any time I run out of ideas, I will have lots of resources to rummage around in. I don’t expect to finish these classes, but rather to use these classes to improve and expand my December Daily. It’s going to be fun!

Here’s a quick peek at what I’ll be using for this year’s book.

Hope you’ll join the fun and play along!

You may not know this about me, but I LOVE scrapbooking. It combines so many things I love to do and think about that in some ways I think it has taken over my life. And that’s probably a good thing.

My own interests have been pointing me at scrapbooking for a long time. I have had my own camera since grade school, and I have been writing for just as long. I always loved hearing family stories and gossip, and I did a bit of genealogical research as well. And I wouldn’t be a member of my family if I didn’t make something with my hands. My particular bent involves paper and ink. If I can stamp on it, write on it, or stick paper on it, I am a happy girl.

The wonderful thing about scrapbooking is that it combines all those things into one big, messy, creative, expressive miscellany of personal meaning. And the thing about scrapbooking is that it is entirely personal. The reasons any of us do it, the techniques we use, the products we fall in love with, the stories we choose to tell, are all a result of our own personal inclinations and history. Which makes this a very inclusive and accepting hobby.

Which leads me to why scrapbooking is important. This is how you can tell your story. The story that matters to you. You get to decide how to present it, you get to decide what to emphasize, you get to decide how much or little to do. It’s YOUR story. And by your story I don’t necessarily mean that it is about yourself. (Although who else is qualified to tell that part of your story?)

So it’s your story. But scrapbooking is also a way to become more present and appreciative of your daily life. Think about things like Ali Edwards’ Week In The Life project. Who knew minutia could have that much meaning? But it does. It all matters. It’s all interesting and valuable, if you look at it in different ways.

Those are the two things about scrapbooking that really bring home how important it is to me. But they also help me realize how unimportant it is as well.

Living my life, and being there for my family is more important than a piece of paper any day of the week. While they may appreciate the pages I’ve made that share my love for them, they appreciate hugs, kisses and chicken nuggets a whole lot more. If I don’t share my love now, it won’t have any value to them later.

That makes scrapbooking so much easier. I don’t have to be perfect, or even pretty. I don’t have to agonize over which paper to use and how big a photo I should print. I just use what I have and go on. It’s just paper. It’s only words. And I can always go back and do another page if I don’t communicate my thoughts well the first time around.

 It’s only when a page is done that it becomes love.

josefine and henry, originally uploaded by Heather’s treasures.

This may look like a page about my niece, but it’s really for my sister. Now if only I had a picture of her playing with Henry…

Did you do it? Were you able to complete a layout every day? Most importantly, did you have fun?