Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Junk Journaling, Here I Come!

 Okay, so I changed my mind! Not-so-new. On Thursday, I will begin again -- something I started to do years ago. Maybe . . . MAYBE by Thursday my new K&Company Smash will be here. But I plan to unlock the artist within a bit more with JUNK JOURNALING. I e-searched Junk Journaling for a definition and discovered the precept of making a journal from junk (cereal boxes, paper bags, etc.) That is not a definition of junk journaling that I would subscribe to. Instead, my view of junk journaling is more from a "slice of life" perspective. Our junk journals are those places where creativity hides, awaiting discovery. It's that scrap of something that impresses us (i.e. making an impression upon us) but doesn't fit on our scrapbook pages or card sets. It's visual poetry; leftover favorites seeking a home; doodles daring to mix without matching. It's more than a diary but less than a memoir. It's a place to experiment, a private moment in a public venue. Junk journaling is for the brave at heart who don't need permission to express themselves. I plan to grow several junk journals between December 1, 2011 and December 31, 2012. Since scrapbooking and cardmaking dominates my lifestyle at the moment, my junk journals will surely reflect these legacy building adventures through the coming year. It's expression at its fullest. When do I begin? Tomorrow, with or without my Smash. I'll be back, the Lord willing.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

My Cricut Catalog

I've not added to this blog for awhile because I haven't been sure about how to proceed, until now. If you haven't had a chance to visit my  website (www.scrappigators.com) then take a few minutes and see what we're up to. It's still far from finished, but it's along well enough to grasp our concept. I'm posting most of my "finished" projects on my scrappigators.blogspot.com blog. I double posted for awhile, but I didn't think that was the best use of this particular resource.

Today, two days after Thanksgiving 2012, I got an idea that speaks more into the notion of "our scrapping life" that what I'm doing on scrappigators.blogsport. com. It has to do with the process of life that we as scrapbookers and cardmakers experience as we seek to express our art on paper. More specifically, it has to do with the nuts and bolts issues like organization, storage, product and project management.

Now, I really like my Cricut, a lot . . . but it is a pretty expensive toy just for lettering. As a Paper Ed instructor at Michaels in Dover and Rehoboth, I'm pretty much expected to teach Cricut classes in our ever-growing classroom menu. That said, I'm pretty much ready to take my Cricut usage to the next level. Now that holiday sales are ramping up, I'm desparately trying to resist temptation by rquiring myself to use what I have before I add another new "thing" to my Cricut cartridge collection (I have close to 50 cartridges which translates to maybe 2,000 images or more). The real shame is that I haven't done anything with most of my collection. That's where the proiect part comes in.

To familiarize myself with the Cricut process, I started creating a "catalog" of machine-generated images to adhere to a page that I will punch and attach into a Rollabind  notebook, Those that I turn into actual projects will be listed on scrappigators.blogspot.com. But each image that I use in a project will also find its way into my "Cricut catalog" along with future reference images for up and coming projects.

My first included image is "Frosty" (see  below) which is found page 28 in the Winter Frolic handbook. I also downloaded the electronic version of the handbook onto my server as well as the overlay. If I add three or four images a month, I'll be doing well. Ideally I would finish one cartridge before starting another, but this is far from an ideal world. I will keep you posted via this blog.