Resilience -- ya gotta love it

Just as Joseph was a young man who wore a coat of many colors (Genesis 37:3) that accentuated his position as favored son in the family, I tend to think of myself as a woman of many hats. In my case, my Scrappigators hat must be a black fiddler's cap trimmed in pink. Why pink? Because this is my year of pink since I have a brand new, practically perfect grandbaby girl. To celebrate, I have a pink ScrapRack Travel Bag, a pink EK Success Paper Trimmer and bone folder as well a pink ATG (Automatic Tape Glider) by 3M. My Zutter products are pink and, well, I think my position is graphically clear.

I love to scrapbook. I love it so much that I love to teach others to scrapbook too! I am an EK Success certified teacher and I teach at Michaels Arts & Crafts stores in Rehoboth and Dover, Delaware. I joined the Creating Keepsakes Convention circut as a teacher for the first time this year. So far I've taught a convention organizer class in Portland (OR) and Manchester (NH). I'll be teaching in Buffalo (NY) next month and Valley Forge (PA) in August. I have two other conventions booked after that.

So, you would think teaching would be enough, right? Not so! Scrapbooking is fluid. It's a creative mechanism for chronicaling life events that ultimately define the legacy that we leave for future generations. I'll share more about that in future posts. It's that legacy building element that accounts for the simple layout that I posted above. In this case, it's my "practice" piece, my tentative toe-in-the-water moment as I contemplated applying for the Scrapbooking From the Inside Out design team. Looking at my schedule, I decided that applying at this time would be foolish. Besides, I wanted to find out more about the program and become adept at navigating their community before takijng such a forward-steppiung move. So, I decided to order the April Resilience kit to see if it would be worth the $50 price tag. I must say that it was worth that and more.

Besides featuring top-of-the line paper from companies like American Crafts, My Mind's Eye, and more, the organizers add embellishments that reflect the latest industry trends. Leaving our personal tastes in their capable hands forces us to climb out of any ruts we might be trying to navigate and work on something new. Product selection isn't the only helping hand they offer us. The website also has a healthy dose of journal-starters, hundreds of topic-related quotes, music selections and project samples. These elements are separated by monthly topic and are designed to help the scrapbook-artist embark on a journey of self-discovery as they build pheonomal page after page after page of grassroots history and accomplishemnts.

Since I'm a girl on a schedule, I can only affort to take short bites rather than long hours of introspection to complete a layout. So, anything that can streamline the creative process sounds like a good inestment to me.That's why I'm such a big fan of Becky Fleck's Page Maps. So, I decided to build my layouts using the Inside Out Products on Becky Fleck's Project 12 approach. Total time invested: about 4 hours.

I love it when a plan comes together