Scrap to Treasure

Are you one of those who takes pictures at Holidays and special occasions? My dear sweet Mom, God bless her soul, was a true shutterbug, through and through. She always had her camera with her. She never felt the need for perfect posed pictures. Some of the cutest pictures of me as a child had messy hair and or a dirty face. She captured the real us. She loved placing all of her treasures into photo albums, aka scrapbooks. Do you remember the ones where you used the little black photo corners? You would lick them like postage stamps and adhere them to the page, and tuck the corner of your picture in each of the four corners.

After time, the albums changed to the magnetic pages. You arranged your pictures on the pages and then pressed the plastic covering over them. Can you imagine how many albums my Mom had by the time she passed away at the far too young age of 78? More than I care to mention. I acquired ownership of all of the albums after she was gone. Talk about a lifetime of memories! I spent a considerable amount of time scanning nearly every picture so all of us could have digital copies. OMG was that quite the project.

I inherited my Mom's passion for photography. I, however, was never as organized as she was. Mine might end up in boxes, in envelopes, wherever they may end up. My daughter introduced me to traditional scrapbooking before my granddaughter was born back in 2002. I thought it was sort of a silly hobby at that time. I did decide to give it a try myself a little later. It didn't take long before I caught the bug. I went all in and turned one of my empty nest bedrooms into a formal scrapbook room. My kids have teased me many times over the years that if Michaels or Hobby Lobby ever ran out of supplies, they could come to me for supplies, lol.

In about 2008, I think, maybe sooner, I stumbled onto digital scrapbooking. I found it fascinating. As I learned more and became more confident, I joined the Creative Teams of several Kit Designers. They would give me their new Kits free and I would design and create page layouts from the Kits and upload them to advertise the Kits. I fell in love with concept and practice. It is at least a decade later and I still do this today. I have had my own Scrapping Blog for years. To be honest, since I started this business, I haven't been updating it as faithfully as I have in the past. My goal is to try to get back to keeping it updated and offering digital freebies to those who visit. If any of you are curious about it, it is called Linda's Scrappin Lane. The url is lindasscrappinlane@blogspot.com

Last year I decided to try another new adventure and attend out of State Scrapbook weekend Retreats. My first one was in Huntington, West Virginia. It was a themed Retreat, Wizard of Oz. There were many activities, one of which was an ATC contest. ATC stands for Artist Trading Cards for those who are not familiar with them. I made several different ones, all Wizard of Oz themed. It was a lot of fun. Needless to say, I absolutely loved this whole adventure. I walked in there not knowing anyone and walked out with several new friends from all over the Midwest and Northeast, I have attended several more since then.

I am tinkering with the idea of making and selling premade scrapbook pages. I have researched on Etsy and there is a market for them. We'll see......