Tuesday, June 4, 2013

A New Adventure

I love learning.  After paper scrapbooking for nearly a decade I felt it had grown a bit repetitive. And I just wasn't enjoying it as much as I used to.  But I didn't want to give it up because recording my families memories and stories was still incredibly important to me.  Not to mention all the new friends I had made while I perused the hobby... I wasn't willing to give them up either. So I guess it was only natural that I began to veer in the direction of digital scrapbooking.  Which is exactly what I did just over a year ago.  My mom has been doing it for years and years and always encouraged me to go in that direction.  I'm not sure what took me so long....but I LOVE IT!  It's quicker, cheaper and certainly less messy.  Every once it a while I miss the tactile nature of paper scrapbooking but I still have much of my old supply stash so I can quench that desire by making a card or adding to my smash book. But for my daily ins and outs of memory keeping I can finally say that I am all digi.  I've learned so much over the last year and I can't help but see it in my work.  This is one of my earliest pages and I like it, really I do, but all I see now are things I would do different.

I'm happy to say that my layouts are a bit jazzed up now.  I still consider myself a beginner/intermediate when it comes to creating things digitally, but I have to admit that I've come a looooong way.  As evident in one of my more recent layouts. 

Thanks to challenges like Lain Ehmann's Layout A Day which she does several times a year I have had lots of practice.  Another person who has helped me tremendously is Marisa Lerin of Pixel Scrapper.  Her tutorials are awesome and she has created a community that really fosters learning and growth in a nurturing kind of way.  I'm even starting to dabble in designing.  Talk about a learning experience. Whew!  But that's a post for another day.