My Story

I wrote this out over on the Spraground. Thought I'd throw it in here.

My story?But why?It's boring and lame-O.Not inspiring at all.But I am proud of my scrappin' journey!!Hmm, where to begin? I have always tried different crafting hobbies as a means to express my creativity. Nothing seemed to fit perfectly. I couldn't play a musical instrument, painting came to stick figures for me, can't sew a straight line, quilt quickly, or even design my own cross stitch. I fell into scrapbooking quite accidently. I hosted a Murder Mystery Party with a 50's soda shop theme in October of 2004. Everyone came decked out in poodleskirts, leather jackets, ponytails, and slicked back hair. It was so great. The pictures were even better. I knew I couldn't just stick these into a magnetic album. I googled 'scrapbook' and found sb.com, and then started to talking to like minded individuals. Before long I had an entire group of people in my area who wanted to hang out and crop together (we just celebrated our third year of meeting once a month!). I was hooked. I think the missing link to my creativity was having a supportive group of friends to encourage and inspire me. I turned to digi in Feb of 2005 because I was teaching technology at an elementary school. They had a business version of Elements loaded and I started poking around. I immediately fell in love with the freedom it offered me. With paper I would look at the layouts and want that EXACT paper, the perfect embellishment, that color ribbon, etc. It was very stressful and within 3 months I spent $4000 on tools and supplies. OY!It was much easier to collect what I needed with digi without poking holes in my pocket. I could also recolor and resize to my liking. Pretty soon my brain started asking, "I wonder how they made that brad." I googled 'digital scrapbook tutorials' and was amazed at how much was available to me. I studied one tut after the other and pretty soon became pretty adept at creating my own stuff. It was so freeing!I joined another message board and was asked to become one of their design team members. Not long after I was selling kits and stuff at their store. It became difficult to juggle both my creative side and my career. I had to choose one or the other. Sigh... I chose teaching because it paid the bills. I didn't give up my digi scrapping though. Next, I stumbled onto the Spraground right about the time Jessica offered her Now We're Rocking class, so I jumped at the chance to learn more. Her teaching style is so encouraging and easy that I was hooked. I stood in the long line all day to sign up for her beta class of Digi in Deep. LOVED that class too. But I felt like something was still missing. I didn't have a perfect set yet. With CKU-Houston looming (21 days!!) Jessica, being the awesome person she is, offered her digi album participants a free U&R membership. Now how could I pass that up??That's the story of my journey. King of convuluted and backwards, I know. But one that makes me supremely happy. Happy that is until Jessica offers her next class!!Thanks for listening.