Thursday, May 5, 2011

Hatching some plans...

I am forcing myself to post tonight, dear readers.

I've been really not into sharing or communicating much this year and this last month in particular.

I sat myself down this week and thought it out as to why. And I realized a few things.

First, I'm a bit embarrassed. I mean, I had all these big plans and very few of them have turned out like I have wanted them to. I felt like I have been a broken record about my Playroom: same old excuses as to why it's not done. Had to have a frank talk with myself about my physical limitations and that maybe my timetable, while perhaps even too long for most of us, was too short for me. I'm now working on cutting myself a break in hopes of feeling more comfortable with sharing progress, setbacks, stalls, etc.

Second, I've had a huge epiphany of sorts as to my scrapbooking, and I will try to explain. When I first was into scrapping layouts, I shared all of them online. All my layouts are on my Flickr and probably also on Two Peas. Didn't think a thing about it. And to be fair, almost all of them had photos of Missy and/or Hubs and me.

Now, I am (finally!) signed up for Stacy Julian's Finding Photo Freedom summer online class (see my sidebar) because I need help getting back into it and also in organizing my photos. I also joined Sisterhood of Scrap because they have a community I like and some great archived info on photo editing. I thought, I'll ease back into scrapping there and not be so rusty for my class.

But then, an opportunity appeared for me to create a scrapbook album of Hubster's 20th year anniversary work dinner. And, I suddenly got all concerned about sharing my layouts full of photos of so many other people, a few of which I know have problems with sharing info online.

And, I just froze up. Luckily, Hubs didn't want a scrapbook made. I had printed out all of the photos on my Picturemate printer (LOVE that thing), and he found them laid out, drying. He's a master snoop from way back, but I digress.

He also knows me, or my history, at least. I know he was thinking, I'll never see that scrapbook.  He said he'd rather just have a little photo album he could carry around or take to work, so that was easy enough. I had a Pioneer album and just filled it up. Hubs was a happy guy.

But, I was still left with dealing with my not feeling it was a good idea to share layouts that included anyone other than my family members who are okay with it.

The next idea I had for graduation presents -- words of wisdom quote pages surrounded by photos from each recipient's Facebook album -- would also be projects that I'd feel uncomfortable sharing. So, while I am working on them right now, I'm also not planning to share them because I don't think it's appropriate.

Something within me did not want to make a firm decision until now about sharing or not sharing. So, I subconsciously avoided blogging. Weird, but that's how my mind was working.

Now, at the same time, I am finding that my preferences for scrapbook albums are undergoing yet another evolution. At first, I bought post bound albums because it was 2004-2005 and it was that or the strap kind I've never liked. But the problem with post bound is that you wither scrap chronologically or you wait until you have all your layouts done to put them into the album.

The 3-ring binder seemed like a perfect alternative, so when it began to be obtainable, I bought some of them. I also found some boxed binder albums that were even better for keeping dust out, and I purchased like 6 of those. That was my first evolutionary change.

Then, I began using those binders. And I discovered two things:
1) When they include 10 page protectors, that's probably all you should really use, because if you try to cram twice as many as I did, you risk sagging layouts and stress on the binder ring mechanism. I had some of those binder rings come away from the spine, and then the binder is useless.
2) There was the bottom page protector drag....always. Highly annoying. Highly.

So, lately I've been re-visiting the post bound albums, but I still have several binders...so my devious little mind has devised a use for the binders as a temporary holding spot for those layouts. I can put them in order, categories, whatever. And when I have all the layouts I want to put in an album all organized the way I want them, then I can put them in a post bound. And I won't stuff them. I can afford to buy another album. I'm thinking this is a great idea. We will see.

I can also add that I have changed my mind about 12x12 layouts. That's the size I scrapped during my first activity period, and for several reasons I remained loyal to it until recently. It's been a while coming, though. I finally opened my mind to the 8x8 and 6x6 sizes last year some time. What cinched it for me was the scan issue. I've never been excellent and stitching my 12x12 layouts and with the smaller sizes it is not an issue. I'm still evolving my mindthink on this. For example, last night I had almost rationalized doing childhood albums for all 3 of us in 12x12. And then I considered the scanning and 8x8 suddenly became okay, hehe. Heck, 8.5x11 would be good, too, right? And I'm also exploring why I never consider just buying a 12x12 scanner. My Kmarty mindthink sometimes sabotages my finding the best solutions....

So, anyway, thanks if you've read this far. This is all just so so trivial in comparison to LIFE, but hey, that's what I got. That and waiting for the duck eggs to hatch, winkwink. And I'll try to post better, too.