It’s been a busy week, albeit quite fun. Last week I was photographing non-stop, this weekend working on DT layouts, and yesterday I managed to attend my first crop. It was a bit of a trek (about 1 1/2 hours to get there), but I got to spend 3 hours with some very friendly scrappers, and of course, drop a few £s in their shop.
Many there were just beginning to scrap—- no surprise, really, scrapping is only now really starting to take off in the UK. One girl was working on her 8th page. Another girl had done about 40. Others had done quite a few, and this made a nice mix of experience levels. It also brought me back to the days when I started scrapping. Ahh, nostalgia…. and that was only 2 years ago….
However, this crop made me realize many things. I am very thankful I have all my photographs sorted by date and event or person. When I saw these ladies pull a 6-inch stack of photos out of their bags and start sorting through them to decide which photos they wanted to scrap, I think my eyes nearly fell out of my head. Maybe it’s just because of the sheer number of photo I have, but I couldn’t do this. And because of the sheer number of photos I have, this would never work for me. Besides, it’s nice and easy for me to simply pull an envelope knowing what’s in it, or search for a particular photo because they are all there… nice and organized, and I know that all the photos from that event are together. But really, it’s whatever works for them.
The crop also made me realize that I am really happy to have found places like Two Peas in a Bucket, and friends like Lynette who brought me into groups like Scrap That Moment, and Cari who challenges me to think out of the box, and sometimes out of my comfort zone with new (and sometimes radical) ideas—most of which have turned into some of my favourite and most treasured layouts. These groups have provided me with insight, inspiration, friendship and encouragement to keep going, keep trying and to keep aspiring. Without these online influences, I probably wouldn’t be a scrapper… or at least not the scrapper I am today. I thank them for that. Having a community to go to and participate in really brought this hobby to life for me.
I also realized how precious my layouts are to me. Before yesterday, the only person who had ever seen my layouts ‘in real life’ was my husband. A general “that’s nice”. It was really nice to hear comments from other srappers on my layouts, and hear their questions of how I did this or that, or where I got my inspiration, and generally be able to discuss beyond the layout itself. As I boarded the train home, I realized how tightly I was clutching my album so I didn’t drop it, because it would have devestated me to have lost my layouts. These are not just photos organized on to some pretty paper. These are my photos, my memories and my life. My albums are truely a piece of ME… and it took until I attended my first crop to realize that.