Friday 25 May 2007

There is this one thread...

On UKScrappers there is a thread entitled 'making a living from scrapping...' I am watching it with interest. The consensus is that if you actually did it for a living it wouldn't be your hobby any more and wouldn't be interesting or fun any longer. I kinda agree... but then I am an ALL or NOTHING kinda gal. My life is obssessional. I guess I only just realised that at the ripe old age of 27. I think I would LOVE it. Being surrounded by supplies and inspirational people day in and day out would be heavenly to me, or at least while this obssession runs its course...

Personally for me scrapping is SPECIAL, you know the feeling... you've finished a LO of your children or whatever YOU choose. It's close to your heart... It has all your emotion and feeling in that one 12 x 12 page or whatever you've used. You journal what you want to remember about that time/photograph... you choose all the little details in the LO. You spend time re-arranging bits and pieces and put a lot of love in that little piece of art. How could you put a price on your memories...? Like previous posts have said about their LO's not being chosen for comps etc... and the 'how could they miss my BEAUTIFUL baby' etc... How can you suggest a value to this sort of thing?I would like to however say you can put a price on how inspiring you are. Ppl mentioned Shimelle and Elsie and yes, they are priceless to me! I love the doodly whimsical no rules scrapping they have. I love they way that the little things in their LO's matter the most. I also admire Emily and Celine who have that 'use everything' style of scrapping... where even a sheet of kitchen roll could end up an important part of thier art. THIS is what I would pay for if you were to make money out of it... Your LO will mean less to someone than to you, but your inspiration doesn't! I think that is the key to how you make money from scrapping...

Karen Russel added some great thoughts on scrapping on one of her blog posts... which I have hijacked - It's good.
It's a hobby for some. It's art for some. It's an outlet for some. It's a scrappin-till-2 a.m.-love-affair for some. It's defining for some.
And for some, it is as much a part of who they are as the color of their eyes.
But part of the beauty of scrapbooking lies in the fact that it is different things to different people.
It's sitting down in front of a blank sheet of cardstock, deciding what it is in your life that you value enough to spend the next couple of hours documenting.
It's about priorities.
And earlier in the day, you might have thought that your priority was that new hole you found in the couch cushion (none of the kids know how it got there, of course), the fact that you're getting your son to baseball practice late, for the third time this week because you can't find his baseball mitt, or that never-ending "to do" list that is haunting you...
But when you sit down to scrapbook, those priorities start shuffling all around until the real priorities make their way to the forefront.
That's my favorite thing about scrapbooking (those moments when my priorities become loudly and abundantly clear).
Ultimately, we might all be scrapbooking for very different reasons...
Maybe it's for your family. Maybe it's for yourself. Maybe it's for a deadline. Maybe it's because you never want to forget that conversation your had with your son yesterday. Maybe it's for a dream.
Different things to different people.
But at the core of it all, I think, are more similarities in purpose than differences.

Don'tcha just think that this is so true. so to sum it all up. Yes, you could make a living from scrapping IF you were so inspiring and so thoughtful like Elsie, Karen, Amber, Celine, Michelle, Sara, Gina, Nina and all the cool other people I know...

4 comments:

Emma_byford said...

Helllooo thanks for your comment, my nan is a sweetie, she does talk alot though, ha ha, bless her.

I would so love to able to make a living from scrapbooking, you could look at yummy papers and embellishments all day, plus you'd get tonnes of free stuff cos they would all want you to make LO's with them... doesn't sound bad to me!!! Plus it would mean no more commuting into London everyday too!!!

x

michelle said...

wow, girl.. that is really deep and it made me think about all the reasons i scrapbook and how much i love doing it. I wish i could do it for a living - and one day it may come true, but I am having a blast doing it as a hobby!

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