A picture can say a thousand words…imagine how many words;

How many words can the wonderful art of taking such precious memories & turning them into something even more beautiful; say? Sometimes it's almost as if you can look at the pages & then close your eyes; bringing even more details from those memories to life.

My grandma & Great Grandma were always more than supportive of any sort of my artistic endeavors at a very young age. I had a friend back in 3rd- 5th grade unlike myself her family wasn’t very well off but she was my best friend and my grandma & great-grandma were always so kind and caring. They would take me & whichever of my two best friends out when we were going to have a sleepover to go & buy us each our own scrapbook & then we would go to Barnes & Noble's & my Grandma & Grandpa would let us take off and run over to the magazine section. I am a 90's kid so back when I was doing this was when Backstreet Boys & Spice Girls ruled the universe of MTV. Each sleepover weekend (just about every single weekend that I was visiting or living with my Grandma & Grandpa & Great Grandma) & those weekends always began with a trip to the bookstore to run and scoured the magazine section for Tiger Beat & all of the other teeny-bopper magazines that were all the rage back then. Hell, my Grandma & Great Grandma purchased two of each of these Spice Girl book/stupid expensive 50$'s a piece photo books; all the while knowing they were going to get torn apart & turned into what I would now look on as being my first informal scrapbooking & collages.

They always encouraged handmade crafts & my artistic endeavors. I learned how to cross-stitch/hand embroidery at a very young age as well; taught to me by my Great Grandma. Along with all of that my first artistic endeavors began helping my dad with his model train layouts he would hand build in our garages. We would sit there and make every little tree & hand paint every single little house; train stations, people. We did it all together. That built upon itself up to the point of me & my dad hand painting & putting together Model Rockets. (1st Place in the Science Fair for two years in a row….just saying) My most formal "training" in the art of Scrapbooking was when we had lived in Utah & my mom's boss at the time would have these I am guessing was a glass of wine & Scrapbooking parties. We had all made pages for my great-grandma 80 something birthday Scrapbook. After not being "allowed" to make such an album for my twin boys….I stuffed all of those needs of my inner artist away for a while. Not by choice. But lack of funds & we were homeless for a minute when we first moved up here to Oregon from San Diego. Scrapbook materials are definitely not inexpensive. Luckily for me; I am blessed to live in a city that has an "Art Thrift Store" No... Seriously it’s a thrift store strictly only for art supplies. Which is how I overtime curated and collected scrapbook materials.

I will jump into what is my most focused project at this time. I Quite frankly knew I wanted to really dive into making a Scrapbook of my daughter & my family. It took me a while to figure out what sort of album I truly wanted/had a preference for as well as leaving me room for expansion down the line. Everything WAS way different back from when I made formal ones with my mom. I'm pretty sure my husband wanted to ask me; "how many scrapbooks do you need to order and not use?!"! Honestly, at the time, I was actually getting frustrated trying to find the best way to not only preserve my family's memories as well give myself room for artistic expression. Also on the other side of that, I had been looking for also something that would allow me to collect & keep safe over time that was going to actually for sure fit the letters from my pen pal/dad & of course right around the same time; I finally had an idea in regards to what kind of album would work best for me to have some room to learn make my Families album & experiment with mixed media as well.

Four albums later…. Okay….Maybe 5… :X I finally had exactly what I should have started off with….In my defense; I'm disabled & it is not always easy to know if what you're ordering is what you need, to make it harder how much can you really depend on the description of an item online that would be so much easier to see it in person. So here I am, trying to not let my husband notice the 5 albums maybe 6….Just a few weeks ago I was finally able to say to myself, "Okay I have everything I need to really get this going."

Why was I hiding and hoarding art supplies from my husband?

Because apparently, I turned him into a puzzle on accident. When I finally expressed to him why it looked like I never was doing anything with my mountains of art supplies….I honestly thought I was a bad person because of the fact that I was injured when I had my daughter and that I was afraid I was being rude or who knows what with the whole out-of-pocket child care & him working 50 something hours a week. He looked at me like I was a fooking (I don’t like saying the real "F" word) idiot & said, "If I didn’t want you to have it & use it, I wouldn’t have bought it for you."

To give a little more insight into that…my daughter turns Two at the end of this month…I became disabled after giving birth to her.

With my guilt slightly diminished…I began to open up my art books here & there. I began to use my guided journals more. Researched ways to turn my emotions into art rather than words. I joined a Bible Study group maybe two weeks or so ago. One morning when going to show my new friend's photos of a card I had made for my dad the day before & I had accidentally sent photos of the scrapbook I had in the works. Not realizing until it was too late & sent it…

I was in no way shape or form expecting the kind of compliments I began to tie together with my oops I sent too much stuff….. What it did do is put me in the perfect position to feel some of the confidence I once had as an artist. Then next thing you know I stumble across this amazing opportunity for writers & artists & creators to get out there & be heard. Especially at least for me. To be completely candid this scrapbook is doing more for me than just giving me a chance to win something for not just myself but for my entire family. It has also reminded me that the inner artist is still there. I just needed something to get the flow going again & to be even more candid. This project has also more than likely saved my marriage as well.