While life has a lot of constants. There are also many stages of transition. As I write this, I find myself in a bit of transition once again. For a very long time, I kept all of my hobbies separate. I chose to focus on just one thing, telling myself that I had to budget my time and my money. As I learned to see the world a bit differently, I realized that I could intertwine what I wanted to do. My art supplies didn’t have to stay segregated. My first forays into translating inspiration were to simply intermingle one hobby with another. At first, this meant something as simple as allowing myself to paint or stitch on a scrapbook page. Now, it has evolved into something else. Something that allows me to use my time and energy more efficiently and with a lot more creative confidence.
The next part might seem like I am going off topic, but hang in there. I assure you it all circles back around. I have been asked a lot recently if I am still teaching scrapbooking classes. I currently don’t have any plans to release a class. My personal circumstances have changed a little over the past few years and there are a few hurdles for me to cross before I can consider teaching again. Right now, my main focus is my son who is entering his last year of homeschooling before he graduates high school. I am really enjoying my time with him before he moves onward into adulthood. My creative time is spent developing my art skills and exploring creative avenues that I have not ventured down in decades. Some of those avenues are paths I have never ventured down before. It is so nice to have my creative life just for me and not for work.
I do still share a lot of what I do with anyone who is willing to listen. Friends are welcome to sit down with me and learn a bit about scrapbooking or art journaling. I am very active with friends in several online creative communities. I just love to talk about what I do with anyone who wants to listen. When Debbie Hodge approached me about sharing a scrapbook page for Get It Scrapped about translating inspiration, I immediately said yes. It was another great opportunity to talk about what I love while trying to share with people a new way to visualize the connections between life and creativity. Specifically, I chose to share a bit about how I bring crochet into my scrapbook pages.
I started crocheting just last year. It is a bit more portable than scrapbooking. As homeschoolers, we actually spend very little time at home ( kind of a running joke in the homeschool community). We often use public transportation which frees me up to work on something while we are on the go. I also keep a sketch book in my purse, but for whatever reason, crochet is more of a sociable creative endeavor. This means I almost always have a couple small balls of yarn, a hook and a pattern in my handbag as well.
I have been part of the Get It Scrapped community almost since its very beginning. Through it, I learned scrapbook page design principles. Debbie was one of the first to consider me for creative team work. The feedback from her and from my peers at Get It Scrapped helped me to develop my own sense of style. Over time, as my confidence grew, I was able to take what I learned and apply it to my art journals. The way I saw things changed. I can look at almost anything and translate it into a scrapbook layout or art journal spread. It doesn’t matter if I am looking at a piece of cloth, a painting or a photo out of an interior decor magazine. If I see it, I can find inspiration in the colors, the textures, the patterns and even in the placement of objects. This way of seeing becomes transformed into what I make. Everything has a connection: math, art, science, literature, etc. It all can become a part of a complete story.
Scrapbook pages are visual examples of the stories we tell. The way we design our pages has meaning. Though the viewer doesn’t analyze the page in a technical sense, the visual cues of the products and colors we use help tell our story. We have a tendency to choose the colors, textures and types of products we like. In essence, we add a bit of ourselves to the page itself. Choosing to combine other hobbies into your scrapbooking can be a part of that.
The page I created for the translating inspiration article series focuses on my new crochet hobby. I used a crochet pattern as inspiration for a scrapbook page in which I tell a story about my son and the weather. You can see my scrapbook page and read the article series in the Get It Scrapped Membership section.
Teaching online might not be on the table for me right now. I do have a lot of plans which I hope will come to fruition sometime in the near future. I will need something to occupy my time with after my son graduates and moves onward to college. For now though, I will retreat back to enjoying my creative lifestyle as a hobbyist once again.