"Everyday Adventures at BPS"

I have no followers but I have an overwhelming desire to share my story or my art or my photography or my something.  Well, not my something!  I don't understand it.  I just want to be heard, I guess.  It thrills me to know that someone out there cares.  But on the other hand I am in the process of simplifying my own blog reader.  I have created a new category called "Inactive Scrapbooking" for blogs that I used to read. Now I only "Mark as Read" them every once in a while.  I can't bear to part with them . . . yet!  I skim through the posts I like to look at and I am trying to limit my online time to less "searching for my muse" and more "putting my muse to work."  It's way too easy to get distracted from what I really love to do.  I have been in such a funky place lately.  Taking pics, sorting, editing, but not scrapping hardly anything.  I keep having the urge to work with paper.  Today I finally did after signing up for this 4-week workshop at Big Picture Scrapbooking.

I worked on my assignments for the BPS class, "Everyday Adventures."  I am hoping I can learn something to use in school for "Our Backyard" studies.  It seems to fit in with the nature journals.  We'll see.  I had the most fun putting together this field journal.  I found papers in my stash that I had gotten from someone in an exchange at Paperclipping.com.  There were so many pretty papers.  I used my Big Bite and old cardboard, lots of cardstock and some patterned papers.  I tied ribbons and other fibers to the binder clips and ended up with a nifty little book.

These are my nifty little "Goggles of Enhanced Perception."  I repurposed a pair of doll glasses that have been in my sewing kit for nearly twenty years.  The class is based on this book by Keri Smith called "How to Be and Explorer of the World."  It's going to be interesting and fun.

Brett says women should not wear a hat titled "Bone Collector."  I was cold!!

Paperclipping.com March Monthly Challenge Layout

This is what I submitted:


I am submitting this layout for Challenge 2. Here are the tips from Paperclipping Tutorial #136 that I utilized to help me tell this story.
-Multiple photos are helped by the grid layout-helps to keep the layout from being chaotic
-Spread the photos with like colors across the layout so not all the greens were next to each other
-Chose a green background (not sure if that's in the tutorial but definitely from the newsletter tip about backgrounds!) to emphasize the lushness of the woods.
-Embellishments are similar in color and theme and form a visual triangle around the focal point photo
-The swirl brushes on the edges of the pages and by the title are intended to soften the hard lines of the grid
-Lastly, the journaling is subdued even though it's a lot the color kind of "hides" it in plain view.

(Paper and Elements, Vera Lim, Memories Makers No. 4)

The journaling: Norwich, VT (March 21, 2010)- Off Kerwin Hill Road is this piece of land on which the owners have several trails cut and blazed. We needed a hike with gradual inclines and dry ground to keep the girls motivated. I was just so happy. What more could I ask for? Walking through this beautiful, peaceful property on a sun-warmed March day with some of my favorite people in the world has got to be in my top ten things to do in life. As we walked we talked about not much of anything. We admired Mother Nature’s handiwork in the form of mushrooms and fungi feasting on decaying trees. We pointed out twisted and windblown trees whose desire for life outsmarted the winds that knocked them over. We marveled at the fairy glens of intensely green lichens and mosses reclaiming the fallen trunks to the moist boggy underground. The greens, the silvers, the almost-blue stones stacked into walls created a stunning canvas from which our imaginations extracted stories of what the land may have looked like a hundred years ago when 70% of Vermont was deforested. Human presence could be found amongst the handmade hunting stands, the abandoned barbed-wire roll, and the stone turned to fashion a chair upon which some long-ago hunter sat. Nature has been working hard to reclaim herself. It's the never-ending story, so beautifully crafted. I am blessed to have been there.