During the last five months I've had the opportunity to attend a few scrapbooking crops at my local shop. I first started scrapbooking eight years ago just after Caelan was born but back then I spent many hours visiting stores, buying papers, buying cardstock and did I mention buying products. I purchased so much stuff that when it came time to actually put a page together I had know idea what it was that I should be doing. I subscribed to a scrapbooking magazine and every month I'd look through it marking off layouts that I loved and that I wanted to re-create.

 

As you can imaging it's difficult trying to copy someone else's layout, the problem I've always had was trying to identify and locate products that the person had used. It was due to this reason that I started going to classes and then crop nights in the hopes that I could work my way through the hundreds of photography's I have for all the children and to develop my own style.

 

I went off to my first crop five years ago in the hope that I would create something nice with the few photo's and supplies I had. As I was pregnant at the time I spent the majority of the time going back and forward to the toilets, but I was hooked and I've enjoyed crop nights ever since. Back in May I went off to a crop with three photo's, a few supplies and a dream of completing a layout. I spent the first hour trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do and then I had a light bulb moment I found a layout that I decided to copy. It was perfect, the colours were faultless and many of the pieces were in store that night.

After about 15 hours of work I was able to create a double page layout that helped showcase the cross country event that my son competed in this year at school. I was really happy to have completed my first ever page dedicated to Caelan especially after I started scrapbooking back in 2005. I was really happy with the layout and the best part was that Caelan really liked what I'd created for him.

Here are the other layouts that I've created since May and I'm happy to say that in all the years I've been interested in scrapbooking this is the most I've ever done. What do you think am I good at copying other peoples layout's and calling them mine?

I've been thinking that while the children are home during the Christmas holiday's (six weeks) I might get around to investing a few hours to completing a few layouts using the new 'Simple Stories' range that I found at my local store. The range is very similar to what Project Life produce however there are a few differences I think. As Mr Opoes went to Europe prior to our meeting he has hundred's of photo's, maps, postcards, tickets and programs that he collected while he was away. These have been sitting in boxes ever since I've known him. Not long after we got married I attempted to place them in an album but I soon discovered that I seemed unable to match the photographs with the location notes that he'd made. So I'm hoping that I can create this manly scrapbooking album for him without it been too pretty, boring or PINK.

Wish me luck as I've already purchased a few things that I think might work and I'm hoping that they go with the pictures that he took some fifteen years ago.

Megan