If I asked each of you, "Is it important to capture the wonderful moments of your family, document the history of those you have known and loved and share a little bit of your heart with those who will come after you?"  I believe I would hear a giant, resounding "YES!"  If I asked a follow up question and said, "Are you actively doing that in any way?"  I would probably hear a deep sigh and a guilty-sounding "No… I should but I just don’t have the time."

I am in exactly your same position as a wife and mother.  As an artist, I have a leg up on you in that I can go to my computer and access close to 1,000 gigabytes of artwork to scrap with, but do I?  Not as often as I would like.  I’ve done more this year than last year and I hope that I will do more yet in 2008.  I’m MAKING TIME (because FINDING time hasn’t seemed to work very well) a little here and a little there.  I’m choosing to take a day that I might go spend in the garden endlessly weeding a patch that will only be filled again with more weeds, to do something instead that will be permanent and even possibly last beyond my lifetime. 

Every day we make choices.  Do we clean the cupboards, mop the floors, weed the garden or do something that has some permanence to it?  All of these activities are of course important, but they are not timeless and permanent.  Perhaps we can let our houses go slightly untended for a day so that we can tend to our heritage.  If we stop and think in those terms, perhaps the task will take on a new meaning.

The second issue that I always hear about scrapbooking is that "I get overwhelmed even thinking about it!"  Do you go into a scrapbooking store and have your eyes glaze in about 30 seconds?  Do you look at all the choices and freeze?  Do you look at a scrapbooking magazine and see fantastic layouts executed by graphic designer geniuses that you know in your heart you could never duplicate and just decide never to start? 

I spend a lot of time thinking about who my audience is and what her life looks like.  Most of you are warm, wonderful, extremely busy people with wonderful families, more creativity than the average person (but you don’t think that you’re very creativeat all!) and you love to touch the lives of those around you with tenderness, emotional warmth and beauty.  You make a gift with your hands as a way of showing how much you care and how deeply you love. 

My goal in creating each art kit, craft project or scrapbook album is to make it as easy as possible to achieve those goals.  My new "Instant Albums" are designed to make the only thing you have to think about what pictures and occasions you want to document in your scrapbooks.  I’m working at creating kits that work together without necessarily being "matchy-matchy" in look and feel.  When I put them together for you, I want it to be so easy that it’s impossible for you to do a "bad" page!  And I want to do it at a price that is so affordable that you just don’t have any excuse not to get started doing a little at a time!!! 

If you’ve never made a scrapbook and given it to someone, you’ve missed one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.  When I made the scrapbook that I gave to Jacqui on her 21st birthday at the beginning of this month, her face lit up with such excitement and joy that I realized I need to do it much more often.  The most interesting thing was that I didn’t put any pictures in it, I just made the album and am having her put the pictures that are most important to her and write her thoughts about that special day.  You know what I discovered?  It was FUN!!!  It wasn’t a burden and it went so fast I couldn’t believe it… maybe if you start a little project like that you’ll discover the special joy of scrapbooking and just might join me in the ranks of the addicted 🙂