An open letter to scrapbooking Me...

It’s funny how when you first discovered scrapbooking in January 2008 you couldn’t get enough of it. It coincided with your discovery of blogs and you became addicted to finding new scrapping blogs for your Favourites list. You would devour every word on them and keep copies of layouts to recreate yourself. You spent a small fortune on supplies and would spend most of your free time browsing the online shops and checking out the latest products. You spent every free moment you had scrapping and your family loved seeing your new pages although you were always a bit shy to show them.
Then you joined Scrapagogo, a kit club, so that you could get a good variety of embellishments that you couldn’t afford to buy otherwise and your other online purchases slowed down and eventually stopped.
When you moved into your first home together with Mr M, he allowed you to use a whole bedroom to devote to scrapping which you turned into an office and you thought you were the luckiest girl.
When you treated myself to a lovely laptop, having had an old dog of a PC you bought from work when they had replaced theirs, you discovered digital products and Photoshop. It was around this time you got broadband into the house as well. I know some of your scrapping time transferred to this and it’s not that you were scrapping digitally, you were just “messing around”, creating logos, designing cards, editing photos and that’s ok.
You joined some online groups on UK Scrappers and really felt part of the “scrapping community” for a short time. In February 2009 you entered one of your pages for the first time to a UK scrapbooking magazine, Scrapbook Inspirations, for publication and could not believe it when you received an email to say they wanted to include it! It was published in June 2009 this was definitely a high point for you.
In February 2009 your aunt also asked you to do an album for her daughter’s 18th birthday in the space of one month and gave you photos she wanted included that meant over 40 pages needed to be done. I know some serious scrappers would think nothing of doing 40 pages in a month but when you have to have it done, and it’s not just because you are on a roll, that’s a different story. I think it’s at this point that you really stopped enjoying it so much. Would you agree?
You continued to subscribe to Scrapagogo and every month would get excited about it arriving but in the end you weren’t even lifting the goodies out of the box again after looking at them.
Scrapbook Inspirations folded and I am sensing that for a lot of UK scrappers, without the possibility of getting published, the motivation to make great pages just wasn’t there anymore. Well it seemed that way for you anyway.
Now quite a few of the scrapbookers in the blogs you devoured have moved on a little too. Stacy, Laura, SJ, Rachel who write blogs you were addicted to, barely mention scrapbooking now. Maybe they still do just as much and don’t mention it now.
Angela, you definitely seem to take really strong interests in something and become engrossed in them and then they pass and you move on to something else. Now it’s designing your wedding stationery, wedding blogs, photography blogs and cameras, cameras, cameras. You are driving yourself crazy thinking about wanting/needing a DLSR! Just wait, you will get it when you can.
This month you cancelled your subscription to Scrapagogo and definitely felt very torn about it, knowing that it is unlikely you will buy many more goodies for yourself and it’s like saying a final goodbye to scrapbooking really.
You recently logged in again to UK Scrappers and seen that 6 people had left new comments on your gallery and this excited you and you thought maybe it would motivate you to scrap over St Patrick’s Day when you were off work but alas, no pages.
I’m so so sad that you’re not in full swing to record all your wedding plans although you have a small album you keep updated when you make bookings and record some feelings in.
I really hope that you do come back to scrapbooking in the future when you have babies, but having babies just to re-spark the scrapping bug is out of the question. Right?
At that stage no doubt you’ll be addicted to baby blogs.