Vagabond

Today Sizzix is offering more travel stamps and a pair of sizing keys to people who link pictures of the location of their Vagabond in the world.

In January I bought the Sizzix Tim Holtz Vagabond diecutter later today I am going to give it a workout.

Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking is a hobby I started doing about seven years ago in the new format of decorative papers and embellishment. Now I had done what was known as a scrapbook when I was in high school back in the 1950s. In it are pictures of school events, moviestar photos I liked from magazines, party favors, and quotes I like from newspaper and magazine articles.

At that time it was very inexpensive. You just bought an album that said SCRAPBOOK on the front cover and you used photo corners or tape to adhere things to the pages. Now as I look through that book,some of the photo corners have come off and the tape has turned brown and in some places have completely lost it's adherence to the picture and page. Oh well, we did not know any better back then. Than of course we followed that with  photo albums the pages had a stick surface and plastic protective covering a BIG mistake over time. Now people are trying to remove their precious pictures from those albums to save them in a more acid free condition.

Today scrapbooking is a whole new thing. Hopefully you buy everything that is acid and lignin free, so thing will withstand the test of time. Among the many things you might buy will be post, strap bound or 3-ring albums. Than you preceed to buy the following: cardstock and printed paper; chipboard letter and shapes; paper trimmers and  scissors; adhesives; inks, paints or chalks; stickers; embellishments of all sorts; diecutting machines(manual or electric); cartridges and dies for those diecutting machines; and numerous tools.

The next thing you know you now need a room to store all this stuff and a place to work on your beautiful layouts. Layout is what the page with your pictures and embellishments is now called. At the moment I have all the stuff I have bought distributed among three rooms in my house. Last week I started organizing all the stuff I had accumulated over the past seven years. Some of it I have never used. I think I could open my own store and still have stuff left over (only kidding!). After sorting through some of the stuff, it required going out and buying some containers to store it all in an orderly and usuable fashion. It was interesting to rediscover some of the things I have. Amazingly I only found two duplicates; one is a Cricut spatula and the other is Sizzix Sidekick. Eventually, I hope to have it all in one room probably the library.

How I Started Scrapbooking

Seven years ago I was flying down to Virginia for my granddaughter's eighth birthday. Her mother had been scrapbooking for years using Creative Memories products and I admired what she had done. She told me there was a store near them that was totally a scrap book store. And she was signing us up for a crop. Now I had no idea what a crop was. Clueless!  She told me to bring some pictures, but I forgot them. That evening we went to the store. My daughter opened the trunk of her car and started pulling out several black bags. There were other women doing the same thing. Now I was curious as to what was in all these bags. Once we were in the store there were a group of happy and cheery women in a workroom with all their paraphanalia. WOW!

At this point my daughter asks me where are my pictures. I say they are back in Connecticut. So while she went about scrapping during the evening, she told me I could help her select some paper. Walking around the store and seeing all the different things I became interested in some printed paper that had a travel theme and thought they would be perfect for the pictures I had taken in Paris, France. I thought it would be best to start out small, so I bought an 8X8 album, cardstock, printed paper, glue, pens and stickers. My daughter bought me a Fiskars paper trimmmer that I still use today. She later bought me the Xyron 900 Adhesive machine, which is my favorite form of adhesive.

That was the beginning of something I love doing. Sometimes, I think I love buying all the tools even more than using them. My first diecut machine was the big red Sizzix and shape dies to go with it, than the Sizzix Sidekick and sizzlet alphabets and shapes, also Sizzix embossing folders. I followed that with the original Cricut four years ago; got the Design studio about nine months ago; the Gypsy when it launched at the end of September and just bought the Cricut Expression in February. My cartridge collection has now increased to thirty-six plus two coming in the mail anytime now. And like many people I am waiting patiently for Picturesque to be released to everyone. Needless to say I have lots of cardstock, printed paper and embellishments.

I still do more shopping than scrapping. But, I have fun and very much enjoy attending weekend scrap retreat a couple of times a year. Later I will write about the one I will be attending in May.