My Favorite Hobby

I have several hobbies that I enjoy. I like drawing with pencils, pens, and charcoal. Playing my trombone makes me happy and is actually useful. I crochet and am working on a gift for a friend right now. Scrapbooking, however, is my favorite because I get to make something beautiful that my kids will treasure and hopefully pass down to their children.

Chelsea recently asked a few questions on a previous post:

1. Do you use a certain brand of supplies? The answer is "not really." I just buy whatever looks interesting. I do have a huge stockpile of materials from the Storytellersclub since I got their monthly mega kit for years. I love those! One thing I really enjoy is cardstock stickers that already look beautiful and elegant and are ready to go on my page. I used to spend a lot of time creating my own elaborate tags and titles and journaling boxes. Now I just collect these. Some companies that make them are Bo Bunny and Pebbles, Inc. (which I use for card making).

Do you have a die cut machine? Yes, I have a Sizzix collection that I began buying about 6 years ago. I've got several of their alphabet sets, which is by far the thing I use most. I don't recommend you run out and buy a die cut machine. I haven't really used it enough to make the investment worth it. Mostly these days I use it for homeschool projects. That could be a whole other post. I also have a Quickutz die cutter with a few dies and one alphabet set. I wish I could afford more of these!

Where do you get your inspiration? For years now I have loved everything by Becky Higgins. I'd say my style most closely resembles hers. Many of my layouts are direct "scraplifts" from her pages. I also like those books that Creating Keepsakes publishes called Scrapbooking with Lisa Bearson. She goes on QVC and sells products and during the show they display scrapbook pages made with the products. The pages are so good that they put them all into books each year. I get a lot of ideas from them.

AND what type of camera do you have? This one: Kodak Easy Share It's not one of those top of the line ones. Although I admire those cameras, I just can't afford to replace it when one of my kids spills a can of pop on it like they did with my current one. I cleaned it the best I could, but the pop up flash still gets stuck sometimes. This one has 7.1 megapixels which means I could enlarge a photo to 10 x 8 and it would still look good. It also has a 10x optical zoom which means I get nice pictures from far away without having to use digital zoom which can make your pictures look grainy.