So before we started on the present and the future, I wanted to give you a little history about my creative life. Hopefully this wont bore you but more importantly, I hope you see that creativity is something that never leaves us. We are born with it and no matter how busy life gets, we always fine a way to let our creative lights shine. So without making too many of you burst into tears, lets get on with the creative history.
Like I said above, I had always been a creative child. I was the one that was more than happy to sit down and colour in, alone if possible and just chill. Even during primary school, my favourite lesson of the day was definitely art class and free time where I refused to get on the floor and play trucks and dolls but instead opted for drawing on the mini chalk boards or colouring in old work sheets that were from last weeks classes.
During high school I excelled at art. I found my sanctuary in the art classroom and when I made my Visual Arts my elective in Year Ten, I would elect to spend my lunch hours working on my latest assignment piece. In Year Ten I was also selected to paint a large mural in the back of the Japanese classroom (another subject I just thrived in). It was such an honour and to this day, that mural still remains on the walls. I look back at it now when I visit sometimes and realise just how crappy a job it was but back then, it was the most perfect piece of art I had ever set my eyes on.
at the closing of my high school life, my final art piece for graduation was a collection of wearable art. The four pieces were all recyclable pieces that represented the four levels of the food pyramid. The heights of the girls and the lengths of their dresses made a side ways pyramid shape. I remember spending hours cutting and knotting a dress made out of pink bread bags, ironing and sewing over a patchwork of chocolate wrappers and customising shoes with lace-up grape vines. I only wish I had the photos to show you.
With this project I also submitted a book, full of photos, outlining the detail and the way the dresses should be worn. I had a complete photo shoot with models (basically my school friends), a make up artist and the permission to take photos in a supermarket (that I worked at) after hours. It was in this book that I discovered scrapbooking. I had no idea at the time, just how invested my life would become with the capturing of memories and the expression of my emotions through paper and ink.
From high school, I graduated and went to university. I was poor, no money, working 3 jobs (a night job, an early morning job and a weekend job) as well as university and living at college. I was living on two minute noodles and diet coke (a pathetic addiction I can say I am well and truly over). I always however found time and money to scrapbook. At college I would make cards and give them to my friends and sell the spare to them to give to others. It wasn't a profitable business but they all thought they were amazing! To this day I prefer and usually always hand make cards to give to people.
The university was in a small town, but they had something my small home town didn't have, a scrapbooking store. For 3 years I would go in there sporadically and buy a few simple products to make my cards and leave but as time went on I came to really love that place and made some amazing friends, including the store owner and her family. In my last year of University I even stayed at their house. They offered me a room of my own, my own bathroom and kitchen, meals and internet all for 50 dollars a week! It was amazing!
In my last year there we ventured with a few other friends to scrapbooking conventions and even had our own scrapbooking challenge blog. Scrap the Music or something it was called. It wasn't very successful needless to say.
After that time, my scrapping really evolved and my style grew with my age and maturity. I was close to being published in magazines and was even selected on a few design teams, the most prestigious being that of Buzz and Bloom, a small company here in Australia. After that time though, I lost interest. I had scrapbooked everything about my life I could, including my love of chocolate, what time I wake up in the morning and copious amounts of photo shoots of my sister. There was just nothing left to encapsulate in the paper and ink.
I became wrapped in other things, Twilight, needless to say. I started reading and watching and even joining a few literate role playing games and really focused on writing. Even though I had given up scrapping, I was still being creative, just in a different way, with words.
From that point on, I role played. It was a dirty little secret that most looked down on or just ignored. I was embarrassed but I really loved expressing myself through fictional writing. I still hope one day to collect my stories and write a proper book.
This continued for almost 6 years until just recently, 2 months again when I felt the need to go back to scrapbooking. My boyfriend encouraged me to go back and enjoy the things I loved in life. Now with him in my life, I actually had things to document and record. I still however wasn't prepared to go back to traditional scrapbooking. Going back to those 12x12 pages just horrified me. Thats when I discovered Project Life.
I have decided that from September 13th, 2013, I would document every week in a 12x24 pocket page layout. I would never catch up but I was determined to capture the joy in my life for my family and my future family to relive. This is the purpose for us all to scrapbook. At least I hope it is. I want to be able to not only capture my life now, but also my children whatever the future holds for me.
I am sorry for the length of that post, but I just wanted to clear the slate, tell my story and show you that creativity never leaves us. It always lives within us and is always utilised even if you are not aware of it at the time.
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