Journal Camp Idea

Last night was a speed scrap at Designs In Digital. I usually go to those on Wednesdays while David is playing his online poker. He does his thing, I do mine and we can still talk to each other about what we’re doing or anything, really. It’s a pretty cool set-up. Most of the time the cats will stick around for a while, at least at treat time, 10:30, and Carla will spend most of the evening with us. She’s Daddy’s girl and after all day without him, she’s a little clingy, his lap cat!

I got into the chat room late yesterday because David got home a little late and he wasn’t feeling great. After dinner I made hot cocoa before I went to the chat. Ghirardelli makes incredible hot cocoa! I made Hazelnut for David and Mocha for me. It was the first time I tried the mocha. Oh my! It’s exquisite! After I made the cocoa, I went to the chat in progress.

The cool thing about the DID Speed Scraps, is they are speed scraps for real life! The chat starts at 9 PM Eastern US time and the layout is due to be posted by noon the next day. That gives any time zone a chance to check in and get the instructions in the forum if they couldn’t make the chat and everyone an opportunity to enjoy the social part of the chat and still get their layout done, even if they have kids or stayed up late to chat and want to do the layout in the morning. That’s me. I often go to chat and choose the kit and photos for the layout and actually do it in the morning.

Here is my layout for this week’s speed scrap that I finished this morning at about 10:30:


There were two required steps in this layout that made me cringe a little one because I don’t like it and one because I don’t do it well. The "don’t like" is buttons. I don’t like buttons in paper or digital scrapping. That’s a personal preference. I don’t mind the ornate buttons in digi, but I can’t stand to see plain old buttons that look like they flew off someone’s shirt on a page. Bleh. The layout you’re looking at doesn’t have buttons on it. I posted it with the required buttons to hold the pictures on and then deleted them before I saved the copy to print.

The other was the cluster. I have a hard time making clustered elements that don’t look cluttered rather than clustered. I’m getting better at it with practice. Vicki at Bubbles Babbles is my clustering guru! She did a couple of excellent posts about it that you’ll find linked at the end of this post. You can also click the blinkie for Bubbles Babbles in the side bar to get to her front page. I think the clustered journal mat I did turned out pretty nice! (Thanks, Vicki!)


Ah the journal mat! This is something many, and I mean many, of my layouts have. When the instruction for “at least three lines of journaling” came up in chat, I was pleased. THAT’S an instruction that is easy to do! I also discovered that so many people disagree with that. Many people say that they don’t journal, or journal very little, only if they can’t avoid it, like when a challenge says you must have it. But you miss so much without it.

The wonderful thing about Scrapbooking is it captures a moment, an emotion, an idea. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes you need 1010, or 1100 to tell the whole story. What then? You need to be able to put a few thoughts into words. If you can post in a forum or chat room, if you can leave a comment on a blog or layout, if you can have a conversation in person or on the phone, you can journal!

What I’d like to do, is offer some tips and exercises help anyone who’s interested find their inner journal peace. I’m putting together the ideas, lessons and files for “Journal Camp.” I’m going to dedicate one post a week to a five-week blog camp.

If one person says “yes,” that’s enough for me to think it’s worth doing. What do you think? Is it a decent idea? Journal Camp? Would you stop by for it??

I’ll have more details about Journal Camp soon!

Links:

Vicki’s Page clustering tutorial

Triangle Placement