Helloooo Saturday!

The coolest thing about all this snow and the bone chilling temperatures is this:

Crocuses, April 2011

This was the first spring for my stripey crocuses and their friends and it was the spring after Snowmageddon, that nasty Ground Hog Day Massacre that ravaged these parts and almost introduced us to language we’ve never heard Jim Cantore use with thunder snow in Chicago. But after Snowmageddon and all the snow that seemed to only quit for a few days and bring more, the spring perennials Kelly and I’d planted in October 2010 were beyond gorgeous! After the incredibly mild winter of 2012, they were just awful but after cooler temperatures and a cold snap at the end, the flowers were strong and pretty again last year. Some were lost in 2012 or eaten by burrowing critters still, their splendor didn’t die and I really hope it means that dealing with all this frozen slop will mean another wonderful spring on the side of our house.

Edna gave me the idea of combatting winter by showing spring on my blog. She had some nice spring nature pics yesterday that just made me feel warm inside. I said I’d post a spring piece of my art. Edna is a great photographer and does wonderful photo art. My art, of course, is my scrapbooking. I did this page in 2011 of my crocuses and daffodils.

I don’t have credits for this one, sorry, but it was finished a few years ago. I thought I might have posted it in one of the scrapbook galleries so I could get the credits, but I didn’t. I think it may have just been random freebie papers from longer ago than that in my stash. I really let the photos and journaling do the talking. I do that often. I tend to not use so many elements on my pages. I like to make a small cluster or two, but the pictures and story are the focus of my pages. That’s not to say that I always journal or never use a lot of elements, just that looking at my work all together, I use fewer elements and journal a lot more than the average digital scrapper.

When I started exclusively digi-scrapping in mid-2007, I actually did my first layouts in 2006 when I did a scrapped photo book for David’s 40th birthday; my hands were already going downhill. I didn’t know it was MS at the time, but my handwriting had been getting worse. I was printing typed captions and cutting them out for my paper books. When I started digital, I typed the whole story of why I scrapped the photos on my page in the gallery descriptions. Someone who’d been digi-scrapping longer than novice me suggested using my stories as part of the layout. And so, the mad journaling scrapper was born! I guess, although I use flower elements sometimes too, I have an attitude of “I got words; I don’t need no stinking flowers.”

While I’m talking about journaling and scrapping, I thought I’d share my week one layout for this year’s “Random 365.”

Page 1

Page 2

Project 365 papers by Kitten Scraps, elements from: Notice Board Mini
by Danish Design; Ice, Ice, Baby by Connie Prince; Project 2013: January
by Connie Prince; Winter Rhapsody Word Art by Jennifer Labre;

I like it. It’s a nice combination of the Journal 366 I did in 2012; the only daily project year I’ve finished, and other things that spark my interest on any given day be they a photo I’ve taken, news, or just a tweet or Facebook status. It’s a nice old-school scrapbook or Smash Book look and I think they’re fun to look at and read. So far they’re a lot of fun to scrap too. If you like the dated papers that I use for some of the days, they were freebies!! I think they are stunning papers for the project and you can get the current day at Kitten Scraps’ blog as a freebie! I’ve only missed one day so far, but that’s what gave me the idea to use the dated pages for some squares and kit pages for others.

Okay, there’s my “spring and scrap” for today! Let me know what you think of the first two Random 365 pages; it’s a FUN project this year! I also hope you enjoyed that bit of floral spring and if you are in the snowed under part of the world, the promise this cold and white stuff gives us for the coming months!