Today I wanted to share with you a new project I recently started which I am calling “Scraps of My Life”.

It’s going to be my place where I will document my stories and the bits and pieces of my life. Things that I like, things that I don’t like, my routines, my everyday, my ordinary, my extraordinary, what I think about, what I struggle with, my successes, my failures.

I find that I get so busy living life, that days, weeks and months pass in a blur.  When you’re always in fast forward it’s hard to appreciate life, it’s hard to appreciate your blessings, it’s hard to learn and to grow from your mistakes. That’s why I’m hoping that this project will really help me slow down, pay attention and bring what’s important back into focus.

I’m doing this for me – because I love to create.  No, more than that – I am passionate about creating.  I love color and texture, I love paint and drips and splatters and getting messy.  I love stamps and stickers, papers and embellishments. I love how creating art makes me feel.  I love that through art I have learned to shut off my brain and my inner critic and learned to follow my heart and my intuition – to let go and have fun.  When I create I lose myself, I lose track of time, I forget about problems and responsibilities. It’s like being a child again.

More than that though – I’m creating this for my children.  Because some day they may want to know and feel their mother.  Not just as a mother but as a person.  I lost my mother when I was 27 to cancer. I remember her as a strong, independent, formidable woman. There is so much about her that I don’t know, so much I wish I knew about her – her life, her experiences, her innermost thoughts, what she struggled with, what her hopes were, her dreams.  She was creative and talented in sewing, cooking and gardening, but she was not a story keeper, so now that she is gone all I have are my memories.  I don’t want my children to feel that hole in their soul that I feel when I think about my mother.

So all of that, is what this project is about.

I’ve decided that this project is going to incorporate a little bit of everything that I love – art journaling, mixed media, scrapbooking and Project Life style pocket pages.  I wanted something manageable, flexible and portable.  As much as I love how much room 12 x 12 albums give you – they take up a lot of room on a shelf – and not every shelf is sized to fit them either (ask me how I know – that’s how I used to scrapbook LOL).

I’m putting It together in the Simple Stories Black 6″ x 8″ Burlap Binder.  Can I say – I LOVE this album.  I love chevrons, I love the texture of burlap and I love the contrast of black and kraft.

The album itself is actually bigger than 6″ x 8″ – it’s actually 8.25″ wide by 8.75″ high. The 6″ x 8″ dimension actually designates the size of the page that fits into the biggest page protector. Now as I mentioned, my album will be a mix of pages.  In some cases I will be using the various sized pocket pages that are available for this sized album. A lot of the time I will be creating my own pages using various materials – scrapbook papers, chipboard, paper bags, tags etc.  Full pages like the ones you see in the pictures below I have made 7″ wide by 8.5″ high which is the size of the actual pocket page protectors, but I will be likely adding in pages and envelopes and tags in different sizes simply because I love the look.

A note about the supplies.  My intent with this project is to dig into my stash.  I have so many delicious goodies that I have been collecting hoarding for eons that are no longer available for purchase (which is why I always hesitate to use them).  It’s going to be all about using colors, mediums, stamps, stickers, papers and other embellishments that I love. I’ll be using a mix of old stuff and new stuff, because I add to my stash on a monthly basis LOL (I subscribe to a few of the Studio Calico kits and the OHDEERME Kit by Freckled Fawn).

Below is a picture of my title page – I created this page directly on one of the chipboard dividers that came with another one of their 6″ x 8″ albums.  The paint colors are from my Liquitex pens, I created all the word bubbles by hand using my  new favorite pen – the Fude ball point pen.  The “Scraps of my Life” I wrote by hand, everything else comes from a combination of different stamp sets. The puffy stickers came from one of my OHDEERME kits.

This is the back of the title page.  I guess you could say it’s my “Why” or what this album is about.  I created the text on my computer using a variety of fun fonts (I LOVE fonts) and then printed it out on a sheet of grid paper that I pilfered from the same album that the chipboard page divider I used above came from.  I created the watercolored look with my Dylusions sprays.  added a few stamps – the chevron and the city scape.

My second page is this Hello 43 Page which uses a whole bunch of fun stuff: Studio Calico/American Crafts products, stencils with inks, sewing, enamel dots, resin flowers, stickers, thread, doilies, splats…..you name it.  Went a little crazy with embellishing it, but I love it!  You can read the story behind this page here.

Here are my pages in the binder:

My next page is about the importance of honoring our stories. You can read about my thoughts here.

This is another what I like to call “arty” page. It’s an arty page where I share my thoughts and struggles about just being me. You can read about that here.

I have created a couple of other pages as well, one of them for my Destination Unknown story, but I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to include it in this album. And that’s the beauty of this project for me – I can still create with freedom, but because I know I have an “out” – it satisfies and quiets the perfectionist critic inside me.

One last note I wanted to leave you with.  You may be wondering why I am linking to my A Fierce Fabulous Life blog with these pages – why I share stories one place and the creative aspect in another – why I don’t have everything on the same blog.  I decided awhile ago that I wanted the A Fierce Fabulous Life blog to be more of a personal blog – or a story sharing blog.  It shares stories about an ordinary woman (me) trying to live an extraordinary life.  It just happens that I share my stories best through creative means – so I use art to illustrate my stories.  But that blog is not about the art or the creative process.

This blog – my Andrea Walford Designs blog – is my crafty, arty blog – so it goes more into creative details which I don’t share at all on my other blog.

Anyways, this is what I am up to when I am not creating for Paper Crafter’s Library.

I hope you enjoyed today’s post and I would like to wish all my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope you enjoy a wonderfully blessed holiday celebrating with family and friends.