A confession of sorts ...

I have a confession to make ... well not really a confession, just more information about me.  I own a papercraft store.  "Wonderful!" you might say, but life is not always sparkly in papercraft world.  It is just like any other business with ups and downs and customers you dream of bopping! (only sometimes!)  I had lost all passion for anything to do with paper which is why I started this blog.  I needed an outlet without judgment.

I recently moved back to a place I never really intended to live in again, and it seems that because of that one reason alone, everything I didn't like is emphasized ten times over.  I should have learned to never say "never again", as that is always the place we are meant to go!  I owned a craft store in our previous home and we decided to do it again here together, but on a much larger scale.  There is nothing wrong with the business sense of this decision, only with the people I interact with everyday.  I was viewing the people in this place with the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia.  I should have known better.

Yes, I own a papercraft store.  No, that does not make me a wonderful scrapbooker or cardmaker.  I am just like everyone else ... I LOVE to craft and as I come from a business background, owning a store is a natural progression of that.  Here, I am constantly asked "How many times have you been published?", "May I see your albums, as I must be able to learn from them!", "You didn't spend much on that layout" (here it is normal amongst the scrapbooking elite to spend over $15 on each layout!), and all sorts of nonsense like this.  If anyone ever sees my layouts I get that raised eyebrow response that means "This is what you do?  Why do you own a store?".  So in a very short space of time, I began to hate paper, inks, sparkles and anything to do with any papercraft of any kind.  Isn't it amazing how much peoples comments affect us?

So I decided to ignore all of them, and I went back to the one thing I knew I loved.  If you were to ask me who I admire most in the scrapbooking industry, it would be Shimelle.  I have loved her style since I first saw a layout by her in a magazine a long time ago.  The clincher was a layout Shimelle once did featuring her Docs (Doc Martin shoes).  That was the first year I voted for her in a magazine asking for your favourite scrapbooker.  I do not know Shimelle, but I have had the privledge of meeting her and that was very exciting for me, especially as I don't have very many idols.  I love that she encourages you to be yourself and tell your story, whatever that may be for you.  The best thing I did was take a step back from all the negativity I am surrounded with and start reading her blog again.

And now I am inspired to keep going and just be myself.  Yes, I love to play with paper.  No, not every experiment works.  But each layout is part of who I am, even the ones I don't really like!  I am glad I did Shimelle's 'Blogging for Scrapbookers' online class.  It is never to late to join up and it is lots of fun.  I feel like I have an outlet to be myself whenever I may choose to blog something.  I joined two other classes of Shimelle's in the past 18 months but didn't end up doing anything other than printing the prompts.  I am now ready to go back and do them.  I WANT TO CREATE, even if I am the only one who likes the finished product.  I got that raised eyebrow response last night at one of the bi-monthly 6hr crops I run at the store.  I wanted to hide in a hole and cry ... but then the eye-brow-raisers would win.  And we can't have that now can we :-)

So I am going to go on and enjoy creating (and secretly hope that NONE of my customers find this blog LOL).  No, you may not like everything I post on here.  Yes, I am going to have fun and post anyway.  This may sound like everything about our store is bad.  Don't worry, it isn't.  I have met some wonderful people who all happily scrapbook in their own style without worrying about all the other peripheral agendas that surround them.  And they are why I keep turning up for work each day.

So don't let other people tell you what you should be doing.  Do what you know is right for your project and just enjoy it.  It is only paper and glue after all :-)

Chipper

P.S. thanks for reading my venting :-)  I needed it.