{create}

yes, finally! i was able to pull my act together and came out with a lay-out! Yey! my first for the year! after being so overwhelmed with the amazing creations of Ali Edwards yesterday, i was so inspired to scrapbook.

this is the first time that i am not working on a sketch or scraplifting. i just gathered my photos and supplies and work my way into creating a page. i think part of the motivation also came from the free online class that i joined at Big Picture Scrapbooking entitled Embracing Perfection. and just a few weeks in the class, it hit me to the core of why i don't scrapbook the way i should. sure, i wanted to preserve my precious moments but i was just too afraid that my layouts would look too plain and simple compared to those of what others do. i am afraid to have mismatched colors and unproportioned layouts. i would spend time trying to figure out how my papers match with my limited supplies that i would end up frustrated and quit making the LO altogether. i am just soo afraid to have imperfect LOs. i am afraid that my family will not appreciate what i am doing.

but why do i scrapbook? does a layout have to be more important than the memories that i intend to preserve? sure that's part of scrapbooking but i think more than the visuals, it's still all about memory-keeping. i have friends who wanted to try out scrapbooking but i hear them say that they are not creative or they are not into arts. i always say that to them that we are on the same boat. i am not a born artist nor i am creative, but i just have this passion of wanting to preserve what i enjoy now so that i have something to look back to years from now.

maybe i just got it from my mom who is a "photo addict" because she likes to take pictures a lot and we had lots of photos when were kids. actually, even up to now that we have kids of our own. we have tons of albums! she told me once that she wants to have as many memories of the events in our lives and have those in pictures because she doesn't have any picutres when she was a child. how sad is that? so she delights in seeing those photos - it makes her really happy. and i want that. i think it's a legacy that i want to take on. that's where the passion is coming from.

so for those of us who are not gifted with such creativity, don't be discouraged. scrapbooking is also for us. because the very purpose of why we scrapbook is not how beautiful our layout will turn out, but it is how the memories come alive each time we see what we have created. how it brings us back to the moment and re-live those memories. pure joy!

i am still in the process of embracing everything altogether, slow-paced and all, but i know in my heart that nothing would stop me from documenting the everyday. and i am doing this for my family, to let them know that each moment with them are truly cherished, all worthy of the effort of putting it all up together - in a scrapbook layout.