Thanksgiving felt

I'm going to have to reinvent my identity. No matter how hard I try I can't always get into my scrap room even more than once a month, if that. I actually find myself creating even far more often, just not in the scrap room. In fact, my son and I have rearranged the former scrap/guest room and he now refers to it as the craft room. Initially I thought "that's great, he can craft and I can scrap" but in reality I find myself assisting him more often than not, and greatly enjoying it all the while.

So while I intended this to be a site dedicated to layouts of my prolific scrapping venture, I now find myself with a plethora of crafts to share, but with scrapbook layouts being the vast minority, and share I will, probably because I really like seeing myself talk (and I've always enjoyed the feel of the keys under my fingers—typing is so calming).

Last month, after weeks of my son begging for a felt board so that he could be "just like Miss Cathy", our children's librarian, I broke down and made him one. I looked online first, but they were all worth a pretty penny, and so were all the felt sets to go with them. So instead I bought a foam board and yard of dark blue felt. I stapled and hot glued the felt to the board and suddenly had a junior librarian on my hands. of course, a felt board isn't worth much without felt sets to go with it, so that first day I created a set of numbers and a variety of shapes for which I already had stencils, but over that next weekend I created an Old MacDonald set, complete with barn. It was fun—way too fun—and I've been in the business of making felt characters ever since.

In October I made a counting set of felt pumpkins, and for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday I just made a turkey with five feathers for a counting game, and a set of pilgrims, indians, and "traditional" foods and symbols to go with them. The set goes with a book we have by Alice Flanagan, (read our review here) and he loves "reading" the book to his imaginary library patrons while maneuvering the felt figures. Life is good.

Three Little Pumpkins

The sun is mostly in hiding, the cool air has arrived, and with the onset of indoor weather I have returned to my scrapping room and table. It felt great to sit back down and start creating again, which is funny because all through the summer I had no desire to do any scrapping at all and the only crafting I did consisted of tools like paste, construction paper, finger paints, and Crayolas. It was somewhat of a relief, then, to find myself seeking the scrapping table and enjoying my old haunt. I doubt I'll be as prolific of a scrapper as I have been in the past, and I think aiming for even one layout a week may be overly ambitious; my son will be three and a half next month and I am enjoying every minute of a life with my family that now includes the excitement of preparing for a homeschooling future.

But I have found my way back to my table. In the exuberance of my prodigal return I actually completed a handful of new layouts, including this one for the Got Sketch? ladies, who contacted me last week and asked for a submission for sketch #92. It's always fun creating for Valerie and Lynn—the sketches are wonderful on their site.



Most papers are by Basic Grey
Tiny alphas by Carolee's
Title is Thickers
Clock is a rubon by Glitz