I've got just one more subject to cover in my Style Reboot series, and the geekling in me has to admit that I've been just a wee bit too excited about it, because it's all about organization!!

Yes, I'm one of those freaks who genuinely enjoys organizing my stuff (did I mention that yesterday?), whether it be scrapbooking supplies or something else around my house. My heart goes pitter-patter at the mere mention of my label maker, and the sight of orderly shelves of color coordinated supplies makes my scrap room an over-the-moon happy kind of place for me to be.

There are several areas of my scrap room that I either totally reorganized or simply tweaked to fit in with my new processes, including storage for tiny embellishments (mostly the little bitty die-cuts), paper, kits, and my most used supplies. (If you want to see all of my scrap room organizational projects, check here under the Scrap Room category.)

Tiny Bits

That's what I've taken to calling packages of small die cuts, like this collection of K and Company pieces. I totally love them and want to use them constantly (especially for all those edge treatments I've become so fond of lately), but Oh.Em.Gee is it hard to find one to match my layout when they're all jumbled up in a package like this!

I've already sorted the rest of my embellishments by color, so it made total sense that these tiny treasures should make their way into my color bins, too. The problem is that they're so small and delicate that they could easily be lost and damaged amongst the larger items in the bins. Enter this set of smaller containers (sub-bins, if you will):

I picked up these small boxes (they have snap-on lids) in the food storage department of my local Big Lots store. If I recall correctly they came 4 in a pack for $3, and the bonus is that if I end up not liking them for the scrap room, they can be cleaned out and moved to the kitchen to use for packing lunches. So far so good, though- they're perfect for corralling small die cuts in the bigger compartments and little blingy bits in the small ones. These small boxes go right into by bigger color bins, so everything is still very accessible.

Background Papers

I find now that I mostly scrap on neutral cardstock as a base- kraft, brown, black, grey, white, or cream- so I pulled all of these papers out of my regular cardstock sotrage and put them in their own little spot near my scrapping desk.

I'm also using ledger papers as backgrounds a bit more now, so I filled a couple of Cropper Hoppers with them, too, and filed them next to my neutral cardstock.

Kits

Ever since I discovered the wonder that is the Counterfeit Kit Challenge, I've become quite the little kit scrapper. I love having a package of coordinated items at my fingertips, and the fact that it all came out of my stash (which theoretically means I liked it enough to buy it in the first place) and didn't cost me an extra cent is a huge bonus. Take, for example, Studio Calico's Lawn Party kit from last month- I made my own version (blogged here) totally from stash and subbed in some items I did like for items I didn't really care for in the original kit, making it totally personalized.

Also? Instead of pulling out tons of supplies every time I want to scrapbook a page, I only pull them out when I want to make a kit, which is a couple of times a month. This doesn't mean that I don't still pull individual items when I'm making layouts (especially for pages that are for a certain call or challenge), but on the whole I do way less rummaging through bins and a lot more putting stuff on pages now.

Patterned Paper

A side effect of all the kit-making is that it's now much more practical for me to store my patterned paper by color instead of manufacturer (since that's how I go searching for pieces when making kits). There are still some lines that I keep together, but I'm slowly moving the remainder of my patterned papers into organizers based on color. I work on this fifteen minutes at a stretch instead of doing all my paper in one shot.

Printing Photos

Possibly the biggest organizational change to come out my Style Reboot is in the way I print my photos. I wrote a long, detailed series of workflow posts last year about how I used to choose photos, select a sketch based on the number of photos, crop/resize the photos to fit, then fill standard-sized canvases with those photos to have printed.

I'm tired just thinking about it!!

Now photo printing is soooo easy. Once a month or so I go through photos from the previous month (I've started with current photos for now since I've printed and kitted so many pages from older photos already) to select and edit the ones I want to print (already having a bunch of photos edited for my monthly photo roundups really helps with this). Once I've selected those photos (I do this in Lightroom by throwing them all into a Quick Collection), I export them as JPG files to a folder on my desktop. From there I flip through them again (Mac OS X's Cover Flow is great for this) and decide if I'm going to print them as 4x6, 4x3, or 2x3 photos. Typically if I know I'm scrapping a photo by itself, it's automatically a 4x6 or 4x3 (mostly the latter). If it's a two-photo page, then they'll be printed as 4x3 photos 99% of the time. For 3-4 photo pages I use a 2x3 size. If I want to include lots of photos, but not necessarily on an actual layout, I'll print the extras at 4x6 to slide into page protectors right next to the layout in my album (more on that here).

All that may sound complicated, but it really only takes a few minutes (if you subtract out the actual editing part) to sort through photos and decide what to print and at what size. Notice that I don't do any resizing at this stage at all- instead, I have a "To Print" folder on my desktop that contains subfolders for images destined to be 4x6, 4x3, or 2x3, and I drop the exported JPG files right into these folders. At this point I wait to print until either A) a good coupon for a printing service comes along or B) I get the urge to scrap a certain photo.

If option A happens, I use Picasa's collage feature (I blogged about how to use it here) to create any 4x3 or 2x3 photo collages (by adding either 2 or 4 photos to a 4x6 canvas), then export the 4x6 collage from Picasa to upload to the printing service. If option B happens, my small 4x6 photo printer (which I now keep handy on my desk at all times) has options for printing 2 or 4 photos on a page right in the on-screen menu, no collaging necessary. Note that I use a really simple tools to do the collage step for me now. I do know how to do this in Photoshop Elements, but I don't enjoy it at all. Finding a way to eliminate a hated step in the printing process was a huge step toward making my scrapbooking process more streamlined and enjoyable.

The best part about the new photo printing workflow for me is that I'm printing a lot more special photos from events where maybe I only have a photo or two from each that I want to scrap. In the past I'd get a coupon for a printing service and spend days editing, cropping, and re-canvasing like a mad woman to get enough photos to fill an order. Unfortunately this meant that I'd often focus on big events with lots of photos (like my cruise album planning here) and skip over smaller evens in my rush to finish. Now whenever a coupon comes along I automatically have a pile of photos waiting that are ready to upload and print in a matter of minutes.

Packing for Crops

Can I just take a minute to say how easy it is to pack for crops now? With a pile of kits full of coordinating papers and embellishments and printed photos at the ready (or at least easily and quickly printed), I can just grab a kit or two, a stack of photos (I store printed photos by month in an Iris Photo Keeper case full of smaller cases), and my basic tools and go. I can literally be out the door for a crop in fifteen minutes or less. And if I decide to take extra tools with me, like my Fiskars Stamp Press (and some stamps, of course!) or my Sizzix Big Kick and some dies, I've got plenty of extra room to haul them along, too.

I hope you've enjoyed following along with my Style Reboot series as much as I've enjoyed sharing it with you. I feel like a whole new scrapper now that so many kinks have been worked out of the system!

style reboot | the rest of the story

I keep hinting that while I've happily settled in to a scrapbooking style that normally uses just one or two photos per page, I have grand plans for all those "other" photos that I want to make sure are in my albums.

You see, I'm this weirdo who develops serious guilt issues if I don't include a photo of Every.Single.Person who was at an event on my layouts. Do you have any idea what that does to page design mojo? It kills it!! Not because I don't want to include everyone, but because it seriously cramps my page making style to have to put eleventy billion pictures on a page. I feel like there's no room for the page to breathe when it's so full, and oxygen deprivation is just soooo not cool.

So now I pick just one or two photos that I really want to scrap, like I did for the layout below (that I shared earlier this week)...

...and the rest...

...are you ready for this....because it's really (not) earth-shattering...

...go in divided page protectors.

Yup, that's my whole grand plan. The big scheme. The rest of the story, as it were. And that last bit can be taken literally, because not only are divided page protectors a really fast, easy way to include more photos, but they give me more space to include longer journaling if I want to.

They also give me more space to add some quickly-cut chunks of patterned paper in the empty spots along with a few embellishments (totally optional) if I feel like adding them. Then I just plop the page(s) down in my albums right next to the layout it goes with, and everything coordinates beautifully.

The divided page protector idea isn't anything new or earth-shattering. In fact, it's not even original- I've admired Ali Edwards' use of them for several years now, they're an integral part of what makes Becky Higgins Project Life album so accessible, and May Flaum's post about her Disney photos from last year really are what got me thinking seriously about using them.

A really awesome thing about using divided protectors is that these days they come in all kinds of configurations. My favorites are the ones that hold different numbers of horizontal and vertical 4x6 photos, like the this one that I used for the page above. Being able to print just a couple of odd-sized photos for the actual layout and then ordering the rest as standard 4x6 prints saves so much editing, resizing, and cropping time that I used to spend in Photoshop. And later if I decide I want to scrapbook a layout using a photo in a divided protector, the image file is still there in Lightroom where I can export and print it at any size, and it's a mere 13 cents at my local Sam's Club to have a 4x6 processed (or I can use my 4x6 printer at home), so that's just something that I'm not even going to freak out over.

I think that this will also help me to get more photos into albums more quickly and not just keep them on my computer. Even if they're not "scrapbooked" per se, they're still in there and visible with all the rest of my memories (because goodness knows that I take waaaaaay too many photos to ever scrapbook them all, anyway).

So there you have the new "secret weapon" in my scrapbooking arsenal. And now I'm curious to know- do any of you guys scrap with divided page protectors? Do you have pages you can share? If so, link them up in the comments so we can all see!!

style reboot | the layouts

I've been skirting the edges of this post ever since I started the whole Style Reboot series. Until now I've only teased you with bits and pieces of layouts that I've creating using my newfound groove, but today I'm going to reveal the four pages that I shared sneak peeks of last week.

Are you ready? I know I am!!

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember my posts about the crazy (for Alabama, at least) snow days that we had in January and my tales of our non-sled-ownership and how our "trashboggans" came to be. I finally got some of that scrapbooked. :)

I love, love, love that I could pull just one photo out to tell the story with no pressure to make a big, balanced, multi-photo spread. I could just play with paper and pretties, and play I did! I didn't even use a paper trimmer for a lot of it, opting instead to channel my inner Jennifer Johner and go nuts with the scissors and make all kinds of crooked cuts. Lots of little pieces and lots of white space contribute to the open feel of this page.

Supplies | Patterned Paper: Cosmo Cricket (Mitten Weather), Hambly Screen Prints; Cardstock: Bazzill Basics Paper (Avalanche); Chipboard: Cosmo Cricket (Mitten Weather); Letter Stickers: Making Memories; Buttons: Papertrey Ink; Bling: KaiserCraft; Punch: Martha Stewart Crafts; Date Stamp: Office Supply; Pen: Zig Millenium

While I was on a snow day roll I pulled out a couple of photos from our snow kayaking adventures (taken on the day after the trashboggan event) and paired them up with some super bright papers to make a fun page.

Again, I made a lot of these cuts (epecially the strips) freehand. Love that! I also love that since my patterned paper pieces are so small I was able to get so many different patterns on the page without overwhelming everything. And those tone-on-tone white snowflake punches? Yeah, I'm really digging using my punches these days.

Supplies | Patterned Paper, Chipboard: Crate Paper (Snow Day); Cardstock: Bazzill Basics Paper (Avalanche); Letter Stickers: American Crafts; Rub-on: Hambly Screen Prints; Punch: Martha Stewart Crafts; Date Stamp: Office Supply; Pen: Staedtler

For this page about my niece, Sophie, and her first Easter basket I decided to go all out with the color using my May Counterfeit Kit. I misted the background paper (originally white) with Studio Calico's Mister Huey sprays, then wiped off the pre-embossed areas of the paper to let the damask show through.

I had fun scattering lots of little items across this page- punched patterned paper bunnies, buttons, brads, rubber charms, and a tiny piece of ruffled rose ribbon. I'm finding it so much easier to embellish my pages now that they're designed more around lines than blocks like my previous pages were.

Supplies | Patterned Paper: Sassafras, Anna Griffin, Pink Paislee (Parisian Anthology), Cosmo Cricket (DeLovely); Mist: Studio Calico (Piglet, Orchard); Letter Stickers: American Crafts (large), Basic Grey (small); Ribbon: American Crafts; Punch: Martha Stewart Crafts; Brads: Making Memories; Rubber Charm: KI Memories; Button: Papertrey Ink; Staples: Tim Holtz for Advantus; Date Stamp, Tag: Office Supply; Pen: Zig Millennium

For this last layout I reverted to my old favorite background paper- kraft cardstock. I love how colors really "pop" against it, and I felt that it went with the whole kind of urban, industrial feel of a Chipotle restaurant.

I moved the edge treatments to the sides rather than the top and bottom, then built embellishment clusters on each side so that they looked like they were "growing" out from the edges of the page. Some other favorite techniques and supplies on this layout are the ink splatter misting, washi tape, and some messy stitching for definition.

Supplies | Patterned Paper: Basic Grey (Black Tie), Pink Paislee (Old School); Cardstock: The Paper Studio; Letter Stickers: American Crafts (large), Cosmo Cricket (small); Mist: Tattered Angels (Slate); Buttons: Papertrey Ink; Journaling Spot: Becky Higgins (Project Life); Tape: mt; Punch: Martha Stewart Crafts; Date Stamp: Office Supply; Pen: Zig Millennium

Did you notice that all of these layouts also have some level of snarkiness about their journaling and titles? I've decided to move away from the longer journaling where I try to cram every detail of an event onto a page, and instead I'm letting my personality come through. I've got other places (such as my blog) for that journaling, and I've even got a space right in my scrapbooks for it. I'll be covering that, plus how I include extra photos in a coming post!

style reboot: the three who inspire me

Scrapbookers are famous for declaring they'll never do things "that way." They swear up and down that they'll never scrap 8.5x11 (or 12x12), that they'll never do two page layouts (or one page layouts), that they'll never do single photo layouts (or multi-photo layouts), that they'll never scrap just 4x6 photos (or that they'll never scrap anything but a 4x6)...you get the picture.

But then one day they see something that sparks an interest- they discover a new twist on a way of scrapbooking they'd never been interested in before, and everything changes. Suddenly another scrapper's project has made the previously unthinkable a reality, and before they know it they're off on an adventure.

I was that scrapper once- the one who thought I needed to only scrap multi-photo (though I didn't care much if they were one- or two-page) layouts with photos cropped to all kinds of odd little sizes to make them fit. And then one day I came across Jennifer Johner's pages, and it was like a breath of fresh air. Just one or two photos (occasionally more, but not often), lots of white space, and plenty of room to play.

I was hooked. I was in love. And I immediately started scraplifting.

Eventually I got tired of just scraplifting and wanted something of this style for my own. By this time I had also discovered the blogs of two other scrapbookers who shared similar (though definitely unique) styles, so I sat down to do a serious study of them. I wrote out (okay, so I typed it out) out a list of very specific things that appealed to me about each scrappers' layouts- everything from photo sizes to element placement- so that I would have a reference list for when I was stuck and needed a little kick-start to finish up a layout. I made something that I could reference for style ideas instead of just scraplifting whole pages.

This post is a glimpse of what I learned in that study (sprinkled throughout with more pages that I scraplifted from Jennifer's work). Please keep in mind that the items I'm going to share here pertain to my personal style of scrapbooking. Yours is most likely completely different from mine, and your list of scrapbookers whom you find inspirational is probably quite different, as well. My goal here isn't to tell you how you should be scrapping your pages- instead, I want to tell you how I discovered how I like to scrap mine.

Got it?

Good. :) Now, let's get on to this list of talented ladies, shall we?

Jennifer Johner (blog | gallery)

Discovering Jennifer's blog last summer was what got me started on this crazy journey in the first place. I was immediately drawn to how open and relaxed her pages were- to how her pages were so randomly layered and yet so balanced at the same time. I'd never experimented with smaller bits of paper like this, especially around the edges of the page. I love the pop of color and pattern it brings without overwhelming everything.

As I browsed through her layouts, I made a list that's at least a page long of specific items that I liked about them. A few (just as an example) of those items are: her use of mostly 2x3 and 4x3 photos, her use of small bits of patterned paper as accents, and the way she "scatters" embellishments on a page. The effect is simply stunning!

Marcy Penner (blog | gallery)

I can't quite recall exactly how I happened across Marcy's blog, but I'm ever so glad I did. Her photography is outstanding, and all of her pages have such a serene vibe about them that one can't help going all zen while looking at them. This girl makes me wanna clean up my white balance big time- I have the tool, I'm just often too lazy to use it.

Like Jennifer, Marcy uses smaller photos (again, lots of 2x3 and 4x3), small bits of patterned paper as accents, and scattered embellishments. The list of things I liked about Marcy's pages is just as long as Jennifer's and contains items such as her "ink splatter" misting method (she has a tutorial here), handwritten journaling and hand-drawn journaling lines, and her use of mostly white 12x12 cardstock as a background.

Marcy also has a wonderful post on her blog that walks through her page design process from start to finish. Such good stuff!

Maggie Holmes (blog)

Of the three mentioned here, I've probably followed Maggie's blog the longest. I believe I first discovered it through Studio Calico (she's on the design team), and then began to notice her gorgeous pages in Creating Keepsakes magazine. Maggie is an amazing photographer in addition to being a fantastic scrapbooker, and she even teaches online photography workshops.

Maggie's scrapbooking style, like Jennifer's and Marcy's, incorporates lots of white space and smaller photos for a clean, open feel. She's got a vibe all her own, though, and the main things that I picked out from her pages were her use of bright, solid colors for backgrounds, her use of small, concentrated sprays of color mists, and her talent for turned almost any small set of embellishments into a pennant banner. No doubt about it, this girl rocks the creative use of supplies!

 

So there you have my three. Notice I didn't say my top three, because there's no such thing. I chose to study these ladies' pages because they have a style that really strikes a chord with me, but I also subscribe to the blogs of many other talented scrappers and love to see what they do as well. No one style is better than another, some are just better fits for one scrapbooker than others all. Style is a very personal thing, and in the end it's all good stuff.

 I'll be back later this week with a post that finally reveals my new pages. Next week I have two more posts planned- one on how I easily incorporate multiple photos from an event when I'm only using one or two per layout, and the other on how I organize my space, print photos, and prep for crops now that I'm scrapping a bit differently than before (here's a hint- it's all a lot simpler now!).

style reboot: beginning near the end

Some of the best episodes of my favorite television shows start out by showing you the ending (or close to the ending) at the very start. It creates a sense of suspense and keeps viewers asking the question, "how did they get to that point?" It also helps to give context to the "earlier" events as they unfold over the rest of the episode.

I think that this same tactic can be applied to telling the story of my new scrapbooking style, so today I'm going to show (and tell) you exactly what it is that I've arrived at and love so much, and then subsequent posts will fill in the preceding events. I'll show you peeks and snippets of scrapbook pages to illustrate different items, but, just as those episodes I mentioned earlier wait until the very end to show the final resolution, the full reveal of those pages will have to wait for another post on another day.

With me? I hope so! (Though there are lots and lots of days when I'm not sure that I'm with me…but that's another series of posts entirely!)

I realize that I've been talking about a scrapbooking "style" as if it's something I could name. You know the standard ones- simple, shabby chic, graphic, grungy, etc. I think that we've all seen them used so many times that they've become overloaded and more than a little meaningless, and, besides, who actually scraps in one of these styles all the time? So, instead of focusing on giving it a name, I'm going to focus on specific elements- specific details of what I like and don't like to have on my pages. This isn't a complete list by any means, but it does hit the high points. Remember that styles of any kind be they fashion, home decor, or scrapbooking, are constantly evolving and changing. The same goes for personal styles, as well.

First up, my list of "likes"...

I like using one or two photos, usually 4x3 or 2x3 in size, though 3x3, 3x5, and 4x6 do get used a bit. Luckily, these sizes are all really easy to either order or to print from my home printer (on of those little 4x6 models) one or two at a time as I need them for a layout. I like just one or two smaller photos because it gives me more space to play with design on the page, plus I just dig white space in general.

A quick side note- I do often find myself with more than one or two photos from a particular event that I want to include in my albums. I have a whole other system for these that I will share in a later post!

I like using neutral backgrounds (white, cream, kraft, gray, black), though I'm not opposed to breaking out a sheet of colored cardstock or even a full sheet of patterned paper if it's what will work best for the photo.

I like small clusters of basic embellishments- buttons, brads, and maybe a flower or two. The "scatter" effect with these types of embellishments is also becoming a favorite technique.

Patterned paper is also one of my favorite embellishments, and I love to use small chunks (generally smaller than my photo) or strips of it either near the photo or along one or opposing sides of the page. I also use tiny bits of ribbon in the same way.

I like using small shapes (think all of those cute 1" Martha Stewart punches) punched from coordinating papers in my embellishment clusters.

I love color mists (especially opaque ones like Studio Calico's Mister Huey) used in small concentrations around the page or with the "ink splatter" effect.

I like my titles to not take up too much space- generally I'll spell out one word with Thickers, and if it's a multi-word title use tiny alphabet stickers to fill in the rest.

I like snark. Whether it's in the title or the journaling, you're likely to find some snarkiness on all of my pages now- it just fits my personality!

I like brief journaling on my layouts. I do have a space for longer journaling to live and will talk about that more in a later post.

My cheap-o date stamp and Staz-On ink in black or brown are my absolute favorite way to put a date on a layout.

I like messy stitching on my pages. Gone are the days of pulling top threads through and tying off my stitching in neat little knots on the backs of my layouts. Now I just backstitch a bit, cut the thread fairly close to the page, and move on. I actually like the look of those little bitty ends on top of my page!

I don't like extremely dimensional pages, so flat embellishments are best for me.

I don't like big blocks of things like photo collages or huge chunks of patterned paper that can only be embellished at the corners where they meet or somewhere in the middle (where it always feels "floating" to me). I think that when I look at a page that I've put together like that and it's already filled with so much pattern and color that my brain screams "enough!!" and refuses to come up with ways to add further embellishment. It just simply shuts down. It needs white space in order to function.

If you were to look around my house, you'd totally think that everything I just described about what I like (and don't like) on my layouts makes sense. My walls are all painted a soothing neutral (Sandstone Cove by Behr), and I bring in color by adding small accents- a vase here, a throw pillow there, and maybe a pretty quilt (or two, or three) on the beds. Photos and artwork are hung in groupings on the walls, but there's always plenty of neutral space surrounding them rather than having the walls completely covered. My scrapbooking style isn't something that I just arbitrarily pulled out of thin air one morning on a whim. It's a reflection of me- how I think, how I function, and how I live my life.

For those who are reading this looking for some insight into finding their own scrapping style, I have an assignment for you. As you go about the rest of your week and your weekend, pay attention to the things that you see around you that you like and don't like. Interesting product displays at the store, colors and patterns in clothing, arrangements and groupings of objects in your home- take a careful look at all of them and make notes (yes, I mean write it down or type it out) about what you do or don't care for. Take some time to sit down with your scrapbook albums (both older and current) and do the same for your pages. Don't worry about looking at pages as a whole, but instead focus on particular elements that you either love or that you want to avoid doing ever again. When you're done, print that list out (or tear it out of your notebook) and put it near your scrapping area where you can easily access it. Use it as a reminder when you're making your pages of what you do and don't like to do.

Next week I'll be back with a post on how I found a way to incorporate ideas from the scrapbookers who most inspire me without directly scraplifting them. It's been one of the most freeing parts of this whole process!

style reboot: finding my groove

Today I have a page to share with you- a page that started a massive shift in the way I'm scrapbooking now.

This is that page.

Not too long ago I made this layout, and then sat back and said "ugh." Not necessarily because it's ugly, but because it felt so uninspired, uncreative, and definitely un-me. After cranking out a few more in the same vein (many of which I've already complained about not liking on this blog), I finally determined that perhaps the string of constant multi-photo, straight-line layouts really isn't for me.

I felt just like Lara Croft in that scene from Tomb Raider on the morning after the bad guys completely demolished her house manor. You know, the one where the UPS dude brings her a package to sign and is looking around at the destruction in amazement, and she just grins and says, "I just woke up this morning and hated everything." Seriously, I just woke up one day and hated everything about the way I was scrapping.

This revelation prompted some soul-searching and serious studying of not only my layouts, but also the layouts of many, many scrapbookers that I admire- scrapbookers whose own style speaks to me on a level that's something beyond just scraplifting or even emulating their style, but instead inspires me to create something that's truly my own. I'll share some of those scrapbookers in a later post because I could write volumes on what I've learned just by looking through their blogs over the last couple of weeks.

During all this pondering of the future of my scrapbooking, I discovered that there were a few layouts that I've made in the last few months that I really do adore. I'll share a lot of those in my next post, as well, and one of them is posted here in an article I wrote for Scrapbook Update. That particular layout only took about 45 minutes to put together and came totally out of my own head instead of being one of my usual scraplifts. And I love it. Completely and utterly love it.

I think that I've finally found a style that I'm good with calling my own. One that means I'll no longer be scraplifting everything. One that will let me have fun and play with lots of one- and two-photo layouts on one hand while still incorporating lots of shots on the other (if that seems like an impossibility, then stay tuned for details on how I'm doing it!!). One that has settled once and for all the kinds of embellishments I really do like to use a lot (who knew I was a basics girl at heart?) and should save me from buying the wrong kinds of items in the future.

I want to take a moment before really jumping in to all of this to mention a wonderful class- Finding Your Way by Karen Grunberg- taught at Big Picture Classes earlier this year. Taking Karen's class was the catalyst that opened my eyes to the possibility that I *could* find my own style. She walked us through her very specific method that she used to find her scrapping groove, and I gained a lot of ideas and insight from taking the course (if it's ever offered again, I highly recommend that you sign up!!). What I didn't end up doing, though, was following her method. I took a very different path to finding my style, though she very much inspired me to do so in the first place. I'm mentioning all this because I don't want you to think that I'm simply regurgitating what I learned in Karen's class or somehow copying her ideas as my own- this is simply my perspective on the journey and my own methodology.

If you'd like to follow along with my style story, I'd like to invite you to come back and visit this space over the next couple of weeks as I share my journey in a series of posts about my style "reboot." They may not come one after the other since I'm writing them as I have time, but they will be fairly regular and there will be several of them before I'm done. A lot of the items I'll cover will be very, very specific to my style, but I'll try to share a few general concepts and tips that might just help you discover your own along the way.

What do you say? Are you with me? Have any burning questions before we get started? Leave a comment and ask away!!

Now, let the adventure begin...