Creative Crafting

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by Sharilyn Miller

Polymer clay is one of the most versatile craft mediums available to the modern artist. It’s easy to work with, appropriate for all age groups (with adult supervision), available in a rainbow of hues (including a sumptuous array of metallic and pearlescent colors), and can be used to make a wide variety of art-to-wear accessories, jewelry pieces, and embellishments. Before you begin using polymer clay for the first time, there are a few things that you should know.

CHOOSING & STORING POLYMER CLAY
Polymer clays are marketed under so many different brand names—Fimo, Super Sculpey, and Premo, to name a few—and in such a wide variety of colors that choosing your clay for the first time can be a challenge.

Most experience scrapbookers know what Digital Scrapbooking is, but there are still pockets of us who did not know.  We knew what digital meant, and we knew about scrapbooking, but combining the two just never occured to some of us.

As you know digital scrapbooking is using your computer and a software program to save your memories for yourself and generations to come.  You download your photos either from your digital camera or from a scanner.  I downloaded a free version of Fusion Foto to see if it were something I would like to do, and if I could come up with anything that resembled a scrapbook page.  I have to say I have never done scrapbooking of any sort, I have watched it done and have been fascinated.  I never thought I could do as I am challenged artistically in most things.  I am happy to say, I didn’t do bad.  I wish I could show you, but the free version of Fusion Foto, saves with watermarks all over the pictures.  But I am still having fun learning, and will purchase the complete program soon.  Then you will be able to see my masterpieces!

“A Day Without Scrapbooking Is A Day Without Sunshine- Anonymous”

As we all can see, the practice of Scrapbooking is quite a rage today. It has spread like wild fire all over. We see everyone around us indulging in this vibrant art. Scrapbooking can be called an art which employs the visual medium to preserve thoughts, ideas, feelings and memorabilia. The main focus of Scrapbooking is to create an impact through the visual medium. It uses several art and craft forms to do so. When a person surfs through his scrapbook after several years, it serves as an interesting read for him.

The art of Scrapbooking has had its origin long back. In ancient Greece, people preserved their thoughts, feelings, ideas, emotions and daily routine in notebooks called ‘hyponemata’. Commonplace notebooks which are a recent concept are also quite popular in preservation of thoughts and feelings. They are a concept allied to that of the scrapbook. The most famous people who maintained scrapbooks were Mark Twain and Thomas Jefferson.

I have never understood the need to scrapbook. I have friends that make page after page of photos, but never saw the allure of cutting and pasting pictures on top of one another.  At least that is how I saw it.

Although I do like doing things with my hands and letting the creative juices flow, the traditional method of scrapbooking never appealed to me.  Digital Scrapbooking, however, does appeal to me.

About three years ago, I started going through photo albums looking at the pictures of my children as they grew and they were in a hodgepodge of order.  Some were marked others were not, as I never seemed to have the time to put any order to the albums.  There were pictures in shoeboxes that just sat.  Pictures of the rest of my family when they were young, including pictures of my parents when they were children.  Pictures of grandparents I barely remember.  Some were fading, some were bent, and some even got stuck together because of dampness.

The girls on one of the many forums I belong to have got me hooked on Digital Scrapbooking. I tried traditional scrapbooking, but soon ran out of room for all the supplies, and after a while could not figure out what to do with the book I had made. One of the reasons I wanted to try scrapbooking was to get rid of books, not make more. The pages were cute, and I liked them, but I soon lost interest.

I am relatively new to Digital Scrapbooking, so I have nothing to show you as yet, give me a few months as I work slow. I did find this wonderful article and it pretty much explains why digital, at least for me, is better than traditional.

Digital Scrapbooking Versus Traditional Scrapbooking
May 20th, 2008 | By Articles | Category: Scrapbooking

Once I decided I wanted to do some scrapbooking, I had to think what I wanted to accomplish.  Did I want it to be just page after page of really cool looking photos, or did I want those photos to tell a story of our family.

My sister and I have embarked the last few years on a history of our family, we have taken our geneology back 150 years to our great, great grandfather on our mother’s side.  Considering they did not have photographic equipment back then, I wondered how I would incorporate those names onto a scrapbooking page? I found on the web a free pedigree site: http://www.misbach.org/pdfcharts/.  With these charts you can fill in the names of the ancestors that you have no pictures for, along with either current pictures of your family, or pictures of other ancestors in that line.  There are literally hundreds of possibilities.

I have a lot of friends who do crafting and when I said I was going to do this blog about crafting, once the laughter died down and they realized I was serious, the ideas and product recommendations started pouring in.

Here is one that my friend Jen recommended. Jen is into scrapbooking everything and anything she can find. She has a new baby, and every step of that babies life is documented in a scrapbook. I think it is great, so I asked her to help me with my scrapbooking pages, as quite frankly I don’t have a clue what it is a person needs to do scrapbooking.

When did the habit of wearing jewelry begin? Who were the first to pierce their ears or wear colored beads around their necks? Where did it start? Have you ever wondered about any of this when you are making jewelry or putting it on? I have; but then I tend to like the history of everyday life, so I looked into it.

I spent some time last month at the Detroit Art Institute and with every exhibit there seemed to be a piece of jewelry or ornament of some kind. While all were different according to region and time period, all of the ornamentation had something in common; it was made by someone who wanted to create something beautiful.