Inspiration For the Week

I really wanted to scrapbook tonight but I realized..I ran out of pictures!  A few months ago my trusty five year old computer kicked the bucket.  Luckily I was able to transfer all my music and picture files onto an external hard drive before we put the old girl to rest.  I transfered all my music to my new laptop but I left the pictures on the hard drive.  Most of them are either up on Facebook or scrapbooked already.  When I got this new computer I sort of stopped scrapbooking for a bit...all my pictures were gone, my photoshop software, saved websites.  It was so depressing, I stopped taking pictures.  So now I'm left with an urge to scrapbook and no pictures to go with it.  I need to change that this weekend.  Time to bust out the camera again.  

Also lost on my old computer was a giant excel document I've been keeping of "scrap challenges".  Every scrapbook magazine, book and website has "scrapbook challenges" or "editor's challenge" where they are like...incorporate a line from a song in your title or make a layout using only 1 color. I used to document them all (nerd alert) in an excel document so that if I'm ever lacking for inspiration I can pick one at random.   So now i need to start making it all over again. Instead of putting it in excel, I'm going to write them on leftover scraps of paper and put them in a jar. No randomizing formulas needed.

Anyway, sorry about the ramblings.  So this post isn't incredibly boring (or maybe it still will be, depends on your definition of the word boring) I decided to list a few things that are inspiring me this week:

1. Barnes and Nobles
I treat my barnes like a public library.  I love to go in there sit in the craft section and pull out a bunch of books.  Then I sit on the radiator with all the upper east side nannies letting their kids run wild in the children's section and browse through all the books.  Every once in a while I'll actually purchase a book but mostly I just like the pictures.

2. Project Life
Project Life scrapbooking was invented by Becky Higgins (Becky Higgins).  It's a kit containing an album, divided page pockets and other embellishments designed to get you to focus on life's moments and pictures rather than complicated scrapbooking.  Normally not my thing but I read Ali Edward's blog and that's when I got inspired to take my pictures of everyday life.

3. Mixed Media Collages

I love collages.  I've been obsessed with mixed media books lately.  Just the combination of pictures and colors is inspiring.

 

 

4. Google Reader's "More Like This" Button

I love to read blogs but I don't know how to find blogs. So sometimes for hours at a time I will just go through the blogs on my google reader and selecting "more like this" over and over and over again.  I've actually found some good blogs this way..although I don't think anyone will find my blog that way.  I don't know how anyone will find my blog.  I also sometimes use the "next blog" button on blogger but it seems I just get a lot of Jesus-loving blogs when I do that.

 

Short list this week. Hopefully there will be many pictures taken this weekend (and a long weekend at that - yay presidents day)!