This fall I've been invited to be one of the presenters for the ScrapGirls Convention held in Salt Lake City. I'm supposed to teach a class, a unique class, something special, and something I'm good at. Talk about pressure! They at first suggested that I teach something about digital scrapbooking brushes since I have my Mastering Brushes Ebook about how to use brushes in digital scrapbooking. That made me cringe as I have gotten burned out of brushes from writing the books and teaching the class. I begged them to let me do anything else... so they left it up to me. I've been stewing over it for months now, wracking my brain as to what unique thing I have that I can teach that anyone would even care to learn. I've come up empty.
Finally after asking other designers for some ideas we came up with one direction that would be fairly easy. A technique that I'm asked about all the time from members on the boards, but I've been trying to figure out how to do it differently since I've written similar tutorials about the topic. I've been struggling this last week writing the class and it hasn't been happening. Talk about FRUSTRATING! Being a teacher I really believe to have to know and love your materials to really be able to teach it. I was not feeling this at all.
This morning I had an idea. I tried it out. It worked and I'm completely excited about it. Ironically it still has to do with brushes, but I've switched my mentality about it to the brushes that really excite me! So now I'm back to first base... rewriting the class materials... but now I'm on a roll. It's part of my passion which my former art teacher used to tell me, "If you love it and your passionate about it, then it's easy to teach it." Now I'm ready. I'll see you all in October. I hope your ready to get messy!
Supplies used in this layout: Overlayed Collection, Fall Watercolors Collection Mini, Smattering Collection, Dynamic Brushes: Paintstroke 5401, Dynamic Brushes: Splattered 4901.
Tomorrow night I'm going to be hosting a Faith Journey Crop at ScrapGirls in the chatroom @ 9:00 EST. It's basically a chance for those of all types of faith to get together and share their experiences and beliefs. It's a great chance to get strength from others who are trying to live their own faith. We will be encouraging them to write down or to scrap those spiritual experiences, trials, and things that are important to them and their growing faith.
Tomorrow night will be a pretty general topic of - "Your personal journey of faith." It will be relaxed with a chance to get to know those that would like to participate, and learning about each others background in their beliefs and where they are on their own personal journey. There will be a PDF given out with journaling topics, quotes, scriptures and the sample layout above using one of the journaling topics: What is the most important thing about your faith that you could leave your children or posterity?
We are hoping to continue having one every month on the 3rd Wednesday, and each time there will be a new topic. We'll also post the pdf here for any of you that might enjoy going through it and journaling your own thoughts of about the spiritual aspects of your life.
Feel free to join us! We would love to have anyone and all faiths are welcome. Just go to ScrapGirls and click on the the chat button. If it's your first time you will need to give a username for it to show up, and you need to have java installed on your computer. It will guide you through it.
I just got back from Minnesota where I have spent the last four days having the most incredible time hanging out with my fellow designers and friends from ScrapGirls. I thought I would share some videos that we took so those of you that missed it could see what these gals are like in real life. Hear their voices, see their faces and see a little bit of their personality shine through. (The video is a little bit rough, since we had to shrink the file size to fit it all into one - but you should still be able to get the basic idea of it. If you want the real actual high quality file, just let me know.)
We had a great time talking nonstop (literally) for four days with an occasional walk around Theresa's gorgeous property! (Thank you Theresa so much for letting us stay with you!) I have never felt closer and more comfortable to anyone than I did these guys. They are incredible, talented, wonderful people and I realized even more so what an incredible opportunity I have to work for ScrapGirls with these amazing people.
Beau even survived staying home with the kids for 4 days. I came home to a clean house, washed laundry, no dirty dishes, and happy children. (He even cleaned my office which was an unbelievable mess when I left.) Did I not marry a good guy or what!
