I’m Sarah, a full time working mum to twin daughters who at twenty years old still live with us in Leicestershire as they both go through working apprenticeships, the rest of my family consists of our two dogs and a very patient football loving husband!
I have enjoyed any sort of crafting since childhood – life just wouldn’t be as rich without creating things and crafting gives me my relaxation and mental happy space! I will have a go at any crafts that I can get supplies for some much more successfully than others; I love to mix media in projects to see what I can come up with. My favourite crafts at the moment include silversmithing, parchment craft, needle felting, embroidery, crochet and tatting as well as glass fusing and making miniatures.
Despite being one of those people who made my own wedding invites and orders of service (in what seems like the distant past) I was only introduced to scrapbooking just under ten years ago when my now best friend moved to our village.
Finding ways to present years of random photos and exploring this different medium is a constant joy. I scrap and journal in lots of different formats from classic 12 x 12 spreads to smash book journals, ‘project life’ style card albums and unique hand bound or clipped albums that can and are made out of all sorts of materials. I’m an absolute magpie for collecting papers, embellishments and accessories that can be glued, clipped, bonded and sewn together.
Whilst I have previously exhibited some of my bits and bobs, artists trading cards and jewellery in local exhibitions I haven’t let my scrapbooking out of my studio before; which means my layouts have only been seen by the small group of friends I have made through scrapbooking who meet up to ‘catch-up, crop and craft’ twice a year.
This is the year I was determined to take on a few challenges as it’s my half century - so I took the plunge to put myself forward as a guest scrapper and Linda has certainly challenged me! I rarely worked from a curated collection of materials, so when my Memories and Photos Scrapbox kit arrived I wasn’t sure what I would get!
The pack is gorgeous and full of the sort of papers and embellishments I love to buy and hoard away to admire - but I couldn’t do that this time; I had to produce some pages! – the urge to run to my ‘stash’ for favourite extra bits was hard to resist, but I reigned it in and hopefully kept to the brief!
Once I got going I found using a curated set is really liberating and alongside Linda’s weekly sketches made me look at my photos in a whole new way – I’m often too literal with papers matching photo themes directly to the style of the backing paper for example ‘countryside’ photos to a floral backing, or baby pictures with a soft pastel theme – this broke me out of my fixation and has given me whole new perspective – hope you like my efforts!