Dirty Scraps Challenge! *warning this may offend some*

I love this world of scrap booking, even mistakes are made to be fun and forgivable. I love the creative freedom I have found. I love feeling like I belong somewhere I can feel talented, though next to most I still feel inept. I love the scrap booking family I have found online. These women who are so quick to praise me on my small offerings, though sometimes I am sure they are just being nice. I have made a point to absorb my scrappin love into a small electronically charged box, due to my lack of scrappy family in real life. Why would a woman, who has made statements saying how much fun and therapeutic it is to scrap all night with a few pots of coffee some great snacks and a couple of treasured friends, become so enveloped in a much less warm slightly less satisfying world of women she only knows from the internet?

Judgment!


It seems when I participate in a crop I feel their eyes, I can hear the turning of the wheels turning in their heads….”Hmmm what brand of paper is that….is that a Wal-mart stamp…she doesn’t have a cuddle bug…how can she not have that color of ink, stickles, ribbon? Why doesn’t she just go buy it…we are in a scrap store…why would she crop at a scrap store if she wasn’t gonna buy anything?” Sometime’s I get it online as well…I’ll find a great challenge that has a great prize, that I really would like to win….then I find out it has to be done with Basic Grey or Jillibean pps. I don’t have any…I rarely if ever do.

I would like to think of myself as a frugal scrapper…the truth of the matter is my family and I live on a very regulated budget. I can’t spend $20 or $40 at the scrap store every week…I usually don’t spend that on scrap supplies in a month. I know there are so much greater things I could be doing in my scrappin world if I had an unlimited supply of money to spend on such things…however I don’t. So I use what I have. People have asked me why I enter so many challenges online…duh!! To win prizes…don’t judge me because I’m honest…I would love to win with no prize if I won because someone thought my lo was the best out of all the entries…that hasn’t happened. So I enter to win things I perhaps cannot afford to buy…pps, stickles, adhesive…anything. I don’t appreciate the idea that people choose to judge me by my lack of Brand Names…I’m not a scrap snob. I will use supplies from the Dollar Store if I think it fits my needs. I don’t want you to feel sorry for the poor woman who can’t afford to buy the latest and greatest of everything in the scrap world…just a little compassion, perhaps take note of the ability I use to make things the hard way. Perhaps recognize how even with no name pp’s I manage to make a wonderful lo. Maybe even acknowledge that though my skill with a needle and thread may need serious attention I still plug on. I’m not ashamed of my work, I’m not ashamed that every lo I do will not have the latest and greatest of all things on it.

Think about it this way….and maybe your different maybe you scrap for a different reason here’s mine.

In 50 or 80 years when my 3rd great granddaughter is being handed these books so she may study them for a paper she’s doing on her great grandmother…she’s not going to notice the brand of paper…she’s not going to know if it was hand stitched or machine…more importantly she’s not gonna care. She’s gonna read the funny stories, and laugh at how backward our way of life was, she’s gonna read and hopefully begin to understand a little more about her G.G. she’s going to put the book away and do something with her own children or have a feeling or a divorce or something that will remind her of a lo in a book put there Oh so long ago…and she’s gonna appreciate that I took the time to make sure that 3 generation’s from now she’s knows she comes from hardy stock and she can handle this, or she can read about how I handled it. That is why I do this. That is why I feel there shouldn’t need to be the most expensive or coolest or newest tools or supplies…if I could yes I probably would be “that” kind of scrap booker. I can’t so I don’t. So when you see a lo done by me and it has last years making memories, or imaginese pp’s on it…because they were finally priced where I could afford them…due to being last season’s don’t think about what kind of looser would use last season’s supplies…think about how creative it was that I used pp’s to make flowers because I was out of flowers and the price for flowers is a crime! Just appreciate I’m the kind of woman who can manage to stay busy with a hobby that has become so overpriced and …though I hate to admit it…somewhat uppity in the last 5 or 6 years…Just know I do what I can with what I have….and I do a hell of a job at it I do say so myself!



This is my entry for Dirty Scraps "compassion" challenge...I know I say this all the time, but really if you haven't had the experience these ladies give, you have no idea what your missing! The challenge's these ladies come up with encourage raw honesty...these ladies are my new therapist's, they are so much more fun and cheaper!! lol!