Stumbled a new thread on UKS called Sunday Bloggers, which led me to Scrappyfairy's blog, which kept me entertained for quite awhile, although all the cool bits on her blog clogged up my poor old laptop for  awhile! Then that led me to the Scrapitude board which led to... me not getting any school reports written!

Somewhere in all that I found out about Quickutz new machine Revolution which uses your old dies and allows you to cut bigger letters too. Woot!

So back to the Sunday Bloggers, Scrappy Fairy asks:
Where do you find your inspiration? Especially when going through a dry spell?
If I am inspired by a subject, I am never short of ideas, but sometimes it takes awhile to figure out what I want to scrap. The whole reason I got into scrapbooking was that I am a terrible hoarder and a sentamentalist to boot (I bet none of you have your first packet of The Pill saved in a memory box :D)! So for me, the whole purpose of scrapbooking is to reduce that stack of mementos and use them to let the photos tell their own story. No more "So this is Brian and Daphne by the waterfall. And here they are in front of the restaurant. That was the best restaurant... Teddy and June's wasn't it? No Tommy and Jane's... hold on." Actually it doesn't seem to be working out that way, I have more than ever, I suspect.

Do you remember a specific moment when a light bulb went on "click" and you knew you had to get home to scrap!!
Our entire trip on the cross-Canada train and during our stay in Vancouver! But have I finished scrapping it? Em, no.

What common day objects do you now view with a scrappers eye?
Art-journalling has had more of an effect on my magpie-packrat tendencies than scrapbooking. To answer the question directly though... coasters and bottle caps. I'm a menace in pubs. Actually I did get barred in a pub once in Dublin for tearing up beer mats. Not many, just two!

I am thinking more countdown than showdown!

So much art on the horizon, it is so exciting. The first date looming is Scrapmanic VI, starting a week on Friday. The classes I am taking are something like: bling it on; mad about ads; and box clever. The tricky thing is that I want to finish my "You Think You Know Me" album and my scrapped portfolio from my Betterphoto course last year before I go. And there is always the mad Photoboxing rush!

Meanwhile, Artfest! Woohoo! Have I even told you I am going? I am so excited and so scared, it will be like nothing I have ever done before. But I am sure that it is going to be amazing. In the meantime, I have signed up for a fat book to commemorate Artfest 2007. I've been involved in circle journals before, but nothing like this. We will all need to make 30 or even 60 copies of our page, but not just copied, embellished as well. On the other hand though, you only need one good idea. It will be interesting to learn about my creative process I think, to be working in assembly line fashion almost, and to a deadline. The other item I want to get going on is charms for the charm exchange. Have a look at this gorgeous page that was shared by somebody on the artbase mailing list.

The big event for today was getting my photo taken for You Think You Know Me book. A big deal for me, as I am only very rarely comfortable with photos of myself, least of all demanding photos be taken of me. But, the book explores ten moods of me, so we need 10 photos, right? So my most trusted friend and photographer came round, I threw back a beer - I'm not recommending that for every situation you feel uncomfortable with, but for an uncomfortable photo shoot on a Saturday afternoon, it seemed like the way to go. I'm going through them now, and I'm pretty happy. The initial sort put 29 photos in the No! file and 32 in the Maybe file. Now I am trying to narrow it down to one photo per mood.

Yesterday we had a late night scrapping session and I finally carried on with my Learn Something New Everyday book (also from a Shimelle course). I stopped making pages after a  local tragedy made everything seem trivial for awhile. I really wanted to finish though, and am happy with the two pages I made last night. I think I will give put them into their own album on here.