everyday | Plant Your Story

So. I love to play with paper. I love neutral krafty papers. I love pretty patterned papers. I love papers with beautiful color palettes. I love papers with realistic textures. I love papers that make you want to pet them even if they are digital. I love layering papers. I love cutting papers. I love using papers in fun shapes. I love using papers to frame photos, to blend photos, to mask photos, to create alphas, to use as mats.

And this love of paper probably goes a long long way in explaining just why I love Liz of Paislee Press so much (beyond the fact that she is completely made of awesome). She creates gorgeous papers that make my paper-loving heart go all a-twitter. She’s also a storyteller at heart I find myself effortlessly inspired by her beautiful work. So needless to say, when I laid eyes on Liz’s newest release (landing in her store on 20 April) I was smitten all over again.

I was instantly inspired to use the beautiful papers in Sorriso to create a design that framed and anchored this photograph of Bugga. I really wanted to create a balance of letting the photo AND the papers shine without one overpowering the other. And Liz made it easy by offering a cheerful and vintage-y palette and both big patterned papers and smaller patterned papers, as well as beautiful neutral papers.

And I knew this kit would really afford itself beautifully to my latest album that showcases a series of “todays” over time. I am scrapping a page every month or so that simply captures the beauty of one moment and then includes a stream of thoughts and feelings I have on that day. So this is “today i…” for 4.18.2011. In the end, these pages will be compiled together into an album mosaic of moments that will reveal the bigger picture and let my daughter and family see themselves and me through my eyes over time. It’s a fun and simple way to document the everydays and see a progression of our story.

So yeah. Liz has inspired me to create another page that helps me tell our story. And I love her for it.

For another peek at Sorriso inspiration that will no doubt WOW you, please wander over to Therese’s blog {HERE}. Therese is a dear inspiration to me and has such a beautiful and restrained voice in her storytelling. I think you’ll be taken in by her beautiful photographs and pages too!

I suppose I’ve always had a love affair with The Story. Although I didn’t always realize that’s just what it was. At least that’s not what I called it. I knew I loved to write. I knew I loved all the things that stories are made of: the characters and character development, the details of the moments, the plot, the tapestry of images and words and art. I knew I liked to collect memories. They lived in shoe boxes of stuff and in my photo albums and in my journals.

But it wasn’t until I started to document the characters and the details and the events in my own life, through photographs and through scrapbooking and through journaling, that I realized what I was really doing was: storytelling. Not in a fictional sense of the word, and not in a “sit right back and you’ll hear a tale” kind of way, or even in a “when I was a young gal, we had to walk uphill (both ways!) in the snow with no shoes” kind of way. This storytelling isn’t about tall tales or embellishments, it’s not about capturing, keeping or entertaining an audience.

It’s about documenting, about recording, about saying “I was here”, it’s about taking stock in life, it’s about celebrating the every day, it’s about finding your voice and getting to know yourself better, it’s about writing love letters to those I care about, it’s about keeping a family history, writing biographies and an autobiography, and it’s about building a legacy. It’s about things that matter. Not to the world. Not to Tom, Dick or Harry or Lady Gaga. Not to anyone else but those who matter to me. The ones I love, the ones I hope to teach and to learn from, the ones I share myself and my life with. I am recording our stories. And in the process, I am *writing* my own.

Anyway…all that is to say, I have a spark for telling my story and I feel there is a value in documenting our days that pours out beyond the page and into our lives. And I hope that this site will emerge as a source of inspiration and encouragement for anyone who finds themselves wanting to tell their own stories, whether they have a “pull” like I do, or if they feel like they don’t know where to start. I hope that, together, we can tell record our memories and document our days in a more meaningful way by planting our roots in the story.