Scrapropos

This is the most frequent excuse I hear from people who say they WANT to scrapbook, but don’t…. or from people who’ve started and quit in frustration. I want to debunk that myth. And yes, it IS a myth. You ARE creative. Everyone is creative in their own way. As scrapbook guru Donna Downey says, “You are perfect just the way you create.” It’s true! Let me prove it to you.

I’ll admit that some people are blessed from birth with the creativity gene. But I absolutely believe that you can become creative even if you don’t feel that you’ve been blessed with natural creativity.

Honestly, I think I’ve experienced both. I’ve been blessed with creativity in many ways, but in other ways, it’s been a learned thing. Decorating and arranging and composition have always come naturally to me. Since I can remember, I’ve been a shutterbug. At a relatively young age, my portraits were good enough that friends and family started asking me to take portraits for them. I’ve always had a knack for arranging furniture and decorating; I’ve spent hours upon hours helping friends bring warmth and personality into their homes. These things just came naturally to me.

But when it comes to the arts, I’ve never felt naturally blessed. I’ve tried to do serious art, but my people always ALWAYS look like cartoons. I’ve tried to do calligraphy, but I’m just not good at it. And scrapbooking…. Seriously. If you think about it, most of my scrapwork is just art based on other art, copied from other art, inspired by other art. I once bemoaned that fact to my husband.

“I’m not really creative. Everything I do is really just a knockoff of something I’ve seen,” I whined.

He reassured me that ALL art is like that. There’s really not a brand new idea out there anywhere! Artists and creative types take what’s around them and adapt it. To some, that comes naturally. To others, it has to be learned. But it CAN be learned.

I know this from teaching women to scrapbook. At first, they’re so timid. They need me to hold their hands. They can’t make decisions about paper, layout, which photos….

They ALWAYS say, “I’m not creative.” But really, they ARE. It just takes them a while to find it. And when they do (and they always do), they SOAR!

The worst thing ANY artist can do is compare herself to another. If I tried to compare myself to Ali Edwards or Becky Higgins or Cathy Zielske or any of the other famous scrapbook artists out there, I’d surely think I didn’t have a creative bone in my body. So I don’t. I’m creative in my way, you’re creative in yours. We’ve all been blessed with a style all our own. Sometimes we just have to FIND it.

How, you ask?

Start by copying. No, seriously. Plunk down 5 bucks for a scrapbook magazine, and copy some of the layouts. Don’t be timid. Just dive in. Participate in challenges on scrapbooking message boards. Make yourself try a new technique. Give yourself assignments. Dare to step out of your normal holding pattern and explore other paths. THAT’S how you learn to be creative. Practice. Practice. Practice.

You’ll be amazed that once you start just DIVING IN, creativity will start to come naturally to you. But first ya gotta start.

One of my favorite songs - “Brave” by Nichole Nordeman -says,
“I’ve never known a fire that didn’t begin with a flame
And every storm starts with just a drop of rain”

…and so it is, I believe, with art. Nothing creative was ever accomplished without starting SOMEwhere. So…

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, BEGIN IT!”
- Goethe