The Crafty Insomniac: So... Where Does the "Crafty" Come In?

As I'm sure a lot of bloggers do when they finally decide to jump into the world of baring their lives to the World Wide Web, I struggled with the name. What should I call myself? My Blog? I wanted to be clever, but I wasn't really feeling that clever. I wanted to reflect on myself as a person, as who I am, but who am I? Well, as my profile states, I'm a mom. I'm a Girl Scout leader. I'm a scrapbooker. And I don't sleep. I turned to my dear group of friends for suggestions, and they had some good ones, but I came up with two on my own and texted them to a friend to choose. Did I mention that I suck at making decisions?? Well, as you can see, The Crafty Insomniac won out. (Incidentally, my other choice was Kelbons for the Win!)

Side note... I Googled my blog the other night. Yes, "Googled" is a real word in my vocabulary. Deal with it. Right under my blog, which is the first result, there is another blogger with the same name! Crap! Fortunately, though, she has not posted anything in quite some time. And I thought I was so darn clever and original!!

Anyhoo, the craftiness, yes. What I do is scrapbook. And as I said before, the target of my craft 99.9% of the time is none other than Miss Sassypants herself. She has one album for each year of her life, birthday to birthday. And I'll admit, my style has evolved over the years. I'm at the point right now where I really like to keep it simple. Oh, and I LOVE to use my Cricut! Even if you don't scrap, you should own one. Seriously. They. Are. Awesome. (Shameless plug.) Over the past six months or so, however, I'd really been in a scrapbooking drought. I either didn't have time or I didn't have inspiration to do it. Even after I lost my job in April and thought, Wow! This is my chance to catch up! No, it didn't happen. You see, I have a method to this madness of mine. So one day in late July, I sat myself down and started out.

First, I make my list. I list out the pages I need/want to do. It usually involves me going through folders in my computer of photos, looking at what we've done together, since my memory is shot (Thanks, Lyme Disease!). After compiling my list, I go to my book. It's a binder filled with ideas and layouts that I've stolen from my favorite (now defunct, but don't even get me started on that) magazine, Pinterest, etc. I have them sorted by how many photos are in each layout. After that, it's time to shop. This was a lot more fun when I still had a full income. My store of choice is Hobby Lobby, as they seem to have the biggest selection of what I'm looking for, plus I love to hit them up when they have their sales: 50% off paper, 40% off stickers, etc. I'll take my "cheat sheets," my list and off we go! What I can't find there, I can usually find at Michaels or Jo-Ann Fabrics, but eBay is a great source as well. Then it's down to business. I prefer printing my own photos; that way I can get the sizes I need and I don't have to wait. All you need is a good photo printer and high-quality photo paper (I prefer a matte finish). A little time and patience and Voila!

Here, I modestly present to you (in no particular order because, apparently, that's how Blogger wanted them...) some of my recent work from Sassy's seven-year-old album: