My artistic journey

Chris’ comment on my blog got me to thinking about how I decided to start bookbinding, and my artistic journey in general, so I figured I would share it.

I remember when I was young loving to doodle, and do artsy type things.  I was very excited when art was a choice in junior hight school and I loved my art class.  The next year I had too many classes that I wanted and needed to take, and there just wasn’t room for art, but it was always a dream to take art classes.

Well life got busy and the next thing I knew I was a mother.  My sister started me scrapbooking.  Then my other sister invited me to a CTMH (rubber stamp) party.  I wasn’t going to buy anything, but came home with one set that I was going to use to scrapbook.

I don’t think I have scrapbooked since that day.  I fell in love with rubberstamping.  Since I have never learned to draw or paint, it gave me away to be artistic.  I could take other peoples images and play with them and make something I was proud of and enjoyed.

People would often look at my cards and tell me they wished they could do that, and I would often think, well I can show anybody how to make that card.  It was quite awhile, before I realized that what they wanted was not to be walked through making a card, but to decide on their own how to group the colors and images to make something beautiful.  That was when I started realizing that maybe there was a little bit of an artist in me.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I wanted to branch out.  I wanted to make something other than just cards.  I started seeing some of the incredible journals, books, and other items that Chris Peden and some of the other members from Stampsmith’s yahoo group made and I started to branch out.  I also really wanted to learn to bind journals.

I couldn’t find any classes, so I got Chris’ instructions, some bookbinding books, and set out to teach myself.

I fell in love and there has been no going back.