Stamping & Scrapping Rock Star Discovers Tinsel Trading

Another passion of mine is scrapbooking. I like vintage (rusty and slightly decrepit even better), I like metals, darker colors, travel and navigation themes, bits n' scraps of old prose in many languages, layers and layers of various papers. My favorite products are from 7 Gypsies and Tim Holtz -- they both fit my aesthetic.  I buy papers from many lines and wind up mixing them in a layout. Like I said, I like layers. I have about an 18" tall stack of papers to choose from right now, all categorized by my favorite topics to scrap about, each of which have their own colors and style.

Right now I'm working on more of an art piece book -- it's a journal that Amelia Earhart would have written if she had landed on an island in the Pacific and had survived for a bit. It fits my loves of navigation, flight, travel. And it's giving me a challenge to try to channel the imagination I had in childhood. It seems to have gotten beaten into submission by adulthood. What is it like to be in Amelia Earhart's shoes, stranded on an island? I'm still trying to reach that place. Right now I'm finishing the visuals of the pages and researching about Amelia to kick my imagination into gear for what she would have written.

I started this book on Mother's Day weekend, when I visited my mom and sister for a scrapping weekend. We had three fabulous days of scrapbook binge!!! Fun. We went to the Mega Scrap Meet in Novi, Michigan. My sister and I stalked the Stampers Anonymous booth to see Tim Holtz. His classes sold out within minutes, literally, so no chance of taking a class, but we did watch his demonstrations at the booth. And got a pic on the iPhone, of course! So now his blog shows that he discovered Tinsel Trading. Oh man, if he likes Tinsel Trading, that's even more reason I must get to NYC soon! They sell some products on the website but you know there are many more tantalizing vintage metal things in the store.

For now, I have pllllllllllllllllenty of new scrapbooking toys from the Mega Meet -- many new Stampers Anonymous stamps, pile of exotic papers, I am loving the Perfect Pearls product which I'm using to layer snippets of words and writing on papers. Vintaj Earth also has fabulous vintagey metals and looks like they're expanding into scrapbooking, with some products at Archivers stores.

But a really strange thing happened with this Amelia Earhart scrapbook. Flying and travel internationally are two of my loves. My husband has an airplane, a Piper Arrow, so I've dressed as Amelia for Halloween in the past and posed with the plane dressed as her because we happened to fly on Halloween!

So I'm researching Amelia's disappearance, as part of my background homework to figure out what to journal and write in this scrapbook. And I find this group, TIGHAR, that shows plausible evidence that Amelia in fact really may have landed on an island. In fact they just landed on the island for their ninth or tenth mission there to uncover more evidence. This time, they'd like to find DNA for indisputable truth about what happened to Amelia. Wow, what timing. This is giving me lots of material, so I'm pretending she did in fact land on Gardner Island, which it was called in 1937 when she disappeared, and the pictures and details about the island online give good inspiration.

I'm finding my natural aesthetic and interests work well for this project: metals, old looking stuff, navigation, travel ...

So, back to working on the book so there will be photos to post soon ...