Scrapbooking helps me to release my tense.

By:

Marini Mohd Thaib

Everyone has hobbies. Most of us choose a simple hobby to kill the time like watching movie, reading, baking, cooking and so on but many people also choose an artsy thing as a hobby like drawing, painting, crafting and etc.  Scrapbooking is my new hobby right now other than reading. Reading will be my number one hobby, nothing can beat that. 

I am not a creative person (although many people tell me so)… I am not even talented in drawing and painting so it is hard for me actually to scrapbooking. What I can tell about myself when it goes into artsy thing, I am quite good with combining scrap papers into something very nice and I call it as a scrapbooking. It is all about making messy with pattern or colored papers and come out with a cool designs and decorations.

Nothing has to be perfect when scrapbooking, you can do whatever you want to do. Well, scrapbook is from scrap papers after all. When I was young, I like to keep pattern and colored papers even though it was a small piece of paper. I love to collect recycle wrapping papers also. I started to collect cheap embellishments when I was in secondary school. However, I am starting doing scrapbooking recently but why now? It is because the time has come for me to show my ability to scrapbooking. Last time, I didn’t have enough money to buy art materials because they are so expensive. My art collections were so lame. So I have decided to have a good and quality art materials so I have started buying these things such as Big Shot (so expensive…RM500) , dies (also very expensive…a small die is almost RM100), pattern paper, stamping, chipboard embellishments, charms and etc. However, I am still looking for the cheaper materials too. I have a friend; she always buys the art supplies via online. She has been spent thousands to buy those things. For me, buying the Big Shot and die cuts will be the most expensive art supplies that I ever bought. Other than that, I will keep looking for the cheaper one. Moreover, I love doing “DIY embellishments” to cut the cost. The finishing is not so smooth but I am happy with it. I want to emphasize here, my husband is not really support my hobby, so I need to spend my own money to buy these art supplies. Well, recently he shows the interest of supporting my hobby. Maybe he had realized that this hobby can give me happiness. Hahaha.

I have interest in card making when I was young. The designs of my cards were so simple by using stickers and colored paper only. I gave to my best friends my handmade cards at every of their birthday.  I have tried scrapbooking twice (3 years ago) but I didn’t continue it because I didn’t have a nice embellishments but I have decided to scrapbooking one day so I have started to collect embellishments a few years ago and the time to accomplish my dreams has come. Now, I am doing my scrapbooking a few weeks ago. I have finished decorating 9 pages already.

Why I want to scrapbooking so much? This is my passionate. That’s why I love scrapbooking. I am doing this for my satisfaction so I don’t really care if people don’t feel my decoration is nice as long as it is nice in my eyes, it is enough for me. (But people keep complimenting my design in FB.hehe). For the past of couple weeks, my mind was lingered about how to decorate my page, what color should I use, what embellishment I need to use, how to put all the decoration in one place and so on. As I look at the examples of scrapbooking design in the internet and books, my heart is pounding and I can’t wait to finish up my first scrapbook but I cannot proceed to finish it because I do not have a printer in my house. That is one big obstacle that I face. We really need a printer when we want to scrapbooking. As my idea pouring out from my head, it is so ashamed that I cannot complete the design which I have in my mind. Luckily, my husband has colored printer at his office but I prefer to use color jet printer in my office. The color is more sharp and bright. So every time I have an idea, I have to make sure myself to sketch it on paper then I need to figure out the DIY printed embellishments and I have to wait for the next day to print the design at the office. So, it takes time.

When I am scrapbooking, I feel free. I do not feel any tense. I love to see my desk get messy with artsy things. For me, that is an ultimate satisfaction. I can be more creative when doing this activity. It can make my brain works too while generating the idea so scrapbooking is also one of the brain activities. I will keep doing this scrapbooking until I am old. Who knows, I can do business in scrapbooking one day. Furthermore, someone has booked one scrapbook from me. I will try to make sure this hobby becomes my side income one day.

Pen off.