scrapologie

What happened to Autumn?

I just can't believe that this pic was taken two short weekends ago. We went from summer straight to pre-winter conditions here in Central Ohio. It's freezing and cold!! And I am so an autumn person - I LOVE Autumn! So to Walmart this weekend for a substitute costume - Alekha had one of those lovely diaphanous Tinkerbelle costumes from Disney that she was going to wear Monday night for Trick or Treating but there is no way I am sending her out in that now! So I think we'll have to go get a fuzzy Elmo to wear instead. A stroke of disappointment to my girlish heart but ah well - there's always next year! One thing I particularly enjoy is that every year, our neighbors all band together and set up a couple of folding tables at the end of the street. We take our chairs down there and someone brings a portable heating source. We bring food and all our candy and everyone just hangs out at the end of the street for Halloween. A great sense of community and lotsa fun socializing! And that way the kids all just wait in line and walk past the table versus going door to door, though at times I do miss having trick or treaters come to my door! So today we are just going to do some fun activities. Bobby is going to catch the Bucks game, I am off to get my hair colored and cut and then we are gonna catch Boo at the Zoo again tonight. She loves all the pumpkins and gets the biggest kick out of seeing them and the characters at the zoo. Hope everyone gets to do some fun Autumn activities this weekend and celebrate with the ones you love!

In search of designing women (or men)...

So I write this on the eve of the announcement of the call for designers. By the time you read this, I hope you are sharing in my excitement at having at scrapologie, five amazing women who have supported me in this early stage of scrapologie’s existence. At some point I will blog about these designers and who they are, including the ones who will join us in November, after we make the final additions to the design team. But today I wanted to tell you a little about why I invited these five women to be a part of the scrapologie community.

I invited these women to be a part of the scrapologie community because I want my design team be phenomenal. And I have found that you draw the best by surrounding yourself with the best. These five women, are, in my opinion, absolute stars. Their passion for design, their love of scrapbooking, their artistic and stylistic expression qualifies each of them as masterful designers and visionaries. Their work is awe-inspiring and trend setting. Each one of them brings distinctive and special gifts to the scrapologie community.

I want to bring the members of scrapologie the best we have to offer. Only the best products, a wonderful and warm community and message boards, top-notch customer service and an unbelievably talented design team that inspires you to be the best artist you can be. That is my personal mission.

By bringing in this team of amazingly talented women, I feel we are giving you the best that scrapologie has to offer and setting the stage for you to give your best to your own artistic pursuits, whether or not you intend to pursue a design team position. Those who are offered a design team position in the days to come will not only be stars in their own right, but will be working alongside an absolutely fantastic design team. This will be an amazing opportunity – to design in the company of such inspiring and talented women – and to be able to learn from each other. It is going to be a truly incredible experience. I am very lucky to be able to call these women my designers, and look forward to those who will join them!

I want to thank them for the support they have shown in me and in scrapologie. And most importantly, I want to thank the members for the outpouring of support you have shown me and the site.

I am so excited to begin our search for the remaining members of the scrapologie design team. I encourage all of you to apply and to give it your best. The interest in the design team positions has touched and overwhelmed me and I don’t know how I will begin to make the decisions that I will make in the days to come with the amazing talent I have seen. I wish all of you the best of luck and look forward to meeting our new designers.

the dream that is scrapologie

So let's talk about scrapologie. I've been wanting to do this blog entry for awhile now. I always envisioned myself on the design side of this industry. So now, to be standing on the business side, I find myself a little dazed as to how I got here, totally an Alice-in-Wonderland-falling-through-the-rabbit-hole experience. It certainly has been a wild ride. And the two people that I have to credit with getting me here --- my husband Bobby and my brother-in-law Amit. Bobby for believing in the dream and Amit for enabling the dream to become a reality. The truth is, I have really missed the design side and I get a little annoyed at not being able to get my daily creative fix. But I know it will always be there waiting for me when I am ready to get back to it. And in the interim, I am very happily fulfilling the other half of this beautiful dream.

Which brings us to the dream that is scrapologie. A lot of people have asked me about the name, how it came about and why the "ie" ending. When I dreamed of starting my own site, several names came to mind but none really seemed to fit the vision that I had for the site. I had to think about the things that I loved and was passionate about in order to find the name. One of those things was scrapbooking. And another was beautiful design. The type of design that I see exemplified at Anthropologie. I remember the day when I discovered Anthropologie. I don't know how it happened but I received an Anthropologie catalog in my mailbox and it was love at first sight. Everything about Anthropologie intrigued me -- not least of all the name with the "ie" spelling. It imparted a sense of elegance and finesse. But also, the beauty and uniqueness of their merchandise, the way in which they merchandised their products, the gorgeous array of colors and designs all spoke to my aesthetic sense. But most importantly, I was impressed with the laid-back approach their products seemed to impart to life and living.  This is not to say that my house and closet are filled with Anthropologie products, it's more that I am struck with the concept and identity of this company. Anthropologie was, it seemed to me, a lifestyle.

So when I thought about what I wanted my site to be -- the answer came easily enough. A scrapbook's artist's lifestyle. Not just another site where one can purchase every scrapbooking product known to man but a site known for the selectiveness with which products are chosen to be featured in the store and in their kits.And I began to think of a quote by William Morris that I have long loved and am still trying to live up to:

If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

I wanted a site dedicated to scrapbooking for the sake of ART as much as for the sake of memory preservation and archiving. A site that acknowledges that scrapbookers are artists at heart -- albeit a range of wonderfully different artists, each with their own vision. And a site that acknowledges that every layout, every card, every altered piece contains a part of the artist's heart and soul. It's about simplicity, truth, and beauty. And that's what I envision for scrapologie. A design team that is passionately committed to the art of scrapologie. Individuals who scrap not simply because they want to keep their albums up to date ---- but those who scrapbook because they must. Because they are compelled and driven to respond to the creative energy force within them. I don't want a design team that follows trends --- but one that creates the trends that are followed. The kits -- the kits should be wonderful gifts you give to yourself every month --- something you do for yourself --- an act of love. The kits should be something you can indulge in,containing lovely and cherished, useful and beautiful things that will inspire and excite you to create. And my hope is that the design team behind scrapologie will also be a team of visioneers who will inspire and excite you with their creations, whether you copy them in entirety or use elements of those designs to kick start your own pages.

I want scrapologie to be a site where you can come for cutting edge design, where you can learn from design masters and learn to unleash your own creativity. Because it's not just about putting together albums to pass on to your children --- though this is a hugely important part of why we scrap, it is not the only reason why we scrap. I scrapbook because I must -- because it gives meaning and passion to my life, because it requires me to be introspective, because it compels me to push the limits of my creativity, because it has widened my ever-growing circle of friends, because it connects me to every single one of you who have ever completed a layout and felt a surge of happiness and pride, and because, by creating, we are defining and re-defining who we are and intimately in touch with the creative force that is life. And because by creating these works of art from life's little moments, we are creating and re-creating ourselves and leaving an imprint of our souls on pages for the world to see. This is the vision I have for scrapologie. And I hope you will come to share this vision too.

Wall Art

Before Alekha was born, we hired a mural artist to come in and paint a mural on the nursery wall. I chose an image from a children's book I had --- The Wind in the Willows, and the nursery turned out beautifully. I found out today that the artist now has his own site and has featured Alekha's nursery among others, on the site!

Check out his work here

Todd Brausch Studio

Alekha's nursery is the second one - the tree, river with the boat containing mole and rat gliding up the river, the little waterfall and house in the background. He even painted our Golden Wiggles (who is no more) into that picture. I love seeing the mural in Alekha's room - the colors he used are so golden that the room is filled with light even when the weather is overcast outside, you get the sense of a languid, sunny afternoon.

Thanks Todd for the beautiful work!

gifts of the heart

I had three grandparents growing up, two on my mom's side and my grandmother on my dad's side. All three were wonderful, incredible and amazing people. And someday I will tell you about my dad's mom, what an amazing woman she was, and how she impacted my life in so many, many ways.

But today, I want to tell you about my mom's mom and dad. And about a simple gift they gave me that means the world to me.

Washing dishes, I glance at the set of dinnerware we eat from every day. Nothing special. No Lenox, Spode, Wedgwood, Royal Doulton or Villeroy and Boch in this house. Not that it wouldn't be nice to have fine china. But the inexpensive Corningware dishes we eat from every day are far more valuable to me because they were given to me as a wedding present by my now deceased maternal grandfather and grandmother. My grandfather and grandmother lived in India and I did not grow up around them in the sense of those children who visit their grandparents regularly. I got to see them on special vacations taken to India or when they would come to the United States to visit. My grandparents came for summer vacations once in a while. My grandfather was a voracious reader, an author, a devoted diarist, letter writer, crossword puzzle enthusiast, and a very learned man. My grandmother loved to sew, crochet, embroider and knit, making beautiful lace doilies, bedspreads, tablecloths, wall hangings and giving them away freely to anyone who chanced to admire them. They would ocasionally bicker with each other, albeit affectionately, referring to themselves as "the old man" and "the old woman". Money they had not in great quantity but love they had and showered upon me and my sisters in seemingly endless supply. Both loved to play Scrabble and would engage the family in an evening of fun, everyone laughing and joking at silly words that we'd build while my grandfather, sternly and disapprovingly would remind us of the necessity for seriousness and decorum in the game. He always maintained a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, a thick, weighty book with a tattered brown cover. He enlightened us on words beginning with the letter q without the necessity of the letter u after it, such as qaid. He was a champion at placing seven letter words and a keen strategist. We spent many an evening gathered around the dining room table playing Scrabble, Boggle and Indian Rummy. My grandfather, highly dignified would voice disapproval at our antics and raucous laughter during the game, but I sensed he found us amusing in spite of that.

My grandparents regaled us with stories of my mother's childhood and stories of our own brief stays with them and childhood in India. In addition to being a wonderful crafter, my grandmother also wrote stories, having been taught English by my grandfather and was an avid reader and learned as well. She had a sense of humor that was the perfect offset to my grandfather's serious demeanor (though he always had a twinkle in his eye!) They loved us very, very much and seemed to do all they could to make up for the fact that they saw us so very little. We were three of several grandchildren, (12 in all) and though they saw us the least, they loved us as much as the others.

My grandfather also loved to enter contests and sweepstakes, filling out the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes mailings with diligence, in hopes that he could win a large amount and make life easier for his loved ones. So when, shortly before my wedding, my grandparents, short on money but long on love, presented to me as a wedding present, a set of corningware dishes that my grandfather had won as a secondary prize in one of his many sweepstakes entries, I was moved to tears. I recall how they apologized for not having very much to give me and I was embarrassed that they would think I'd take offense to that!

Little did I know at that time that they would pass away, within three weeks of one another, seven years later. My grandmother died peacefully and painlessly and my grandfather followed her three weeks later. They loved each other so much that I can't imagine he wanted to go on much longer without her. He remained on long enough for my mother to travel to India and see him one last time. 

It was over eleven years ago that they gave me that gift, and as I wash those dishes lovingly today, I take no notice of the chipped edges. Those plates are more precious to me than dishes of gold and silver because the amount of love they hold is immeasurable and priceless. I love you and miss you, Thatha and Monammai.

Look Mom! I'm blogging!

blah blah blah blah yada yada yada yada blah blah blah blah BLOG!