Surrounded by crafts at home
as a child and now on a daily basis as a buyer for Hot Off The Press,
Stan Rickert recently began his own journey into the world of scrapbooking.
"I guess I can say that I have always wanted to do it, but didn't
really know where to start," Stan explains.
Stan began by taking a technique class last month, where he started on
his first two pages. "I enjoyed the class so much I couldn't wait
to get home to finish the pages—I think I was up until after 11
p.m. that night working on them. I learned through finishing these two
pages that this was not only fun, but also relatively easy."
For Stan, getting started was the most challenging part of scrapbooking.
However, once he had a bit of instruction and encouragement, the rest
fell right into place—it even seemed to come to him naturally.
"The photos really seem to inspire me," Stan says, "Once
you pull them out of the box and start working with them, they really
seem to talk to you. A relaxing feeling seems to overwhelm me when I'm
designing a page."
Scrapbooking is a very calming and thought-provoking pastime to Stan.
"It's been a really good workout for my mind. The feeling of accomplishment
after I've finished a page is very satisfying and fulfilling to me."
Though Stan is still relatively new to scrapbooking, he's excited to
try other forms of paper-crafting such as altered and handmade books.
He's particularly eager to work with all of the new ephemera,
fibers
and other embellishments that are in the market now. "Once I got
a taste of it, it was easy to see that there are really no limits to what
you can do," he said. "But, I think I'll do a bit more scrapbooking
before I dive into a good altered book."
 Here
Stan shares a layout he created as a tribute to his mother:
My mother was a lifelong, avid crafter. She could decoupage and embellish
literally anything and often did. She was decoupaging before decoupage
was cool. She also tried her hand at scrapbooking and loved paper. I remember
growing up that she would make me sit at the kitchen table and help glue
the eyes and noses on her clothespin reindeer at Christmas time. It seemed
to take weeks to finish them all, but in actuality it was only a few hours.
But, the fact that mom made me help her made it seem like a huge, never-ending
chore that as a teenager I wanted nothing to do with.
On January 12th of this year, my mom passed away. The never-ending chore
of hot gluing noses and eyes on tiny clothespin reindeer seemed to come
to a grinding halt. That was, until I inherited quite a bit of her crafting
supplies. As I was sorting through all that had come my way, everything
that once looked like clutter lying around her house suddenly had purpose
and a lot of meaning. I realized that this "stuff" was Mom's
life, which is why I created this page to honor her memory. This page
ended up looking nothing like I had envisioned when I began; from the
time I started to the time I finished, the page transformed into something
completely different than what was in my mind's eye.
When I finished this page, I stepped back and stared at it. I surprised
myself by how beautiful it had turned out. It was then that I realized
that I had inherited a lot more than her clutter of craft supplies—I
inherited her gift of creativity, I inherited her life. The memory of
my mother inspired me to do something that I never knew I had in me and
my dining room table has not been cleared since! Thank you, Mom, for showing
me that the clutter that I grew up with wasn't really clutter at all,
but the sign of a content and happy life.
Stan used the following supplies in this layout:
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