Red Carpet Extravaganza

Last night was my first red carpet extravaganza in the Twin Cities. Okay, I don't think that there was actually a red carpet, but it was a movie premier! Minda, Kate, Nancy and I headed to the Minneapolis Woman's Club to view the premier of Scrapped! The Movie.

Our connection with the movie started months and months ago when I received an e-mail with a link to a couple of fantastically hilarious movie promos for a movie about scrapbooking created by a hunting, biker guy. I loved him the minute that he shot his scrapbook and then made a great scrapbooking page by incorporating the holes made by the bullets into his layout. I forwarded the link to Minda. She had received the link from another scrapbooking group a little earlier and had just deleted it. When she received a second request to view it, she decided to give it a try. She, too, fell in love with the concept and she e-mailed Wes, the director and creator, immediately. An instant friendship sparked.

I really didn't know what to expect about the movie from the promos. Would this be a biker guy trying to integrate into the scrapbooking culture? Would it be a farce about scrapbooking (not that we have ever seen any of those!!)? Well, last night, I was blown away. Wes did a true documentary on the scrapbooking world by focusing on a couple of key areas: Why do scrapbooker scrapbook? What are the products used by scrapbookers? I was pleased with the diverse group of scrapbookers that he incorporated into his movie. He has men and women from different cultures who all scrapbook for different reasons. There were several touching personal documentaries from each of the contributors. The only thing that I was disappointed in was that the focus of the movie was primarily archival scrapbooking and there was only a small segment near the end of the movie about art scrapbooking and a small clip where Wes altered (ie. sandpapered, painted, etc.) his page. I suppose I am disappointed in the limited quantity of that type of scrapbooker because I am a mix of the two, so I don't feel that I was represented in the movie. However, as we learned from the movie, it isn't really about how we scrapbook, it is more about why we scrapbook and the connections with ourselves, our family, and our history that we make and discover during the scrapbooking process.

Talking about connections....
One of the things that I love about being part of the scrapbooking community is that almost everyone is a loving and trusting person. I have to include the "almost" because I have met some crabby people, but they are definitely the minority. There is something that opens you up to other scrapbookers when you have the commonality of understanding that this is something that we love and something that is helping us grow as people. We make connections and we even network through the scrapbooking community. Last night, I was able to reconnect with some women who I used to see all the time when I worked at a local scrapbook store. I haven't seen one of them, Julie, for probably a year or two. It was like we picked up right where we left off. Julie is one of the founding members of a scrapbooking sorority, Delta Phi Scrappa, and she told me a great story about women in her group networking. One of the husband's of a member of the sorority had a massive heart attack. When he was admitted into the hospital, the wife was thrilled to see two of her fellow "sisters" working as nurses on her husband's floor. The "sisters" helped to make the family more comfortable and made extra visits to their "sister's" husband while he was in the hospital. This is just one of the examples of the amazing network that scrapbookers have developed. I have to admit that I have pulled away from that arena a bit in the last year or so. I did this when I quit the store when I realized that I was attempting to maintain a crazy schedule between working full time, having a family with two small boys, and working at the store. I pulled away not because I didn't like the people, but more because I felt that it was becoming an obsessive part of my life. I needed to step back and actually start using some of the product that I had collected over the years that I worked at the store, but had no time to use. So, instead, I have focused my energy on going on one to two weekend retreats with friends. I have also started an evening scrapbooking group at my church. It has opened up a whole new world of friendships and connections within my church community.

Another aspect about the movie that I loved was a segment where Wes interviewed Christine Smith. I know Christine by name because she is an amazing digital scrapbooker who was helping me out when I was participating in the Designing with Digital challenge. I really need to re-watch her segment (luckily, we received copies of the movie in our goodie bags) because I feel that I connected with hers the most. She pointed out how she captures moments, good and bad, to record and remember the moment. It made me pause and think about why I scrapbook - I love to do the chronological pages because it brings such great pleasure to my children to see their pictures of their special events, but I have started to more non-chronological work and I find it very satisfying. Little pages about why I love to be a Mom. I also thought up another page the I need/want to do. It has to do with why I garden. My garden is a mess, but every year I plant a garden. We often don't even harvest the vegetables because we forget about them until they are too woody to even eat. I started to think about why I even bother and I realized that it has to do with the fact that it is my connection with my Great Grandmother Lena and my Grandmother Lula. I grow sunflowers every year because of my Great Grandmother. She grew one sunflower a year directly outside her kitchen window. I loved to watch it grow; I loved to view it from the kitchen window; and I loved to feel dwarfed by it when I stood under it in the fall. I grow beets because of my Grandma. I don't remember much about her, but I do have a vivid memory of her hands in the sink washing, peeling, and canning the beets that she grew. The work to can the beets destroyed her hands every year. They would swell and crack open (she must have been allergic to them), but she grew them and canned them every year. I was about to write that she loved them, but I don't really know that fact. I just know that it is a memory that I have of her being who she was.

Okay, I'm getting a little weepy and I have a house to clean, so I will write more about the festivities later.