Which Came First??? Blog Hop!! :)

Welcome to the "Which Came First???" Blog Hop!!

Who knew that a single piece of paper or a tiny rubber stamp would start an addiction that could overtake our dining rooms, living rooms, and bedrooms???   What started it for you?  Did you start by stamping cards and then progress to scrapbooking?  Were you an avid picture-taker turned cardmaker?  Or did you pick something from the start and stick with it?  Join us on our adventure as we share how we each got started in the scrapbooking and stamping craft!!  You'll find some fun stories, neat projects, and awesome folks along the way, we hope you'll enjoy each and every moment!!

Let's get hopping!!  If you've hopped over from Michele, then you are in the right place!!  If you've just popped in to visit my blog or are reading this via email and you'd like to join our FUN, then please CLICK HERE to start at the beginning with Lynda's blog...

For the hop today, I'd like to show you some of my very first "real" scrapbook pages and what it progressed into for me...

Truth be told, I was probably a stamper before I was a scrapbooker...  When I was little, little, little I received a set of tiny Hero Arts stamps and mini stamp pads...  I remember thinking that I was the cat's meow with those!!  I stamped everything in sight (paper or NOT!).  I made cards and wrapping paper and notepaper...  I even stamped little rectangles of paper and glued them into little "books" to make coloring books for my Barbie dolls (boy, do I wish I still had those to show ya!!  LOL)...

My sister received one of those magnetic photo albums when I was about ten...  She would spend hours trimming her pictures into silhouettes and making collages on those pages -- Then she would cut titles from magazines and add talk bubbles to the pictures of all the fun times she was having with friends...  A few years later, I received my first magnetic photo album and couldn't wait to use all the tips and tricks I'd learned from my sister for all of MY pictures...  I even had a Kodak DISK camera (who remembers those???), and I used that to take TONS of pictures!!  Sadly, I haven't found that album since the fire back in '99...  And what a reminder THAT is to back up your photos now...

Anywhooooo...  In 1998, I attended my first Creative Memories Workshop...  And I was HOOKED!!  It wasn't long before I started doing my own workshops (to support my habit).  Times sure have changed, because this was one of my first pages way back then (I actually think I made this one at one of the workshops I attended before signing up myself!!)....

Yep!!  THAT was the Creative Memories way back then...  A strip, a shape, a corner...  Some stickers, some markers, some journaling...  BAM!!  Done!!  :)

I quickly learned to get a little fancier...  Clusters of colorful shapes, those punch out die cut shapes, fancy marker letters and doodles, rounded corners on the photos, and TWO DIFFERENT SHAPED photos on the same layout!!  GAH!!  What was I thinking???  An oval, a circle, a bunch of triangles???  Anyone else DIZZY???  :)

I finally managed to get my hands on one of those fancy "Idea Books" that were all the rage...  I also got that fancy wavy cutter that laid over your cutting mat...  AND letter stickers were introduced to my collection...  Ahhhh...  Now that's nice!!  :)  Say what???  Can you believe I actually journaled right on the page???  Who does that???  Now we have to have journaling boxes and fancy printers!!  :)

About a year or so after I was buried in scrapbook paper, fancy tools, and adhesive, I was invited to my very first....  (insert exciting fanfare music here)...  STAMPIN' UP! PARTY  ...and life as my husband and children knew it was O-V-E-R...  I dreamed of all those magical inks and stamp sets...  I spent hours perusing the catalog and carefully checking off the sets I had, the sets I wanted, and the sets I couldn't live without...  I purged the hallway closet of coats and boots and umbrellas and filled it with organizers filled with scissors and adhesive and paper...  When that overflowed, I asked my dad to build me two 8 foot high cabinets with adjustable shelves... And he did...  And it, too, began to overflow...

For a while, my two best friends and I would congregate in my living room to stamp, punch, and color every piece of paper in sight...  We had collections of cards for every occasion, and I sincerely believed that I had to make 30 of every card we created!!  Keeping whatever I was scrapbooking in mind, I began to make cards that I could save in my scrapbook (does anyone else see the insanity here???)...  I mean, I was already taking pictures to go with the stickers that I bought, so why not make cards for the pictures I was taking???  The card shown above is the postcard that I made for each of the cheerleaders that made the midget football cheerleading team with The-Girl-Child that year....  The actual card that I really did send to The-Girl-Child is carefully preserved in her cheerleading scrapbook...  The one above is the one I preserved in my (are you ready for it?) "sample" scrapbook...  E-gads...  I'm feeling a little nutty here now.

And time marches on....  I switched to black pages and thought I was a rebel for that (GASP!! Who knew I'd use patterned paper as a background in future days???)  This is the layout opposite the page with The-Girl-Child's "Congratulations!" post card (sorry, the other layout has all the first and last names of all the cheerleaders, so I didn't feel it was appropriate to share)...

So what about NOW???

Sometimes I dabble in digital scrapbooking (see more details about this layout HERE)...

I still use black background pages from time to time (you can see more of this layout by CLICKING HERE because YES, that really is Mark Ballas with The-Girl-Child!!)...

I still have a RIDICULOUS selection of stamps -- digi, rubber, AND clear!! (you can see more about this card HERE)

I still use a LOT of Creative Memories products (you can see more of this layout HERE)...

And these kiddos are STILL a few of my favorite things!! :)  (see more details on this layout HERE)...

Thank you again for checking out my blast-from-the-past and caught-up-to-the-future projects...  I'm the LAST STOP in the hop today; however...  Please remember to visit all the stops for MAXIMUM ideas and LOTS OF FUN!!  ** Don't forget!!  There's some EXTRA SPECIAL blog candy JUST for today's hop!!  You can find all the details HERE!! :)

Until next time,