Get Way Into the Game ...

Have you ever seen that lottery ticket/gambling thing commercial for Pro-Line Sports, with the catchy phrase "Get Way Into the Game"? Well I was just having my usual early-morning-gotta-feed-the-dog-might-as-well-surf-the-net session today, and I stumbled upon a website called "Scrapbook Update". After clicking around the site a bit, I thought to myself, "Wow - this is mecca for those scrapbookers who get Way Into the Game!". I mean, they have scrapbook industry job listings ... links to media stories about scrapbook manufacturers and their ugly legal battles with each other ... breaking news (breaking news!) relating to scrapbooking ... and stuff that regular scrapbookers like me might care about, like sneak peeks of some Craft and Hobby Association 2010 (CHA) releases.

A person with nothing but time on their hands could spend all day on this site learning all there is to know about current trends in scrapbooking, who's suing who, what designers are working where, how social media impacts on the scrapbooking industry, what K&Company's latest releases are, what the weather's like in Anaheim today (for those of you not in the know ... the CHA convention is going on in Anaheim, California right now) ... whew. Yet another reason why I need to quit my day job.

Then again, based on what I learned this morning about hot scrapbook trends at CHA, I better not quit my day job, because my scrapbook style really doesn't line up that well:

1. It's all about die cutting. (Uh, a $500 die cut machine with dies that cost over $50 each is not in my future, immediate or otherwise! Unless they mean those die-cuts I have somewhere in my stash from when I started scrapbooking 10 years ago? Uh, no, they probably don't mean those.)

2. We're going green. (Folks - give me a break; I'm still trying to go acid- and lignin-free here! Now I gotta worry about the impact of my little hobby on the environment, too? My cutting and pasting has to have a social conscience?)

3. We're going patriotic. (As in, American. As in, Buy Local. So yeah, that one doesn't really apply to a Canadian scrapbooker! I could limit myself to Canadian products but then my pages would all start looking alike and I would need to find pictures to match patterened paper with mounties and beavers on it ... I kid you not, such a thing exists ... oh wait, given the stereotypes, I think it's probably made in America!)

4. It's all about stamping. (I know what these evil scrapbook industry leaders are trying to do. They're trying to get me to spend even more money than I already do, on a related obsession - stamps. You're not gonna get me, evil leaders. I may have bought a few acrylic stamps over the last few months, but I'm really lame at actually using them - so there!)

5. Paper is reborn as digital. (Two part response here. (A) I suck at anything computer-related, nuff said. (B) A big part of the attraction to scrapbooking, for me, is the cutting, the pasting, the owning inches and inches of scrapbook paper. Please, evil leaders, don't take this away from me!!)

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So as you can see, I had waaaay to much time on my hands this morning. But that's a good thing. It's nice to slow down and smell the coffee, so to speak. After all it's Sunday already, the weekend's half over, there's still laundry to be done, sons to be picked up from sleepovers, mothers-in-law to be visited, hockey practices to be attended, beef stews to be made, and according to the weather man (hey, I surf the web in a multi-tasking kind of way - lots of windows open at once, you know), there might be some freezing rain this afternoon. In the meantime, it's time to wake up the husband, and see if he feels up to taking the dog for a walk in the woods. We'll have lots of stuff to talk about today. I can tell him all about the breaking news on Scrapbook Update! (Uh-you know I'm kidding, right honey?).

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Have a great Sunday, everyone.

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PS: The winners of the week 1 sketch are posted on the Ella Blog. I'm not one of 'em, but I had lots of fun playing and fully intend to participate in week 2! Which reminds me, I need to fit some scrapping time in today!

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PSS: I don't know what the heck is going on with Blogger, but I'm having a hard time inserting spaces between some of my paragraphs. So if you're wondering what those dots are between paragraphs, they're my half-assed way of solving the problem (note comment above about sucking at anything computer-related). :o)