Cut-n-Paste

Like many artsy-craftsy types, I am addicted to magazines. I subscribe to about 20 and then have others that I purchase regularly off the stand. I know it's cheaper to get a subscription, but I love being able to have the immediate gratification of a new magazine so I purposely don't subscribe to a few of my faves so I can snatch them up as soon as they hit the stores. I love that magazines are highly visual, colorful, immediate, and come with a low commitment. You don't have to read them in a linear fashion and they don't require a full attention span. They're fun, they're fast, and then they're out of your life. Love that! Many of the images are so enchanting to me that I cut them out and paste them into blank journals to create my own visual inspiration book. (Come to think of it, if I could cut and paste photos from all the amazing art blogs out there, I would do that too!)


Most of the images I love come from Country Living, Country Home, ME's Home Companion, Marie Claire Ideas, and many of the Somerset publications. I like to cut and paste while watching TV, usually right before I go to bed. I find it relaxing. I've been doing this in one form or another since college. I've always been crazy about babies and children...always wanted to be a mom one day, so the first book I made was simply a collection of baby photos. Cute babies, bald babies, ugly babies, fat babies - all kinds and sorts. Several years after college, probably during a move, I was overcome with a wave of embarrassment and threw it away.

In fact, the first time my new husband asked me what I was doing (cutting and pasting in front of the TV), I had a flash of embarrassment and well....how do I explain this? What the heck am I doing anyway? Did I not get enough art in kindergarten or something? Shouldn't I have better things to do with my time?


Even if my sweet aerospace engineer husband doesn't quite get the point of it, he does respect and support me and my hobby and all that it entails. In the end, it's just one of those things that I like to do. Sometimes I'll add a bit of ribbon or writing or outline a picture with Stickles, but the process is very haphazard and is not meant to be pretty or organized. It's just a collection of interesting images that speak to me and make me feel good. Perhaps this is the modern day's version of a Victorian scrapbook. Hmmmm....wonder if they'll end up in an antique store one day?