Auctions and Crafts

Since my new job is keeping me pretty busy, I've adopted a policy of blogging almost never during work hours. Because of that, I have to admit that I've fallen quite a bit behind on logging what I've been up to.

Every time I'm supposed to be cleaning house, I'm inevitably doing one of four things... watching tv (mostly "Hell's Kitchen" and "So You Think You Can Dance"), play Lego Indiana Jones per the bidding a one carefree fiancee, surfing the Internet for wedding ideas, or wandering the local chain crafts stores. The results of my past month of auction bidding and craft store wandering have resulted in a couple of distractions. They've made for a very, very messy living room floor. My place is strewn with wedding related thing be it shoes, contracts, pictures, stamps, magazines,and now scrapbooking materials (especially with the awesome 4th of July sales). I can't imagine living like this for another three months. I desperately need to find a way to store this stuff in a more organized manner!

The first and key item I searched for is something that fits in the black bag you see there, an old-fashioned technology that makes me feel like a kid with a new toy. I have spent a grand total of $37 plus $30 shipping to purchase these awesome Polaroid cameras. The middle camera is one of the last consumer models sold by Polaroid, circa 2006? The other two cameras are lovely "antiques" that sold for some $200+ in 1980 and 1982. It's strange to think they're as old as my brother. Tim laughs at me when I coo and awe over how cute and interesting my "new" cameras are. Becoming a Polaroid junkie comes at a price, it's called $1 to $2 per shot. And since the film will stop being produced early next year, one either has to give up the hobby next spring or make room in the refrigerator for a lot of boxes.

The main purpose of buying a camera in the first place was to have a scrapbook guest book. Many brides select a photo booth or other delayed-gratification plan to capture all the guests. We thought this would be a fun way to allow people to express themselves not only through a photo but also in the way they dress it up on paper. We hope that my relatives and other older folks will tap their rusty, creative brain cells to come up with something that reveals their personality. (Okay, wishful thinking.) Among our friends, we're sure to get some great art.

The second part of this project means buying supplies with which people can make their scrapbook pages. I feel like that little girl who used to go to Paperdoll and buy a 10 cents tab of stickers when I was lucky enough to stray away from my mom at the mall. I'm not a scrapbook person, at least not in the past... seven years. Things have changed a lot since my simple but fun travel albums. The number of choices in paper, stickers, embellishments, etc. is totally overwhelming.

Every time I've walked into the local craft store my minimum wandering time has probably been 40 minutes. In the beginning, I didn't really have any strategy. I simply bought sheets of paper that fit two criteria - on sale and pretty. Over the past month (or two) I've collected a decent sample of papers that looked like they could make for a story. As Tim and I have worked through our wedding colors, invitation, and website, I've honed in on colors that fit the theme. Today, I was proud to finally finished amassing the color palette of background papers we will provide to our guests.

I'm SOOOOo excited. We're both incredibly happy with the colors that I came up with. It fits with colors that are very commonly "wedding" yet nothing is so girly individually that guys will stay far away like it's garlic to a vampire. There's burgundy which is Tim's favorite color, a fun word page with burgundy and yellow with orange tones, a warm yellow, ivy-embossed white, and a light beige/tan. I was aiming to match the hues of the wedding flowers, my bouquet in particular.

The next big challenge for me will be to create my own scrapbook. It's meant to chronicle our courtship and wedding planning process. Not only will it be a cute way to remember all that we've been through to get to this special day, but hopefully it will help people who are unfamiliar with scrapbooking some ideas on what to do with their Polaroids.