Meet one of the Big Idea Festival stars! Karen Grunberg

We are gearing up for the Big Idea Festival and are excited to have one of the Festival's "rock stars" Karen Grunberg as a guest blogger for today!

Hi everyone! This is Karen Grunberg and I am so happy to be here. I am a huge fan of Big Picture Scrapbooking and I am so excited about the  Big Idea Festival and I hope you are, too!

During the month of May, I decided to do a layout a day for 31 days. This seemingly little exercise changed my scrapbooking forever. The practice of doing it day after day, every single day, put me into a rhythm where I could sit down and do a page I loved relatively quickly. One of the reasons this happened was that I finally found my comfort zone. This allowed me to make some quick choices about my layouts. 

For example, here are basic supplies for any layout for me:

- white 12x12 cardstock background

- several colored big and mini alphas

- glue and my ATG gun

- my little journaling stamp

- lots and lots of border punches, butterfly punches, and heart punches

- colorful patterned paper

- matching thread for stitching

This is 99% of what I now use on a layout. Any layout.

 One of the other things that happened in May is that I fell in love with color. Bold, happy color. I used to be into the vintage-look and I still love it on other people's layouts but, for me, I now crave color. I fell in love with red and orange and yellow as if I were seeing them for the first time.

So when I got my Cocoa Daisy kit and saw all the orange and red, I was over the moon.  

And since I'd just finished putting together the content for my new workshop Book of Stories, I had tons of story ideas. With the help of this beautiful kit and my 7 staple products, I could do my layouts without any stress. As you'll see in my layouts, all my backgrounds are white, I love having multiple photos, and long titles. And each of my pages tell a story: some with just a few words and others with more journaling.

Those of you who know me or my work, know that journaling is one of the most important parts of a layout for me. I learned, a few years ago, that when I go through my older pages, I cherish the words more than anything else. The details that otherwise escape my memory, the moments that are now long gone. Those are the most precious parts of my layouts. You might also know that I prefer to teach classes that focus on a process and not a project. When I take classes, I prefer to take ones where I walk away with a new skill or a new way of looking at something. I love classes like Library of Memories or Get Organized, Be Inspired. Since my passion is for journaling, I decided to create a process for collecting and storing all my stories so that when I had the time to sit and scrap, my stories would be right there waiting for me and I would never have problem finding a story for my page, ever again.

This is how I came to write my new workshop Book of Stories. By the end of this workshop you will have a system that helps you come up with, collect, store, organize and use your stories. The ones you've always wanted to scrap about. The ones you didn't even realize you wanted to scrap. The ones that just happened last week. The ones from years ago. And the ones you will have tomorrow. Every single day that you live, you're generating stories for your life. Stories worth preserving. This system will allow you to preserve them so that when you have the time to sit and scrap they are right there for you. You will never run out of journaling ideas ever again.

This workshop will also tell you what journaling to match with those photos that are absolutely beautiful but have no inherent story. Like the one where your daughter is staring right at the camera and smiling. Or the one where your son is laughing while playing in the backyard. You can scrap all of these photos and couple them with meaningful stories. Effortlessly.

If you've ever wanted to journal more on your pages or found yourself at a loss when it comes time to add some words to your layout or just wanted to create a good organizational system for your stories, I hope you'll join me in Book of Stories.

In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you in the Big Idea Festival. I absolutely loved this kit and cannot wait to see what all the other fantastic teachers have created with it, too.

See you in class!

Comments

[{vicki}]

OMG!!!! Love the taking steps l/o----will check into the book of stories class---sounds like something I need!

[Ajf 6]

Music world, in the mind is free, you can go to try!

[karen]

Lol Crafty p, thanks for making me laugh!! :) Lain's pretty awesome, isn't she?

I can't wait to see you in my workshop Dayna, thank you for signing up!! :)

[Dayna Howard]

I have just finished Nic Howard's Dimensional Details class and wasn't going to do another workshop for a while, but after reading this I couldn't resist signing up for your class! Looking forward to it!!!

[crafty p]

sounds like a great workshop! I'll check it out. I was all ready to say WOW I can't believe you did 31 LOs in May when I stopped and remembered, HEY, I did that, too, with Lain! LOL Needless to say, it's been a long day!

[karen]

thank you norma, i hope to see you in my workshop and make sure to say hi during the festival!! :)

[Norma]

You sound so much like me in that I too prefer classes where I learn techniques and not just specific projects/layouts. I'm really looking forward to the festival, and I'll definitely be looking into your workshop too!