May/June Guest Blogger - Jana Eubank

Hello Crafty Friends! Jana Eubank here. I'm so thrilled that Christina has asked me to be a guest blogger today. I love her work! First, a little about me. I grew up in a family that owns a copy/print business and have always had an infatuation for all things paper. It began with Mrs. Grossman stickers, colorful copy paper, and mini Hello Kitty stationery kits. And now that I'm grown-up it continues with scrapbooking supplies. I adore shopping and collecting all kinds (as I'm sure you do, too! *wink*). I scrapbooked a bit while I was a teen, but really got serious about it when I married my husband a little over 16 years ago. I wanted to record our family's story from the beginning and have been doing just that ever since. Scrapbooking as a hobby became my "best friend" as a young mother when my husband starting working nights. It was a great creative outlet for me, and I loved that when I was finished each night I had a new page full of family memories that my kids could reminisce over. I began trying out for design teams and submitting my work and have been blessed to work with many amazing crafters and companies. 


For my project today, I decided to do something a little different. At first glance, these photos of my husband and I on a Cruise celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary seem like they should be happy, relaxing, and frivolous ... which they were, to a degree. But the most memorable thing about that particular vacation was all the worry we felt while we were away from our four children. I decided that I wanted to try and record the spectrum of being both happy and sad together on the same page. I accomplished this with a happy, color scheme, mixed with raincloud icons, and a title that draws you into the journaling, searching for the backstory.

 At the last minute, the couple we had arranged to stay with our children, let us know that they could only be there part of the time, and so we had to quickly make additional arrangements with family members who weren't exactly able or planning on helping us while we were gone on our trip. My kids were constantly being shuffled from place to place (something I really wanted to avoid while we were gone for the week) and they were sad and miserable. They felt like a burden to everyone and my eldest daughter had to take on a lot of responsibility (she was only 13 at the time) while waiting for family members to fill in the gaps. We were unable to change our travel plans and felt so sad to leave them like that. We worried about them the entire time and called them as often as we could. It was a hard week, but we also learned a lot.

 We learned how much we like being together as a family. We learned how resilient our children are, and how much they care about each other, and that they can pull together when they are feeling sad. We learned that even though we enjoy being together as a couple, it wasn't worth our children being sad and uncomfortable. We decided on that trip that if we needed to get away as a couple in the future (which we all need from time to time), we would do a much shorter overnighter somewhere closer to home. :) I used the rainclouds to represent our feelings of helplessness in this situation. Even the background paper has a feeling of rain. The varying colors of green in the title letters do a great job of illustrating the range of feelings we went through on this trip. But I also used the happy color scheme, starbursts, stars, and butterflies, to represent a feeling of growth and realization. It was a learning experience as a family, and one we want to remember for the future.

Life can be hard at times. We learn and grow from life experiences. And I want to remember those lessons in my scrapbooks. I definitely think they are worth recording. Perhaps you have a similar memory that you would like to record, but you weren't sure how to accomplish it. Perhaps you have a backstory that needs telling. I hope I have inspired you today to pull out some photos and scrapbook the lessons YOU have learned in life. :) THANK YOU again, Christina, for having me! If you would like to learn more about me, or see more of my work, I hope you'll visit me on my blog at www.janaeubank.wordpress.com.