Cathy Zielske personifies Simple Scrapbooking for me, I bought her books and still love the design principles she uses. I am sad that the mag is closing, I subscribed for nearly all of it's life, but saw in later issues that it had lost it's edge. Much like me, not that I ever really had an edge, it kind of went from forward thinking, funky, graphic, statement led scrapbooking that not everyone 'got' to being just another style that everyone uses to scrap quickly.

I'm much more journalling led now, well not journalling, but journal. The whole page thing and albums just aren't me at this point in my life, I don't have time for it, I weep for my beautiful American Crafts albums gathering dust and for my half finished layouts needing titles or inpsiration, but where i am at now is sticking something in a book and writing on it or around it. Ali Edwards personifies this style, although I feel sometimes she is too fussy or uses too much product, she is where it's at for me - an achievable scrapbooking style that still looks funky and arty, I also admire her honest photography - sometimes not all in focus or framed perfectly, but reflecting the hectic family life. Margaret Scarborough is also a wonderful scrapbooker - her photography is really spirited and she is a funny lady - her writing style has me in stitches.

The best thing I ever did was chronicle the first year of Pip's life (a Stacy Julian idea) - a few pages a month, no style or format, just freestyling. The love that went into that book shows. I am attempting to retroactively achieve this in yearly journals, I have a good memory for trivial and non-important detail (I can remember who bought every kids present from years ago, I can remember stuff that went on on a particular day at school nearly 30 years ago (eeek i hate that it was that long ago)), so it's really just a matter of getting my big fat round butt out of the chair and getting on with it.