Layout A Day - LOAD 219

Yesterday, I mentioned Layout-A-Day, but I didn’t really go into what it was.  If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know that LOAD (as it’s affectionately called) is a month-long challenge I’ve taken on many times over the past few years.  My first LOAD was in February of 2012, and I joined in after I saw a post from another blogger I follow (Joy Tracey’s Obsessed with Scrapbooking), and I was intrigued.  I wanted to be more productive with my scrapbooking, and this gave me the perfect excuse to do a little crafting every evening after dinner (“You need someone to take you to the store to get supplies for your science project? Go ask your Dad, I have to do this layout for Layout-a-Day’). So I signed up, and have been hooked ever since.

My stack of layouts after I completed my first LOAD in 2012.

The brainchild of Lain Ehman, LOAD typically ran 3 times per year, in February and May, which were open to the public, and in October, which was open only to the members of Scrap Happy, an online network of Lain’s followers.  I wasn’t much interested in the Scrap Happy group, so even though I was sad I couldn’t do the October LOADs, I never joined.  Instead, I just did every February and May, completing every daily challenge on time…that is, until my Dad had a heart attack.  Then I had to drop everything to go home, and it just fell apart after that.  I never finished that February challenge, May got interrupted by something else, and eventually, Lain decided she didn’t want to LOAD any more.  I had heard that someone else bought the rights, but I wasn’t on the mailing list, never found out who it was, and so I was just sad that such a fun and interesting challenge had fallen by the wayside.

Fast forward to January, 2018, and once again, I found myself signing up for LOAD!  I can’t remember how I found it, but somehow I stumbled across a link to the next event, which was starting up the next day, and my heart took a giant leap!  I was so excited to join again, and I did.  But there was a hitch…I was set to leave on a cruise in 4 days, and I would be nearly a week without internet and with very little scrapbooking supplies. Regardless, I was determined to do it anyway, so I packed up a little tote of supplies, a traveler’s journal, my trusty HP Sprocket printer, and I decided to scrapbook on the fly.  I bought the onboard Social WiFi package, which allowed me to upload my photos to the Flickr gallery and still participate in the challenge.

Scrapbooking in my travel journal during my August cruise (MINI LOAD).

Everything went okay for a day or two, but then the girls I was traveling with, my instructors, decided we needed to finish up some work we brought with us.  It turned into a much bigger project than we’d anticipated, and I spent most of the rest of the cruise working on that.  I didn’t get much scrapbooking done, and after I got off track, I didn’t do much on it at all.  Something similar happened in May, when I had yet anothercruise, this time one of our popular Scrapbooking Cruises we do each year.  I was so busy getting ready for the cruise, then teaching classes and leading the group that I fell off my proverbial wagon and failed to finish that LOAD, either. They say bad luck comes in threes, so yep, I missed out on the finish a third time in August, when the new owner, Alice Boll, decided to host a Mini LOADthat lasted one week.  It was right during the middle of a group cruise I organized for my Aggie Moms.  I did get some work done on that one, but not the whole week.  And I’m not sure whathappened in October, which I finally got to participate in because I finally broke down and joined Scrap Happy for the year.

So here we are…it’s February, I’m signed up for LOAD 219 (that’s Layout-a-Day February 2019), and I’m already behind! As I mentioned yesterday, I’m in the middle of a craft room reorganization (watch for a big reveal, soon!) and I have a lot of year-end (2018) bookkeeping that I’m trying to get done. So I missed the launch out of the box, and have been playing catch-up ever since.  I decided I would do 2 layouts a day until I get caught up, which should have taken me 2 days, but then I skipped a couple more days, and one of my pages took longer than I intended, and there are a million excuses, but I am catching up…AND…I am also starting in on Ali Edward’s “One Little Word” challenge at the same time…even though I’m starting it a month late!

Working on my One Little Word album.

So for today (and the next few days, too), I’ll be sharing with you my layouts from LOAD 219 and OLW, along with some info about my processes and supplies.  I hope you’ll enjoy it, and maybe it will give you some inspiration to challenge yourself.  After all, you don’t have to sign up for a challenge to create a layout every day.  Just get out your supplies and do something.  Be creative every day, whether it’s a scrapbook page, a card, something you made for your home, something from paper, something from fabric, or something you’ve drawn.  It all counts – as long as you DO IT!