Ah spring. The days are getting longer. The birds are chirping. The trees are putting out blossoms and leaves.
I love spring! I love all the new life. I love the promise of long, hot summer days. Everything feels possible this time of year. Everything feels fresh and new.
Which is what your design team is talking about this month. To tell you the story of my New Beginnings themed post, I have to take you back a full year. To last spring when the world shut down and we all stopped to evaluate our lives. I had a 6-feet-apart coffee with my friend Amanda and said “I may be crazy but I think this is the perfect time to open that craft store we’ve been talking about for years”.
She could have replied with “Um, hello Alison, only grocery stores and big box hardware stores are even open right now! What are you thinking?” But she didn’t. Instead she said “you know, I may be crazy too but I’ve been thinking the exact same thing!”
Fast forward a year and voila! We are doing it!
Last spring I was (happily) staying home instead of going into a job I’d grown to hate amid a pandemic we had NO idea would still be a thing over a year later. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, just that I didn’t want to go back to my job as Colour Consultant at a local paint store. I wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to use my creative training and skills to make my little piece of this whole messy planet a bit happier.
Now I am realizing that dream. I also found a pretty amazing job I love along the way which I will be sad to leave, but this New Beginning is too awesome to pass up.
I’m also enjoying a New Beginning when it comes to crafting again. Some of us have been riding out this pandemic by crafting up a storm. Not me. I’ve been in the kitchen and working at Homesense. LOL! In fact, I found it really hard to craft after those first few weeks of ignorant bliss thinking it would all be over by the summer.
I craft from a happy place. Yes, it is therapy to me and I always feel better once I’ve made something. But if I’m not in a good head space, if I’m stressed or anxious, I can’t craft. Knowing this dream was coming closer and closer to being a reality has reignited my crafty mojo, and I am LOVING it!
Now my issue is not enough hours in the day … but hey, one problem at a time, right?
Soon I’ll be able to “order” my Best of Both Worlds kits from my own store, but for now I’ve been happy to support another Canadian business – Treasured Memories in Edmonton Alberta. I’ve used my April Kit (a combination of items Shimelle Laine posted on Scrapbook.com plus items from my stash) to make a Half and Half layout (Shimelle’s newest class – speaking of new beginnings LOL).
I have paired a brightly coloured rainbow stripe with a woodgrain for a couple of reasons. One, Shimelle used a rainbow stripe in her first layout of the class so I wanted to follow suit. I didn’t have the same paper she used but this Vicki Boutin one was equally as lovely and gives a nod to the vintage vibe of our store. Plus rainbows are happy! Two, while Shimelle paired her rainbow print with a lighter pattern, I wanted to reference our store in my paper choice. Our new store will (fingers crossed we can find some) have lovely distressed “wood” floors (we can’t spring for real wood but we will settle for a really good approximation) so that seemed a logical pairing.
Plus, our store is a heritage site and used to be a General Store. The building itself is on the river bank and most of the building is actually over the water on stilts. Under the current carpeting there is reportedly a trap door that allowed importers, and traders to pull their boats right up under the store to off load their goods. How awesome is that?!
This photo was the first one we posted to our Instagram (@ladnervillagecrafts if you want to follow us) so seemed only right to use it for this layout.
I then went looking for layers and embellishment pieces. Not part of the kit, but something I threw in my cart as highly appropriate, was a sheet of cut-aparts from Simple Stories Quarantined line. This card above jumped out at me as needed to be on this page! I mean, aren’t we all??
I can’t wait to continue to share the progress on my New Beginnings with you all. And trust me, when the time is right there will be an online Grand Opening and you’re all invited! Then, when the borders open and travel is allowed again, I’d love to welcome you to my little corner of BC Canada. Bring your creativity and let me take care of the rest!
Cheers to creative new beginnings!