Teaching my first scrapbooking class...

wasn't as scary as I thought it was going to be. Last night was my very first class over at RTEC and I can already tell that I'm going to be a little sad when the 3-night course is over.

There are eight wonderful gals in the class and all of them are pretty new to the hobby of scrapbooking and they are just a ton of fun!!

Last night, we covered some basics in the areas of 'Why scrapbook?', 'Tools', 'Organization', and 'Design'. I tried to show lots of own layouts as examples so that they could 'see' what I was talking about and even showed them pictures of my own scrapbooking space and how I organize my supplies...if you can call it organizing! :-)

If I'm feeling really brave, I might even share some of those pictures here soon.

The 'lecture' portion took about an hour and then we got to the FUN part...creating!! They got the Pebbles Make a Wish Kit as part of their class fee for the night and some used that to create their layouts and others used items they had brought that better suited their photos.

I basically then just went from table to table answering questions, offering advice, and showing them some of the little 'tricks' that I've picked up along the way.

I had to laugh at them all a little because some of them were so concerned with everything being 'perfect' and 'just so' and I TOTALLY remember being there when starting this craft! Heck, sometimes, I'm even that way once in a while now.

Then, today, I ran across this quote (and you all know that I LOVE quotes):

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), essayist, poet, philosopher

As with any interest or hobby, it takes time and practice to get to a place where you feel comfortable enough with your talent to let go of some of these insecurities. "Do these colors match perfectly?" "Ugh, I should have put that flower over here instead of there!"

Often, I've found that some of the layouts when I allowed myself to EXPERIMENT and NOT be concerned with 'perfection' end up being my favorites.

Hopefully, some of these ladies will experience at least of moment or two of this feeling during our short little course.

I think they all enjoyed themselves...I know I did! I can't wait for next week and I will take my camera this time - I didn't want to freak them all out by snapping tons of pictures on the vary first night.

Their photo reprieve is over! :-)

Next week we will be covering the topics of color theory, titles and journaling, the crafting process and a little bit about all the various 'styles' of scrapbooking.