Friday 31 July 2009

In her current post, Angie worries that she's boring because she hasn't changed, altered or fiddled with the look of her blog since she started it. Of course, I don't think she's boring at all, I think that when she (and her lovely daughter who's help she happily acknowledges) built the site, she chose colours, fonts, styles, sizes, templates blah blah that she liked, that suited her well and said what she wanted the world wide interweb to say of her. After all, if these micro spaces of interweb don't reflect our personalities then I certainly, am missing the point. Whilst I know I don't need to 'defend' the changes I've made to this blog (with I must add, the help of Ginny who selfishly lives on the other side of the world so she can't drop by for coffee) - I thought you might like once more, to climb into my mixed up thought process and see why I'm driven to play with all these features.
It's because I can.
Well, only just - my technological understanding is limited to copy and paste and asking for help. But man, there's so much choice out there, how could I possibly not try on a whole bunch of colours, looks, formats? I know, on the advice of my Sissy Dunnit that I need to keep the font over a certain size, and I know from a really scientific poll back in my early blog-changing days that the majority want to read my nonsense off a pale background. But the rest is up to me and I cannot resist. Now this may well explain quite a lot about my scrapbook 'style' too. Or rather, the lack of it. There are so, so many fantastic ideas and styles out there that I don't really need to bother to come up with my own. I don't actually copy, but I can look at a LO that I really like, and 'de-construct' it to sketch level so I can have a go at it myself. I think probably that we all can do that, but very often other scrappers don't need to. I find my best LOs are definitely the ones that kicked off from a sketch. No imagination see. Interesting though isn't it..I rarely lay a photo on a piece of paper to even see if it'll look nice before I've thought about the layout of the layout, if you see what I mean. But I'm a genius at changing my mind too, which is sort of back to the beginning. My beautiful, now grown up mega niece and I went to an afternoon cinema showing of some Disney film or other, probably 16 years ago. There were 6 people including us in the theatre, and every five minutes or so, Mega Niece would change her seat - front, back, aisle, you name it, she sat in most of them - usually without taking her eyes from the screen. I wasn't a parent then, so was more amused than alarmed by the characteristics she was displaying. You know already, that when I asked why she kept changing seats, she said it - "because I can". That choice thing - it sure has some power!

I've been tagged - a great way to find out something specific about someone!! This is fairly harmless though, so I doubt you'll need to look away. I have to fetch my current reading book and turn to page 161, then quote the 5th whole sentence. Brace yourself:

'But there's no denying that the way many public schools are managed poses at least as big a problem as how well they're funded.'
Barack Obama - The Audacity of Hope

And I'm to tag five other people, and for a change, I'm going to work my way through the Followers list - because after all, it's nice to be included!
Jazzy1972 (OMG is that your birth year?!!)
Chris
Lisa
Sarah
Avrilann

8 comments:

Smudgemakes said...

I think we can all relate to this, Julia! I too, like to use sketches, I don't seem to have a clue where to start without them! And, the book you spied yesterday in my craft desk WOYWW picture, is, yes, you guessed it, full of sketches I have seen on blogs, which I can use in cards and LO's!! Thanks again for a slic of Dunnit wisdom! Wish we could meet for a coffee!!

Angie said...

So glad my thoughts on blog changes sparked this post.lol. and yes ... DD's birth year is 1972 ..... why is it an OMG?? xx

Ayesha said...

girl you write so well i feel you should teach me hehe thanks for popping by and leaving love. i love the look its a pitty that its these small elements that gets a notice.....blah i say hehe if you lived closer i would be over all the time for coffee

Chris said...

Hi and thank you for the tag, I only wish what I'm reading was even slightly as interesting as your book! I enjoyed reading your thoughts on sketches, the only time I really like to use one is for a 12x12 layout (which is rare as I don't make many layouts!) yet I don't enjoy using them for making cards. I think it has to do with the space, I'm intimidated by the space of the 12x12 and ok with a 6x6 card :). I would love to join you for a coffee too! Have a good weekend. Chris

Paige said...

from another 1972er ;) thank you thank you thank you!!!! for the lovely comments you leave on my blog each day :) you really are too too kind :) I really think we should bridge the solent one day and meet for a coffee!!! Px

ally fiddy said...

Love the little ship, is it on a canvas? Not ashamed to use sketches when one catches my eye, as you might find out today!
:-)

voodoo vixen said...

You change your blog look if you want... I don't touch mine because the one and only time I tried my entire blog disappeared on me! All those photos uploaded on dreadfully slow interwebs speeds... all that writing and nonsense... gone... well, I got it all back because i wasn't stupid enough to save the changes... and swore from then on... if it aint broke, don't fix it!!

Anonymous said...

Love the boat. i would love to have had it in my house. my bathroom is in creams and browns!!!!
Lady nurse