My chorus was making a scrapbook for our retiring director. A page was requested from each of us. Augh! I’m a quilter – I’ve never worked with paper. What to do, what to do…hmmmm. Most of my friends were using photos as the foundation of their page. But I’m a relatively new chorus member and don’t have any photos of us yet. Hmmmm…what to do, what to do. I finally remembered my daughters’ 5th grade name acrostic projects. The teacher had each student use the letters of their name in words that described themselves: Marvelous Exciting Lovely Laughs a lot Intuitive Sunny Sweet Animated - Melissa; or Sensational Able Reasonable Active Humorous – Sarah.

Once I had an idea, I did the smartest thing possible: asked for advice! I talked to a co-worker, Sandy, and to one of our resident authors—Sue Astroth. They had a number of wonderful suggestions, plus I had done a class for Valentine cards recently with Lisa, so between the new ideas and the old lesson, I was ready.

I was a little nervous going into the craft store because I wasn’t sure what to buy, but once I got going, I had a blast. I bought papers and ribbon and letters and pens and glue and raised dots and little round shiny things; it was great. Then I went home and over the next few days put together a page I am really pleased with. I’ve gotten a little bit of the scrapbooking bug now and since I have leftovers—I’ll be making some homemade cards for birthdays and other events soon. Thanks, Sue, Sandy, and Lisa for the encouragement!