You are an artist!

Most of us have been taught that art is framed and hangs on museum walls; we think art is costly and created by a certain few with God-given talent. Some believe that only the trained eye can appreciate art, that wealth and marketing pizzazz dominate over pure inspiration, and that a certain type of education is required to become an artist. These notions are nonsense!

When visiting scrapbooking stores and seeing the pages created by people who spend countless hours documenting the lives of the ones they hold most dear, I am always amazed at the art, creativity, imagination and playfulness there. I am equally shocked that the people who make these masterpieces often don’t define what they do as art. I hear things like, "I’m not creative," "I just followed the directions," or "It’s not that good." I find myself jumping in to exclaim, "You must not be looking at what I’m looking at! What you’ve made here is amazing, it is valuable, it connects you to yourself and to others, it tells a story, it leaves a legacy and it matters."

I challenge you to set aside your grown-up distinctions between the art displayed behind glass, under lights and the art we each create everyday in the pursuit to live purposeful and meaningful lives. There are no rules as to what art can be. I challenge you to take a closer look at the scrapbook pages you’ve created and see them clearly as art and yourself as an artist contributing beauty to our world.