From waaaay back when!

It's funny how one's taste and style changes, isn't it? How even in scrapbooking, there are fashions, fads and trends. How we try things on for size and then find that it doesn't suit us at all. How long it takes to find a style that fits.

If anyone had asked me a couple of years ago if I had settled into a style of scrapbooking I liked, I would have said, "Sure".  After all, I'd started at the beginning of 2006 and by the beginning of 2008, I felt like I'd been doing it forever. I was working for Libby on the Bellaboo design team, I was taking classes, I liked what I was doing.

And then Libby got me involved in The Scrapbook Magazine (UK) and I got my first commission! I was thrilled to pieces and got stuck in to everything they asked me to do. These were surely my "best ever" creations...

Off the layouts or projects go and you wait ages to see them in the mag - such a boost to see one's own creation there in print. And then you forget about them. The layouts are with the magazine and generally they wait until they have a box full until they send them back.

Fast forward to this summer when a box of said "best ever" creations came back to me. Ranging from summer 2008 to winter 2009. Yes, it was lovely to see them again and to read the journalling and look at the photos. But the designs? Not so "best ever" any more.

It's weird how I spent so much time and effort creating these commissions, and then when I look at them now, I see all sorts of design faults - trapped white space, non-common margins, too busy designs - every design sin in the book.

But I also look at them and see how not settled into my style I was. And I think that now, it's really getting there. When I showed Lib my latest mag creation she told me it was "... so absolutely you... " which I liked the sound of. Thanks Lib! And at the same time, they too are a snapshot of life - the way I saw things at the time I made them.

I am listing them here in the order I like them (least like first) and then there is one I just can't bring myself to put on (yes, THAT one Lib - the one with THAT cardstock!)

Definitely my least favourite - don't know what I was thinking with this - gorgeous papers, gorgeous photos, heartfelt journalling but the whole thing just misses! Created back in summer 2008

Summer 2009, created using some of my favourite papers of all time, and one of the best Bellaboo kits that Libby put together - still love it. (BTW I got a second kit at the time and fished it out the other day to get to use it - it's still gorgeous) But the design is somehow not quite right. But it's getting more towards what I would say is "me"!

I really like this one (summer 2008) but looking at it now I would do it completely differently! But it's one of my favourite wedding photos and I love the papers and the buttons and of course the journalling. But the flower? Mmmmm... not at all convinced!

Overall, not too bad (summer 2009) but that trapped white space?  A total no go!

Yes, one of my favourites. (late 2008) I love the clusters (I was just beginning to get to grips with those) and I like the sentiment. But today, it would look different! What is it that is "wrong"?

 Created most recently (May 2009), using great products and much more "me" than the others - multi-photo, multi-PP, journalling, small cluster and some stitching. Think some of the positioning could be better.

But when I look at them all together, it's so interesting to see the development in my style and to see how different they would be if I was making them today. I am seriously thinking of ditching the one I couldn't feature as it was so bad and also the one with the roses, but then again, maybe I should keep them, just because...

How has your style changed over the years? Do you cringe when you look back a few years?