10 years ago, 15th September 2006, I wrote my first "real" blog post about the start of our Nova Scotia adventure.
It's a badly written piece to be honest and includes no photos... I wrote it from the lobby of the hotel we stayed in at Frankfurt Airport before we headed over the ocean - in the days before wifi and smartphones. I was excited about the trip and excited to share my adventures online - using a fixed internet (modem perhaps) computer available for guests at the hotel - oh the pain of that slow connection. Of course, no one read me back then. I'm not surprised, like I said, it's badly written! But also, blogs were still relatively new back then in the UK and especially over here in Germany. Most people I mentioned it to had never heard of a blog. No one could see the point or why they should be interested.
I'd been scrapping since the start of 2006 and was still a painfully inexperienced newbie but it was exciting and fun and the industry was so much bigger then too. Was that the peak? Did I join the trend at the high point?
Anyway, 10 years on I'm wondering who's out there still reading blogs. Are they passé? Should we all consider giving them up in favour of the dreaded social media? I'm not sure but it's something I'm thinking about - what direction to take. Many people have stopped sharing through their blogs and I'm wondering if I'm just hanging on for the sake of it! But for now, I'm still here. I'm even thinking about an overhaul of the blog - design, layout and even the name. After all, I haven't lived in Recklinghausen for 7 years!
But all this is just a preamble for one of those shares...
This evening I made a layout to celebrate this milestone in my personal blogging journey and followed my own Whimsical Musings prompt WM#299 to be inspired by scrapbooking product made by a manufacturer that doesn't produce scrapbook product any more.
It had to be BasicGrey of course. In fact, this collection is one I treated to myself in that first year. It might even have been the first papers I ever bought. I ended up buying it twice I think. It's "dated" of course, but I still love it. And thank heavens that my style has changed considerably over those ten years so I tried to use some of the products in a more up-to-date way. I fussy cut and layered and roughed up the edges. I matched it up with some modern items such as gold mist, washi tap, Thickers and mini-alphas. Back in the day a BasicGrey collection consisted of papers, a sheet of alpha stickers (almost always the same font!) and a sheet of die-cut labels - non-sticky of course. I did find some remnants of the infamous matching BG fibres and really tried to find a way to use them on the layout - but no!
I'm not totally convinced at how successful I was at bringing Urban Couture to 2016 but I do like the layout and isn't that what matters?
What's your opinion about the future of blogging? Should I be moving on to other mediums or continuing forward with a bit of a redesign? What's your own blogging adventure? I'm really interested to hear what you think as I carry on thinking about what I'm doing here.
Happy 15th everyone! Back soon with Simple Scrapper shares and a (no doubt) late 16 loves!
