interview by Amy Kingsford
GIS Username: Celia
Joined: April 2008
Posts: 454
Most Active In: the “NSBR” (non-scrapbook related) forums
Alum of: Art Journaling 101, Art Journaling 102, Art Journaling 201, Art Journaling 301; Building Pages, Digital Templates, In Loving Memory, Oodles of Doodles, Mother May I?, Page Parts, Beginning Photo Editing, Product Pizzazz 101, Product Pizzazz 201, Scrapbook Your Events, Scrapbook Your Everyday Life, Scrapbook Yourself, Scrapbook Travel & Vacation, Shutterfly Savvy, Sense & Sensibility, Souvenirs of the Season, Your Life: Captured Through the Lens
Celia’s Blog: See Me In NY
Our featured scrapper, Celia Meehan, is known to many people as Celia (including on our forums), however her full name is Cecilia and she answers to both names–and even others. Celia moved to New York City in August 2003 from Melbourne Australia. She works in the city in education and lives in a wonderful apartment with another friend from the same company. In Australia, Celia worked in schools and left the position of principal of a primary school to come and work in schools in NYC. She also left the active amateur theatre world in Melbourne to be a an active theatre-goer in NYC.
When we caught up with Celia and asked her to give us a little insight to her life as a scrap-booker…this is what we found out:
I was lucky enough to start scrapbooking in 2001 when a friend of my sister’s invited us to an introductory workshop about scrapbooking. I was hooked from the word go and did some pages and albums before I came with my two suitcases to NYC. After a few years in NYC, I decided I wasn’t getting to know enough people in the city, other than those I worked with, so joined a meetup in Manhattan and made some great friends. At the first meeting, I met Hillary from the NYCScraps website and in that forum I met and did a class with Debbie Hodge. I was blown away by her dedication and thoroughness and friendship. When I heard that she was setting up her own forum and classes I joined (I was a little slow in getting going, something I regret!). The friends I have made at GIS have been generous in their support both personally and creatively- they are gems!
Dina Wakley's Masterful Art Journaling class was an important spur to Celia's creative development, and this journal page is great evidence of that.
All of my family live in Australia and so each year during the school summer vacation in NYC I head home for a long vacation with family and friends. My scrapbooks, thus, include pages of my travels throughout the US, as well as other tours I take with friends through Europe (it’s so close to the US compared to the journey from Australia) and Canada. Then when I am home I love photographing the area around my holiday house at Aireys Ilet on the Great Ocean Road. It is a truly glorious place on earth!
I tend to scrap at odd times–mostly on the weekend and occasionally during the week. We have a dining room table where I can spread out and this involves moving paper and supplies out of their storage space in the hall cupboard/closet and returning them out of sight when I’ve finished. I’ve managed to set up another narrow table by my desk in the bedroom to widen the space and hopefully get more scrapping done. When it comes to doing art journaling the space goes up an extra notch of needing to keep things in check. I put out a shower curtain liner on the table and then try not to spread too much paint, glue, spray ink and paper scraps around.
I don’t think I have any style at all- I tend to try to keep to clean lines and then get overwhelmed by it all. I really what to have things that chart my travels and experiences of living in another country. As I don’t have children I don’t have the family or need to hand on to future generations.
Celia loves scrapping sights: of her current home in NYC, of her original home in Australia, and of all the places she travels to.
I love different letters and fonts and find it really difficult to go past them.
I’d love to have one of those big glue guns- don’t even know the correct name for it so how can I ever hope to get one?!
I want to learn stamping but I’m scared! I think once I start I’ll never stop and I’ll end up with even more mountains of stuff and I’ll need more than one shipping container to eventually go back to Australia!
The beauty of nature inspires me–particularly Central Park. Can one have too many photos of Central Park in the snow? In the fall? Or of the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens in spring?
My favourite GIS classes have taken me on different but converging journeys. Debbie’s “Scrap Yourself” and “Scrap Your Everyday Life” classes led me to finding a new voice in my scrapbooking and enabled and encouraged me to look at my life here in NYC and in Australia, in different ways. Another class that provided a big development in my creative journey was Dina Wakley’s Masterful Art Journaling class, which freed my thinking up to look even more at the colours and techniques and work of artists in the world around me.
Of “It’s Sunday UNWIND” Celia tells us that this is a layout she really loves because" "it brings together many of the things I have learned at GIS and about myself. I became much more confident about journaling and could confidently express what my life was like as well as using the “sticker” technique and using multiple shots in different ways- all of which are of the ordinary parts of my life."
These wonderful friends at GIS just keep on giving … their friendship, support and creative talents. Thank you, all. It’s great to have so many wonderful giving friends in the US and around the world.
Note from Get It Scrapped! founder, Debbie Hodge: Dear, Celia, I am so grateful to you for joining the Get It Scrapped! classes and community from the beginning. I still remember your early feedback and comments. When I wrote for magazines, I couldn’t cover the kind of in-depth material I wanted to. These classes gave me that opportunity, but I was still nervous, wondering whether the short blurbs and slight material I’d been taught to write for the magazines was really more appropriate. Finding a student like you and receiving your feedback gave me the evidence I needed: that there were scrapbookers who wanted to pursue learning technique, design, and content in a serious and thoughtful manner. I always write my classes for my ideal student — the one who wants what I have to offer–and you were that first ideal student for me. With gratitude and affection, Debbie
