Hi, Everyone!  I’m Gina Maria.  I could go by my first and last name, but I’ve been Gina Maria all my life and that name feels like the part of me that likes to hang out here and play with Photoshop in my free time.  The other name is shared with a whole bunch of other people who write poetry, play volleyball and earn a living in professional photography - which isn’t too far from some of my own secret yearnings but I’m just not there yet. 

So, this is my website and blog.  I have another blog dedicated to keeping friends and family updated on the regular goings-on in my life, so I try not to dump much of that here but you’ll probably hear a little about my teen or my two younger kids, once in a while.  It’s just a fact that stay-at-home moms have very little interaction with anyone above chest-level and relating real-life experiences on a blog means some of those experiences will be about children… and cats… and maybe even hamsters.  And poop.

So, I’ve been scrapbooking as long as I can remember but I got bitten by the CM bug in 1995 and finally knew what to call it.  I jumped into the hobby wholeheartedly and busily began collecting supplies and tools until my “office” was overrun.  Unfortunately, I didn’t scrap as much as I planned to.  I’m essentially lazy and getting all that stuff out was just too much work.  So it all sat on shelves, in drawers and dividers, waiting to be made into the beautiful pages I had in my head.  And sometimes I scrapped.  My pages were satisfying and appreciated - and sometimes beautiful - but then I had to clean up the mess.

Then, in 2006, I started a scrapbook for my Mother-In-Law that needed to be completed in time for overseas delivery at Christmas.  Because I was living in Germany and making a California theme parks vacation album, it soon became apparent that I’d need something I didn’t already have.  I decided to give all those digital supplies I’d been collecting but ignoring a try.  The result was fabulous and I was a convert.

Now, all my scrapbooking is digital (though I’ve since learned that my old scrapbooking style was more hybrid than traditional) and there’s no looking back.  I’m in the process of ridding myself of my collected papers and embellishments and learning more and more about the art every day.

Because my insatiable curiosity (and my monumental cheapness) leads me to want to learn how to create as much as possible, I’ve taken up designing as a hobby.  That results in my sharing right here.

So, you may not know much of anything about me, but you can be sure of one thing - there’s always something great here.

Tschüss! (that’s German for ‘bye!’)