Guest Scrapper 003: Lina Maria Ullerup Witzner

Hello everyone and welcome back for week 3 of my Guest Scrapper series, a series where I feature an amazing scrapper on my blog each Thursday.

When I first began watching process videos online, I was immediately drawn to Lina, or Aurora Inbag as she is known on YouTube.  Her style really inspires me to go beyond my comfortable zone in my scrapbooking and stretch my creativity in ways I never would have thought of before. You can image how thrilled I was when she agreed to be a guest poster on my blog! So here she is...

Hello. My name is Lina, and I live in Denmark. A tiny country in Scandinavia, Europe. I’ve been married to my husband since 2001, but known him since 1992. I guess you could call us high school/college sweethearts. And then there’s my daughter, born in 2007, whose everyday life is often portrayed on my scrapbook layouts. I love animals, and have a history of breeding Somali cats and Chocolate Fox guinea pigs, and I used to have horses as well. Today we live with an Abyssinian cat, the true queen of the house, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel dog and three guinea pigs.

What inspires you to scrapbook?

It’s the story that inspires me to scrapbook . But that kind of starts at the time I’m deciding which pictures to get developed. I guess you could say my albums are divided into different stories. I have albums about our everyday family life, about the dog, about my childhood etc. And I go through these albums, looking for stories I have yet to tell, and decide on which pictures to develop to compliment those stories. Then when I sit down to scrapbook, I go through the pictures, and know exactly what story I want to tell with that picture. From there I gather the papers, embellishments, stamps and everything else I think I’d like to use. Once I begin the scrapbook process in earnest, it usually takes me an hour to an hour and a half to complete a page.

I’ve been taking quite a few design principle classes since I started scrapbooking back in 2007, so even though I don’t often think about them consciously, you’ll often find visually triangles and complimentary colors etc. on my pages. I’ve also come to love somewhat flat embellishments. I typically scrap 6-8 layouts a week, so the amount of space the layouts claim in my albums is something I think about. But if I think the theme of the page would go well with a huge, bulky flower, then I’ll add it.

When do you scrapbook?

I’m a stay at home mom. So I usually scrap while my daughter is at school and husband at work. I try to be active every morning, so 3 times a week I go to the gym, and two times I go for a run. But once I’m home, showered, and cleaned the house a bit, you’ll most likely find me immersed in some creative endeavor until it’s time to take the dog for his second walk of the day and pick up my daughter.

I actually held off beginning to scrapbook for a few years. I used to work with 3D modeling and texturing, and from there learned a little about digital scrapbooking. I loved the pretty papers and beautiful embellishments, but knew that if I started down the scrapbooking road it would be an expensive and time consuming hobby. And I wasn’t ready to devote that kind of time. But then my daughter started daycare, and I had to pass a local scrapbook store twice a day…every weekday! Needless to say, passing all those so cute mini albums and gorgeous papers in the shop window proved to be too big a temptation, and one day saw me entering the store. I guess the rest is history, as they say *wink*.

What do you love most about scrapbooking? What tips and techniques do you use?

I love color. In fact I’m a little bit obsessed about color. You wouldn’t know, looking into my closet, since most of my clothing is black or neutral. But paint, paper, washi tape even nail polish. If it comes in a range of color, I have to have it. And when I gather papers and embellishment for my layouts, I’m often taking my cue from colors of the photo, or maybe I think the mood of the layout could be set nicely with a certain color. I very rarely use a sketch of plan my layouts. One I have the ‘kit’ assembled; I just go with the flow. But I think that comes from knowing my own style and really knowing what I like and don’t like. I guess in some ways I am using some kind of plan, since I often use the same ‘setup’ of papers or the same places for my embellishment clusters. But I also like to shake things up every now and again, and if I see a layout or a technique I really like in a gallery somewhere, I’m never afraid to try it out, even if it is far from my usually style. I truly believe that, for me, creativity comes from experimentation, practice and knowledge. Knowing design principles means I don’t have to think hard about them, and can knowingly break them if I want to/need to. Years of scrapbook practice makes me confident in my own style, likes and dislikes. And experimentation is what makes it all fun and new again. And every once in a while it results in a style change for me.

What is your goal as a scrapbooker?

 I guess you could call this my goal as a scrapbooker, is to have fun, enjoy the process and create something my husband and daughter enjoys reading/looking through. After all, it is ‘only’ a hobby, and if I don’t enjoy it, I should be doing something else. That said, being able to share what I do through my YouTube channel and blog has really made everything even more fun. People are so nice to comment. And I am so happy when I learn I have inspired others to be creative and have fun, to tell their stories and get them down on paper one way or another. That’s definitely one of the best parts of sharing my works with others.

Isn't her work amazing! And 6-8 layouts a week! Holy smokes! I wish!

Inspiration truly pours out of everything Lina does! Make sure to check out her YouTube channel as well as her blog and show her some love! I hope you are all finding time to be creative in some way this week. Next week my blog will resume it's normal posting schedule as hopefully I have found some kind of a routine with our new baby girl! Be looking for a post all about Miss Eleanor on Monday!