I have to admit that despite my professional experience and lofty career goals, I am a very ordinary and typical scrapper in one very emotional way: I sometimes fight my guilt over the time I spend at my work by salving that wound with the reminder that “well, I’m creating a record of her life to leave my daughter at least while I work.” But lately, a change in page topics that are appealing to publications and that are inspiring me have conspired to take that guilt-fighting weapon away from me.

Magazines and other publishing outlets are increasingly looking for broader page topics than just “babies, kids and vacations.” As the scrapbook market expands beyond the moms scrapping about their children, designers are finding a lot of success scrapping about other topics. We are even encouraged, shockingly for mothers who are often forced to make ourselves our last priority, to make books all about US. But when you are doing that it is harder to hide behind saying “but at least I’m creating a book that will be an heirloom for my child.” I have resisted embarking on those kinds of projects despite the trend for that reason. “I have boxes of pictures of my daughter to scrap,” I tell myself. “I don’t have time to scrap about myself.”

And then I got inspired with an idea for the Basic Grey album contest, and an idea for the CKU layout contest in Orlando in a couple of weeks. And I told myself that “well, I will do those projects because they are trendy and will have a better chance of being noticed and so I’ll do it for professional reasons.” And so I timidly embarked on this alien territory (at least since my daughter’s birth, when time has become such an issue) of scrapbooking about myself. And I discovered that I am enjoying it – and doing really good quality work I think! Oh no, what if I like this too much?

And then I came to a realization while I was working on my CKU layout. I realized that I was putting something on that page that my daughter would probably never know about me otherwise. I was giving her the chance to get to know something about her mother that probably would remain undiscovered by her if not recorded in this way. So while the page is not actually about her, it is still a gift and a legacy to her from me.

Now, most of the time I do respect myself and my goals and have no problem justifying the time and effort I put into building my career…but at my weak moments it’s still nice to have that “legacy to my child” arguement to fall back on. It’s nice to think that I can scrapbook sometimes about myself and still be leaving something of value to her. And it’s nice to know my professional work can serve a dual purpose in my personal life as well.

Scrapbooking can be time consuming as a hobby. As a vocation, it can be even more time consuming, especially as calls for magazine deadlines and other events seem to come in batches, and we spend more time agonizing over every little detail of our work. So, since most of us who are attempting to build scrapbook careers already have overflowing lives – families, homes, even another job – how do we make room in our lives and schedules and find time and energy for yet another endeavor?

For me the answer to this has been to have respect for myself and for my work. These goals are important to me, and so should be important in my daily life. I treat them as priorities when planning my day, along with other priorities like the needs of my daughter and my husband and running our household. They are my needs and so they are a priority too. This means that I have to give up other things in favor of this priority. I don’t just put my feet up and relax when my two-year-old lays down for a nap. That is the time for my priorities – and that means working towards my scrapbook goals. And the same thing applies in evenings and on weekends or when my daughter is asleep at night. Not all of that time is spent working. But work is first on the agenda and not last.

Of course, there may be others that are affected by your priorities. I am lucky in that I have a supportive husband who believes in my goals and wants to see me succeed at them. He is willing to accept a few more household responsibilities to assist me in my endeavors and he encourages me to keep going in chasing my dreams. I know everyone isn’t so lucky. But make sure you share your dreams with others who are close to you and get the assistance and support you can from them. If it’s important to you, it should be important to those who care about you. Let them know what they can do from a practical standpoint to help you pursue your goals.

I know it’s sometimes hard to respect and treat scrapbooking as your job and make it a priority in your life when you are still in the starving artist phase of submission work. I have found myself doing this all the time when talking to others about my work and being reluctant to describe it as my “job” since I’m not collecting paychecks from it often. But I have finally come to the conclusion that I have to respect myself and my work before anyone else does. And I have found that doing that opens doors within myself that makes it easier to proceed with confidence down the road towards my dreams.

Multiple submissions are the subject of ongoing debate among many members of the scrapbook industry, and their acceptability even varies from publication to publication. Is it alright to submit the same piece of work to multiple places for consideration at once? Obviously for some things like major contests, the rules are specific that it is not acceptable to submit work elsewhere that is being entered in the contest. But what about the rest of the time? Can you send the same layout to more than one publishing outlet at a time?

I believe for several reasons that multiple submissions should be acceptable and are probably a necessary evil for both the artists and publications in the industry for the foreseeable future. This is due to editorial schedules and changing needs and styles of magazines, as well as the practicality of notifying artists when their work has been rejected.

That last reason that I listed is actually the biggest reason. As it currently stands most publications do not notify artists when their submission has been rejected, instead keeping them on file for possible future use. While this can sometimes lead to a call in the distant future for a previously submitted piece, it leaves the submitter in limbo as to whether or not their page has been rejected. Even if they are aware through professional contacts that page requests have been made for the call for which it was submitted, artists can’t be sure their work isn’t still being considered for another use. And the vast volume of submissions they are receiving makes it impractical for publications to send rejection notices, as well as the fact that this would effectively result in greatly limiting the number of layouts they have on file for future use to fill editorial gaps. So with no such thing as a rejection notice in this industry, artists would have to either commit to offering each piece of work to only ONE publication or everyone has to work with the idea of multiple submissions.

There are other reasons for accepting the reality of multiple submissions as a system that works for both artists and publications. The first is seasonality. Much of scrapbook work is seasonal. If you don’t submit that Christmas page to multiple places when all the Christmas calls are out, by the time you know for sure one place has rejected it, more than likely all the other publications have finished selecting their Christmas work. Another problem is the evolving style of the industry. Just when you think you have figured out which magazine your work fits the best, changing styles may put you over in someone else’s territory. And since this all takes place months before anything actually goes to press, there is no way of knowing this is happening until after an issue is published – too late to adjust your submissions! Allowing for multiple submissions gives artists the best chance of getting their work picked up without having make what is often little better than an educated guess at which publication’s direction it will match, and recieving a broad range of submissions allows publications to have plenty of design style options from which to choose for their editorial needs.

But if multiple submissions are going to continue to be a fact of life in scrapbook publication, there has to be respect for the system. Scrapbookers shouldn’t abuse the allowance by “blanket submitting” work everywhere in the blind hope that someone will pick it up. Submissions should be targeted to match calls or a publication’s presumed editorial style and needs. Work should be provided to the first request received for it, even if that is not the artist’s first choice of publication. Rules of contests and other calls that specifically disallow multiple submissions should be respected. If these guidelines are observed, it will discourage publications from drawing a line and deciding to completely disallow multiple submissions. And while there are some advantages to it for them, it is us artists who have the most to lose if the publications decide to change the system.

Multiple submissions are a fact of life, a necessary evil in the industry the way it is today. Let’s all play by a few rules so it can stay that way.