B & B Review: Cathy Zielske’s Blog

This is the first installment of the B & B Reviews.

I have been following Cathy Zielske’s Blog for a few months now, but have been familiar with her as a scrapbooking celebrity for a few years. I remember browsing her books while an employee at my local scrapbook store. I chose her blog to review first because her scrapbooking is probably the least like my own scrapbooking style. Zielske’s focus is digital and hybrid scrapbooking. I do some digital scrapbooking but mainly create traditional or conventional scrapbooks.

I reviewed her posts from September 15 – October 15, 2010—one month. I settled on a month’s worth of posts because I thought this would best represent the author. One week might not work if I happen to chose a week the blogger is on vacation. A month illustrates more fully what the whole blog is potentially about. Even this has its limitations as a writer’s style and focus may shift over time. I suppose this means that I will just have to re-review blogs in the future. Anyway, on to the review!

Cathy Zielske’s Blog is not just about scrapbooking. She also writes about her new year’s goal of “moving more, and eating less.” With this in mind, she shares with her readers some of her weight loss strategies (she is also a runner and a cyclist). I really like how she stresses the moving part over the eating part, thought she does sometimes talk about the eating part. Her family has also recently undertaken a home remodeling project, which she shares with her readers on her blog.

Now, you may be thinking “what about scrapbooking?” There is plenty of that, too. In fact, her “moving more, eating less” progress has been chronicled in her scrapbooking. She also shares layouts as way to educate readers. Zielske is a trained graphic designer before becoming a scrapbooker in 2001. She has her own line of digital products from Designer Digitals available for purchase and she occasionally gives away digital goodies, too. In October, she began a series of posts called “Make a Page Mondays” in order to show her readers the pages she is making and how to use some of her digital products. She goes step by step through the process making even the most digital-phobic scrapbooker want to try it out.
Most of Zielske’s posts include photographs of herself, her family, or other items to illustrate her posts (e.g., a photograph of her running shoes). This makes it easy to see right away if the post is something you want to finish reading. You see the photograph and instantly want to know the story behind the photograph (isn’t that what scrapbooking is all about?).

Over one month, Zielske posted 21 times and had five giveaways. I recommend reading her blog if you are interested in any self-improvement projects outside of scrapbooking or wondering how to incorporate self-improvement projects into your own scrapbooking. I also think she is a good source to look to if you are interested in digital scrapbooking or just using software programs to edit your photographs before using them in traditional scrapbooking. Zielske is a scrapbooking educator. She teaches online classes for Big Picture Classes and has published two books on scrapbooking, Clean and Simple Scrapbooking and Clean and Simple Scrapbooking — The Sequel. She has a positive attitude about life and it shows in her posts. For happy, scrapbooking-related reading, check out Cathy Zielske’s Blog!