My first publication!

I have just received my copy of Australian Scrapbooking Memories magazine Vol 14 No 5 and it contains my first published LO's! I managed to get TWO layouts into this edition, the one below is contained in the Newbie gallery and I have the cover page of the Final Encore gallery. :)

A while ago I came up with a few goals in relation to my scrapbooking. These were to enter a LO into the Gold Coast Show, to win best exhibit and most successful exhibitor in the scrapbooking sections at the Gold Coast Show, to be on a DT and to be published. I completed the first two in 2009, the second two in 2011 and have now achieved the last in 2012. The interesting thing about this delay in having a LO accepted for publication made me realise that there are so many different ideals when it comes to scrapbooking and what is judged to be 'good' really depends on the audience. Some of the LO's I submitted for publication had previously won awards at the Show and they rejected; LO's which had won blog competitions didn't win at the Show and so forth. Even just looking at the different blog competitions I enter I'm reminded that different groups place different emphasis on how important the journalling is or the photos are or whether a LO with lots of fussy cutting and flowers is 'prettier' than a messy one with lots of paint and texture.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I'm excited to finally be published, I no longer consider it to be the event that defines whether my scrapbooking is 'good' or not. It also means I need to consider some new goals for the future of my scrapbooking. Here is what I've come up with:

1. Be in the top 5 at Once Upon a Sketch. I can't see this happening any time soon, because they choose stunning multi-layer designs with so much detail for their winners, but I want to work to developing more of that into my work. Plus, they have a really friendly DT who leave lovely comments when you enter their challenges. :)
2. Gain a spot on another design team. I enjoyed my time with The Lollipop Ladies however it was hard to be part of a fortnightly challenge blog while working full time since I normally only manage to create one LO a week. I'd love to join another team which did monthly challenges.
3. Promote my blog some more. At the moment, my most popular post is the one about a costume party I went to because people are searching for inspiration for a Pat Benatar costume. I would love to get more people commenting on my blog and more people visiting to actually see my art/craft. :)
4. Host some more crops with my friends. I get so little actual scrapping done but it is so much fun.

So what are your scrapbooking goals at the moment?