Uninspired page calls

There have been some really great page calls lately from SM, FK and SC but the new ones are doing nothing for me. I've never been very big on punches and I guess I don't really love the traditional categories like Mother's Day although SM have accepted one I did about my mother which I don't really love. The one I did love about my experience of motherhood didn't make the grade - too much journalling I'm guessing and the pic is a tiny bit out of focus but I wanted it that way - but it's still my favourite anyway out of the two. I can't post the one that got accepted but suffice to say it will be in SM in April (?) maybe, in time for Mother's Day. I'll happily post the loser here though. Maybe I love it because it's such a striking picture of Her Royal Highness and it brings out all the warm fuzzy mama love feelings when I look at it. Lord knows I need as much of that as I can muster to love her through each new destructive day!!!

FK want multiple pics and I haven't really gotten the hang of that either. I'm most definitely the "hero picture" scrapper, and that's what virtually all of my layouts are about. I very rarely use more than one picture unless I'm really forcing myself for a particular reason (see "The Beach Is Calling" layout above) and then I think it doesn't leave me enough room to embellish the way I want to so I'm never entirely pleased with the result. This one's also a no-go from the big three so off to an album it goes....

I took some very good advice from Lusi Austin (amazing and very talented and most importantly totally original scrapper) to get into the habit of submitting everything and so that's what I've done. Admittedly it has brought more success than just focusing on the page calls alone and pages have been picked up for categories that I haven't even seen advertised as page calls yet, or they have made it into sections like Final Encore, Quick Grabs, etc that don't require a particular theme. There is a cute blinkie somewhere that says "Just Keep Submitting!" and it's absolutely true. You have to perservere and just keep plugging away at it. Be prepared for the mags to take some layouts you don't really love as much as others, and brace yourself for them to reject pages you truly love and think are amazing. Funny business this getting published, you never know what to expect! I'll mutter something here about nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!!