I finally tackled and finished one of the projects on my scrapbooking list of to dos this past week. I turned my not so minibook into regular scrapbook pages. It was a mistake to think I could fit a vacation into a minibook to begin with. I’ve realized that I personally want the big stories and chronology to exist in my regular albums. Minibooks would be extra projects…
Here are peeks into my August vacation in USA ala scrapbook pages. A bit of everything mashed together.
It was troublesome removing photos and elements from the existing minibook pages, resulting in ruined photos and ripped up ephemera. However, going through it all again helped me to make cuts, reducing everything down to the essential elements. Weird to think about memory keeping in that way, but it just felt great to rip up unnecessary things. I know that it’s all okay, because I felt happier after the fact and more satisfied with my pages. I also typed out my journaling. (No, I have not learned to love my handwriting just yet.)
My pages turned out to be a mix of A4 pages in page protectors along with photos and ephemera added straight into the album. I used patterned paper to attach to the edges of those external elements, not only for decoration, but to make room for punching holes.
However, many of my pages also have ephemera stuck directly on them. It felt very natural to just go with the moment, whatever worked best with the items I had. No particular rules, really.
While marathoning through these pages, I also realized that I do not like the decks and stacks of patterned paper that I usually buy. I get tired of the same patterns from project to project. I’ve never bought many of the loose 12×12 pages because of laziness, I think. However, I’m realizing that it might be more inspirational to be more selective. I also like the b sides of patterned paper as my preference is wanting to focus on my photos, not products.
Sometimes I get caught up in wanting to make pretty pages with lots of color – too caught up into the materials and decoration. When looking at it, I think it’s too much color instead! While flipping through my pages, I realized that I really like the variety of page sizes.
I also added little tabs and patterned paper edges to those non-page protector pages, first for decoration, but realized they function really well too! They help with the flipping of pages.
In the end, I also ended up with really simple pages. Just a photo and some journaling. I didn’t really see the need to add anything else. Perhaps bad for manufacturers of embellishments, but it simplifies things for me. And I truly like the way simple pages look as well. It just all depends on the photo I suppose.
In the midst of scrapbooking, I did snap some photos of my desk area… talk about a mess. It was madness, but also fun at the same time. It was enjoyable and satisfying.
I suppose that the mega session of scrapbooking reminded me yet again how much I love practicing this hobby. I organized a bit of my albums as well and bought some new mega albums to fit all the pages I had created. It got me thinking about really getting scrapbooking into my schedule, not just as a fun thing whenever I have time. It IS important to me and time does fly by when I play with paper. It’s not really a surprise, except that I somehow wanted to make it a bigger part of my life.
Anyway, I decided to sign-up for Layout a Day with Lain Ehmann starting in February. I’m really looking forward to finding my style and getting into the rhythm of keeping my memories, stories and ultimately, life.
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2 Comments
Oh wow! I love what you’ve shown.
Isn’t it funny how having to pare things down is ultimately a good thing? I think that one of the reasons I stopped scrapping was because I wanted to scrap ALL the photos, especially of Gracie. It felt bad to exclude any of them. So I just stopped altogether. Now with my tiny art journal, I know I can only fit about three or four photos (sized way down) on a double page spread, so that’s it. I usually print a few more and crop them and then decide. But it’s very freeing, in a way, to START each page knowing that I can’t fit most of what I want to in, so it HAS to be the bottom line photo or image that fits the story I want to tell (or, more likely, the mood of the situation…)
And the funny thing is that Gracie and I flip through the three completed art journals I have and her zillion art journals (she’s REALLY prolific!) and then we’ll find something in there that inspires us to look up the photos on my computer and go through them and share stories and memories. And she and Tom always remember different bits than I do.
It’s sort of like an “index” to our daily life, in a way. With a little bit of the story and a few images to jog our memory, we’re inspired to look at all the photos and remember the event. It’s neat how its evolving that way
Oh, I defnitely know what you mean, creating boundaries and rules so we can actually approach the task at hand. Great point!
I love how your art journals are like an index – I think it serves the purpose of keeping memories and revisiting them – fabulous!