Scrapbook My Life

I hope has enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday. Here are a few journaling questions to help you start scrapbooking those Thanksgiving day photos:

•  What is your favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal? Are you a traditional turkey and stuffing kind of girl or do you prefer something more unique?
• What non-food rituals do you associate with Thanksgiving? Do you enjoy watching football? Planning Black Friday shopping trips? Playing board games with your nieces and nephews?
• What are you most grateful for this year? Friends? Family? Work accomplishments?

If your Thanksgiving day photos didn’t turn out quite as nicely as you had hoped, remember that creative cropping can work wonders. It’s hard to get group shots where everyone looks perfect, but it’s fairly simple to crop the person who is blinking or squinting out of the photo. If your photos look overexposed or underexposed, try adjusting the contrast and converting them to a sepia tone for a traditional-looking Thanksgiving layout.

Even the best writer occasionally wonders what to say on her scrapbook page. If you find yourself at a loss for words, here are a few journaling techniques to consider for your next layout:

• Use brochures, programs, and fliers to add journaling information pages about special places and events.
• Find a famous quote that relates to your topic, then use it as a starting point for your journaling.
• When creating a scrapbook as a gift, consider writing your journaling in the form of a letter addressed to the recipient.
• A top ten list can be used on a variety of pages, such as “The Top Ten Things Adam Loves About Preschool” or “The Top Ten Reasons Why I Love My Husband.”
• What does your family do in a typical month? Create a calendar page with listings of soccer practices, parent-teacher conferences, birthdays, haircuts, business trips, and the other activities that fill your days.
• Creating a timeline of important events and dates is a great way to combine a variety of photos into one unified layout.
• Classified ad journaling can add humor to a layout. If you were writing a classified ad for the perfect mother, what would you say?
• Acrostic journaling is easy to do and fun for personality pages. Write down each letter of a person’s name, then think of short phrases that begin with each letter and describe this person’s personality.
• Create a dictionary definition of your subject. For example, how would you define your spouse or your children?
• A scrapbook can be used to preserve important family recipes like the one for Grandma’s apple pie, but give your self permission to go beyond the obvious. How about creating an imaginary recipe, such as the recipe for a successful family vacation?

If you walk through the aisles of your local scrapbook store, you may find yourself wondering if everyone who scrapbooks has a perfect life. There are supplies for vacations, weddings, birthdays, athletic achievements, and romantic rendezvous, but nothing to scrapbook the parts of life that are less than perfect. When is the last time you saw a layout about getting fired in your favorite scrapbook magazine? What would your scrapbooking friends say if they watched you complete a page about the trauma of getting a divorce or the difficulty you had coping with the death of your parents?

Even though it’s tempting to only scrapbook the happy parts of your life, I challenge you to take the time to record some of your more painful memories as well. The obstacles you’ve overcome are part of what makes you a special and unique person. Learning from your past experiences is a huge accomplishment and one that definitely deserves a place in your family history.

Although I don’t always use a title for my layout, I do think a properly chosen title is a great way to help reinforce the theme of your page. A title can be a single word, a definition, part of a quote, or a snippet from a song lyric. When you embellish your little using alphabet stamps, letter stickers, chipboard, or other decorative treatments, the title can also serve as an interesting accent.

If you’re having trouble coming up with a suitable title for your page layout, I suggest visiting the following sites:

• http://www.scrapbook.com/titles.php
• http://www.theperfecttitle.com/
• http://scrapsayings.com/
• http://www.wittyliving.com/crafts/scrapbooking/titles/titles_index.html

When you want to include a title on your page and you’re running out of space, it’s time to get creative. Try highlighting key words in your journaling block with chalk, acrylic paint, or a secondary font choice to make an interesting title. For example, in a layout about your son’s first birthday, you could highlight the words “James is one” to make a functional yet unobtrusive page title.

If you’re not a professional writer, scrapbook journaling can seem like a bit of a chore. However, it’s important not to totally skip over this part of the process.

At the bare minimum, you’ll want to include the following info on your pages:

• Who is in the photos on your page? (Try to include full names of people outside your immediate family, since your memory might fade in the future!)
• What are they doing?
• When were the photos taken?
• Where were you when the photos were taken?
• Why did you choose to include this particular layout in your scrapbook album?
• How would you describe your thoughts and feelings about this particular event?

Pre-made scrapbook journaling aids, such as chipboard titles, vellum quote stacks, and die cut words and phrases, can make it easier to start journaling on your pages. You may also want to get in the habit of carrying a small notebook in your purse so you can jot down notes when you’re taking pictures or happen to think of a funny memory you’d like to include in your scrapbook.

Like many moms, my favorite scrapbook subject is my son. However, I still try to include myself in my albums from time to time. Since part of the reason I scrapbook is to preserve my family’s history, I think it’s important to have pages that reflect me outside of my role as “Logan’s Mommy.”

Here are a few journaling prompts to get you started on your own “All About Me” scrapbook:

• How did you get your name?
• What are your religious, political, and social beliefs? How did you develop these beliefs? In what ways have they influenced your life?
• What do you value? Honesty? Education? Family? Friendship? How do these values influence your life?
• What would you most like to change?
• How did your upbringing influence the person you are today?
• In what ways are you similar to your parents and other family members? In what ways are you different?
• Who is your hero and why? Has it changed over the years?
• What is your motto?
• What are your greatest accomplishments?
• Why do you scrapbook? What other activities do you enjoy?
• What are your favorite and least favorite things?
• What did you want to be when you grew up? How did you choose the career you have now?
• What do you like the most about yourself? How would your friends and family describe you? How would you describe yourself?
• What was the best piece of advice you ever received?
• How is your life different than you thought it would be?