Scrapbooking, from a different point of view...

I came into scrapbooking via my desperate love for paper. In my pre-scrapping days, I would just entertain myself for...well, minutes, but that's long for me, by cruising the notebook aisle at Target, maybe cave and buy a new journal or pen. I love to sew and crochet also, so I was always in Jo-Ann's or Michael's and couldn't help but peek at the scrapbooking aisles. I even bought paper, though in those days, it was just to decorate my poems and things. Finally, I had the revelation that between my love for photos, journaling and paper, I think this scrapbooking thing might not be as hard as it seems from the outside (something I tell anyone who admires my books and then goes on to say they could never do it).

So I just sort of found my own way. Read the magazines, checked out the galleries at Two Peas, found things I liked and that worked for me and things that didn't. I had my system. Sort photos into categories then file in my "need to scrap" photo album. With my new digital cameras, I've been taking so many pictures that I just can't scrap them all. I'm okay with that. I've been putting them photo albums and making page kits for the ones I really like and want to do something with.

I recently bought both editions of Cathy Zielske's Clean and Simple Scrapbooking. The first one I got in January, I think and the second as soon as it came out. And from those books came the idea to journal first. And in my true writing style, not just the same old story, year after year ("T loved the zoo. His favorite animal was the polar bear. etc." That's cool and all - it's how I do most of my event pages. But one of my goals in scrapbooking it to tell the stories my way without my needing to be there, so my writing voice is kind of necessary). I tried that Friday night, my first night scrapping in a few months. What a fun way to scrapbook. I felt so much less pressure to organize my photos on the page to get everything in. I had the important thing - the journaling - already taken care of. Everything else just flowed.