my scrapping style evolution-

I've been scrapping for at least 8-10 years (I don't really know for sure), and my style has evolved and changed over the years... it's pretty interesting to look at the difference from some of my older pages to more current ones! 

I started out using Creative Memories strap-hinge albums, and scrapping my pages in the 'Creative Memories' style... little or no patterned paper, white backgrounds, lots of stickers as embellishments, and borders / blocks for embellishing and journaling. 

Don't get me wrong; I'm glad I took the photos and scrapped them... but looking at them now, I don't really think there's much 'design sense' on these pages; they're just blocks of photos, etc. placed sort of randomly on the page. On the page above, I used letter templates to make my titles; I traced the letters and numbers individually, then colored them in with marker- talk about time-consuming!

Like so many scrappers of that era, I also cut some of my photos into shapes- luckily, I usually stuck with ovals or circles, rather than going crazy with stars or other shapes, like some scrappers did! And of course, every photo had to be matted (another 'talk about time consuming' thing). I did use patterned paper sometimes, as you can see above. I vaguely remember the scrapbook store I used to shop at, back in Illinois-- all the paper was separated by theme (baby, travel, birthday, etc) and the growing trend was to use themed paper that matched your photos. 

I also got into a new trend in page layout design in the early 2000's, with color blocking templates. (I think I even still have some of these templates, although I don't know why I kept them, since I haven't used them since at least 2005!) I do like how this particular layout turned out, actually, but color blocking like this required a lot of photo cropping and measuring (which I'm not all that good at). 

I went all out on this page and made an origami bird to go with the theme of this layout, which was a visit to a Japanese garden with my parents. (although you'd never know that, since I didn't leave any blocks on the page to include journaling!) The origami bird gives a tiny bit of dimension to the page, but my pages were mostly flat when I first started scrapping.

Here's a page I did last year-- it's sort of like the color blocking layout above, although it's much more loose and collage-ish in style, and even includes dimensional things such as ribbon, brads, and charms. I think the fact that I do art journaling has influenced my scrapbooking style; it's not quite so rigid any more. (in addition, this series of pages documents an art retreat I attended last year, so I wanted to emphasize that quality in the page design.) 

I also stopped using the 'strap-hinge' style album, since it was pretty rigid in terms of the page order- you had to glue the papers right to the pages, and couldn't rearrange them once they were in there. This was way to restrictive for me since I now like to scrap 'what I want, when I want' and not feel 'forced' to scrap what was next in order chronologically. I switched to 3-ring binder style albums so I can slip the pages into page protectors and re-arrange them however I want them.

I think the fact that I now take digital photos has also influenced my scrapping style- before, I somehow felt I 'had' to use all the photos I took since I paid good money for the film and for developing them. (Or at least to use a lot more of them than I do now, anyway!) 

Now, I take so many digital photos, I couldn't ever hope to scrap them all-- this has been helpful, actually, because now I can pick out the few (or the one) that best captures the feeling, mood, or event, instead of trying to cram all of them onto the pages just because I took them. On the page above, I actually used a photocopy of my own artwork as the background paper, and tried to capture the colorful, chaotic feel of the photos with the papers and colors I chose.

I also scrap things other than 'events' like birthdays, holidays, or special events... the photo above is one page of a layout I did that with photos of graffiti I took on a day out last summer in downtown Phoenix. I wanted to echo the graffiti-feel of the photos with the page layout, in the ink splatters and the gray / cement colored paper I chose. This layout was done for no other reason than to showcase the photos, and try a few new techniques.

While I don't love some of the details on this layout (I fussed with it longer than I should have), I think I did the photos justice with the layout I made, I learned some new techniques that I like, and found some that I don't like so much. And it taught me a lesson that sometimes, I should just 'leave well enough alone' with my art. But it also showed me that I can get over my sense of perfection and that 'not-perfect' is perfectly fine.

I still do 'event-based' layouts if the photos call for it; the 2 pages above are from a trip we took to Las Vegas in September 2009. I just scrapped these pages a month ago, actually-- yay!! for scrapping out of order, and for only scrapping the photos I feel capture the moment the best. I'm also putting my opinion and feelings onto the pages more than I used to (they're my scrapbooks, after all!) so these pages record my feelings about Las Vegas, not just the where-what-who-when type of things. 


I can see a change in my scrapping style over the years, although I don't think I really have a 'signature thing' that defines my style-- I still do color blocked layouts sometimes; I sometimes still do who-what-where-when journaling; I still use page borders and stickers occasionally... I may even cut a photo into a shape now and then, although I'm not exactly sure about that one! 


Thanks for taking a walk down my scrapbooking 'Memory Lane' with me; has anyone else's scrapping style changed over time? I'd love to hear about it!