okay, so these pictures aren't new, but I don't have the camera right now, so... I thought a lot about Jackie's comments (thanks, Jackie!!) on my last post, did some internet searching on scrapbooking sites, and got out my stack of albums and took a look at them, to see what I actually have.
I started out scrapbooking with Creative Memories, which is a home-consultant company... they were very much of "the pictures are the focus" school of thought- by this, they meant not overwhelming the photos with patterned paper, embellishments, etc. They also had strap-hinge (a type of binding) albums, and white paper pages. The pages above were photos of my parents and sister graciously helping me with the very messy job of removing the carpet from my first house, and restoring the hardwood floor that was underneath. Not much in the way of embellishments here, but the photos help me to remember how hot it was, how much dust there was, how much I appreciated, their help, and how satisfying it was to have it done!
The layout above was made with a template for cutting and arranging the photos- the photos were all taken at Anderson Gardens, in Rockford, IL, a very beautiful public Japanese garden in the middle of the city. I didn't do much embellishing at all, except for matting the photos and making the origami crane. The photos are definitely the focus here, and I very much meant it to be that way.
This layout doesn't even have any photos, but I wanted to remember some of the (many) big changes that happened in 2005- we got a dog (Sedona!), Tom sold his car, we sold our house, and we moved from Illinois to Arizona--- no pictures needed, really.
One thing all these layouts (and most of my layouts, actually) have in common is that they're pretty linear and simple... in the past, I haven't gone in for overly "cutesy" or "busy" layouts- maybe that will change with the art journaling influence, we'll see.
The internet searching that I've done the past few days led to some revelations in regards to the "guilt" that can be associated with scrapbooking (guilt from mountains of photos not scrapbooked, or even printed); the feeling of not being "caught up" and feeling like scrapbooking is a "chore" rather than a fun hobby. My searching led me to the site Big Picture Scrapbooking- they offer online classes, and a totally different philosophy that is about scrapbooking the memories, not necessarily the photos, not doing "event-based" layouts, and not having to do things chronologically in order to capture the memories you want to keep. Now, I need to find a couple books related to this at the library.
I had actually been thinking about ripping my photo albums all apart and re-doing them, but I decided NOT to do that; they're okay the way they are-- that was my style at the time. I also went thru my boxes of stuff, and found pretty much another whole album's worth of pages that are all mostly done- maybe it's not a creative block after all, but an organizational block!
Anyway- I got over 60 photos printed last week from a trip we took over Christmas, and we'll see what happens to them. And lastly, a quote I just found that seems to sum up the whole "scrapbooking" and photo album thing- to use the photos and journaling to keep track of events and memories for the future: We write to taste life twice, once in the moment and in retrospection. Anais Nin
