PRT036 – Go Outside

I am committing the Izzy- injuncted sin of commenting before I finish listening to the episode– hope I don't end up sounding silly… I have a word for my scrapbooking-time-eating habits which, under cover of the excuse that I am looking for inspiration, take away my time– Shopping, Looking at sneak peeks online and so forth equal “Scrapcrooking”. sometimes they give me my scrapfix and are beneficial, sometimes not! Am sneakily listening to the show while packing for our annual Convention here in S.A.– previous teachers include Stacy & Tim– Scrapcrooking deluxe!

:)

I bet you'll have a blast! Have fun!

Loved how you took a list and applied it to scrapbooking for this podcast! Very cool, thanks for a new perspective on things.

Dear Noell,

I didn't get the chance to listen to last weeks Roundtable until today, and I have to say that it is a good one. I do have some input on the topic you were discussing regarding emotions evoked from our layouts. I have to admit that there have been a few times when scrapbooking a layout, that a photo (most often and older one) grabbed at my heart, and I cried. Most often it was a photo of my children when they were little, and meloncholy feelings of where did the time go.

I want to express how important these feelings are though, and how we can grow from these emotions and even heal from scrapbooking emotion-filled memories. When my oldest son was 3, I divorced, and a little over a year later, I remarried the wonderful man I am married to today (going on 14 years). When I started scrapbooking in 1997, he was around 5 years old. I had a lot of photos of him and his biological father when he was very little, old wedding photos, college days. I didn't know what to do with these photos. I knew I didn't want to throw them out (well maybe I wanted to) but somehow I knew that those photos did not belong to me. They belonged to my son. I think it was the summer of 2004, after giving birth to my third child, that I decided to make Matthew his scrapbook. The pages created with all the love I had in my heart for my son. I made the book about him. And even those college photos, and wedding photos were scrapbooked to reflect the fact that “HE” (our son) was created out of great love. I think it was the fasted scrapbook I had ever completed. Matthew sees his dad once a year, and I always take a photo of them, to add a page to his scrapbook. My son is 17 now, and I know he cherishes that book. He even showed it to his father once when he came to pick him up. His father loved the book. The scrapbook didn't evoke bitterness, or anger. Just a lot of love between a father and a son. What I found the most surprising from the whole experience was that I had healed from my divorce. I didn't hate him, and I was no longer bitter. I could move on, and happily I did.

Love my membership. Keep up the great work!

Sincerely,

Amy Bailey

First, I wanna say how hilarious it was when Ali (I'm assuming that's who it was) whispered her subliminal message of “go-outside” during the show, and I was SHOCKED that Izzy didn't chime in and point it out, but I love that he did name the episode with that in mind. Too funny!!

I have a question completely unrelated to the episode…

I have really tried to focus on adding the date to my scrapbook layouts, but I am never sure whether to put the date of the day I am making the layout, or the date of the photos or story. I often scrap photos that are a year or so old, or older, of my daughter, and tell the story of the photo, but I am telling it from the perspective of the present. So what I end up doing most of the time is listing the date this way:

Photo: mm/dd/yy Journaling (or Page): mm/dd/yyyy

Just curious what everyone on the panel does?

Rachel Smith, Knoxville, TN

I just finished listening to “Go Outside” and as always I loved the show. I especially enjoyed the discussion of who are we scrapbooking for? I do not have children to past my scrapbooks on to, so I have been satisfied scrapping for the “Now” and for “me”. Having recently worked on some genealogy, I now find myself thinking more like Molly Irvin and asking about the future and who may be viewing my pages. Even though I don't have children, undoubtedly “someone” will be looking at these photos. Looking back at my pages, I feel they lack the information for tracking a family history. Example: my page may include journaling about John and a particular event (and of course I don't journal on every page) but it lacks tracking information such as full name, age, year. I am considering going back through all of my pages and putting this type of tracking information on the back of each layout. I would love to hear what your panel thinks about this idea. Love PRT, Digi Show, and Foolish Adventure. Sharon

Thank you for having Molly Irwin on the show! Her Scrapbook retreat in Paris will be my very first EVER! (living in Germany there just aren't any) Since Paris is only 7 hours away, I've got a gang of women and we're all making the drive together! Yeah!!!? Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I do something similar. I'll usually say “Photo taken mm/dd/yy” and

“Journaling written on mm/dd/yy.”

I love listening to the Roundtable and the topic of the zen habits really hit home with me. When you got to the “less noise, more solitude” topic the wheels in my head really starting turning. Years ago I read a newspaper commentary where the writer talked about the constant barrage of noise we face every day. He then wondered “if we were never quiet, where would our next great music, or literature, or art come from?” If we never stop to be quiet we will never know who we are inside. We will never see our own beauty or or find our own inspiration. Once we connect with the person deep down inside ourselves by taking time to be quiet we will no longer be uncomfortable with the layouts we create or worry about whether it is “correct” or “perfect”. We will scrapbook because it tells about who we are, even if the layout isn't about us.

Such a great point! I've read that most people are afraid of being alone with only themselves their thoughts, which is why we tend to surround ourselves with lots of noise. The writer claimed that when alone, most people fall into a downward spiral of negativity and eventually depression. If we're engaging our minds in creative ideas, though, there's no need to fall into that empty space that becomes negative. It's those who exercise their creative minds and the generation of ideas who feel confident in their quiet alone time.

Definitely enjoyed this episode of Paperclipping Live. More Zen (that seems like an oxymoronic phrase?) would be better.

I have been challenged to try and simplify my possessions and my life over the past year. I'm by nature a collector. I love beautiful things, lots of texture and pattern. It does feel better to have less clutter, makes one appreciate lovely things more.

Currently, I'm taking May Flaum's class at BPS “Use Your Stash” which is pushing me to do more layouts. Of course, creating more uses STUFF up. There is good discussion on the message board about our stashes and managing them. It's been helpful to get me to focus more on what I really can get used when I think of shopping now. I'm also trying now to get supplies organized to donate.

I enjoyed the other aspects of the discussion about the stories and inspiration. You know how I look at the future when it comes to what I do – not sure my scrapbooking will survive. You know, we often put too much emphasis oon the wrong things. I used to tell folks that life needs to be balanced – work can suck you in, especially my generation. My phrase was “They are not putting your name up in lights on the building when you leave”. I think generations since my baby boomer generation get that and I believe may have richer lives for that realization.

I think we need to have some of that attitude about scrapbooking, too. It's FUN! Feeling obligated with 'have to's' cannot be helpful.

As always enjoy the show!

Loved hearing the adaptations of Leo's philosophies for living more simply to the creative processes involved in scrapbooking…I read his blog regularly and had ironically already begun to think about how to apply his lessons for living more simply to my own art adventures…I started by giving a lot of my older supplies away…for the same reasons as discussed about being overwhelmed with too many choices and too much product. I think Nancy's comments about the scrapbooking industry being better off in the long run with less consumption was so timely to this discussion!

Anyway, the real reason I looked for the comment section was to ask about the coupon code for GIS…I tried to use it for just one of the workshops and it came back as invalid. I'm wondering if one has to buy all three with the package deal offered to actually get a discount? Thanks in advance for any guidance on this….

And thanks for your shows…I have now listened to all the past ones and look forward to each new one now…very entertaining and informative and thought provoking and just plain fun getting to 'know' all of you!

This was my first podcast! I will be listening more in the future! Molly, I lived in D.C. from 2006-2008, and I never found a LSS. =(

Thanks for reminding me about Nancy's comments that the industry will be

better off with less consumption! I agree. I think the country and world in

general will be better off as well.

Yes — the coupon code is for the bundle package of three classes. :)

Jennifer, what event are you referring to? You have me intrigued!

Nancy's comments at the end of the show really resonated with me. She said that our “starting place” (for scrapping) has shifted, that we no longer look through envelopes of photos and group them into layouts like we were “taught to do.” I loved this quote: “We're doing it as an art/craft, rather than as a funcitonal thing to do with our photos, that we feel we have to do something with.” I think that the phrase “we feel we have something to do with” is really significant. Years ago when I went digital (for photos), I vowed that I would not change my picture-taking habits and end up with thousands of photos that I “don't know what to do with.” Now five+ years later, I have fully succumbed to taking more photos than I'll ever need, and I have only just recently really begun to consider what this means for my scrapbooking process. We used to use photo albums (maybe some people still do?) as a way to display all or most of our photos, and as least in my own case, I would only scrapbook the ones that pertained to certain events or that “spoke” to me. It is certainly still (and more so!) the case that we can only scrapbook a small part of the photos we take, but is there something that people are using to showcase all of those other fantastic pictures that they take? I know they are all there, in my computer, but I feel like until I “do something” with them, no one ever looks at them or sees them. Anyway, just a few thoughts. As always, thanks for the great show, guys!

as always, i enjoy the weekly podcast and look forward to the newest episode coming in over Itunes….so my two cents (first comment, hope to do many more)….love Leo at the Zen Habits which means this PRT episode really resonated for me…taking my love of scrapbooking and combining it with the search to simplify and to be more meaningful with my free time. great refresher and loved everyone's input on Leo's list.
and i thought Nancy's comments at the end gave me a place to stop and really think about her comments. I interpreted it as the world of scrapbooking is moving away from that routine of chronologically gluing photos onto 12×12 card stock with an 'over-do' of embellishments and some random 3 word title on the page. I think I heard Nancy say that the world of scrapbooking is opening up to be inclusive of many approaches-paper, digital, mini-books, by topic or creative expression, chronological etc. I am finding that my time is scattered between catching the current notable events (ok, that looks chronological, doesn't it?), trying new techniques, scraplifting an idea of template from a magazine or the web, trying the world of digital and on it goes. This lovely pursuit for me combines many things and I love it. Your podcasts help keep me enthused, make me laugh (you all have such infectious laughter…i wish i could be in the room with you, visit with you in person and laugh alot) and give me pause to think. Keep up the wonderful podcasts!

Noell, just in case you are still following / interested– Go to scrapbookex.co.za– We are a tiny market, but we get high quality input! Off to listen to the new show with shimelle. Yay, PRT

I think there was just some mis-communication, actually. We want her to

share a brief news story that we can all discuss briefly. But we found that

there wasn't a wide enough interest from scrapbookers in hearing a lot of

news (which is why we stopped doing Newsbreak — our original “talk” show,

and why we don't plan to do a spin-off podcast on news). And since much of

the news involves law suits and technical stuff, we don't want to end the

show on a really low downer.

I think we've been in a transition into what we hope the Scrapbook Update

segment of the Roundtable — trying to find that right balance between

sharing some industry news that will still fit in with the overall upbeat +

thought-provoking Roundtable feel.

I think the Scrapbook Updates in the last two episodes were what we were

looking for (episodes 37 and 38 I think?). I'd love to hear your feedback on

whether those two shows filled your news needs or not! Thanks for your

feedback! It's really helpful!