PRT134 – Story Albums

Thanks for getting Ashli on the show, Noell, it is so fun to have new voices in the mix. I have been following Ashli since the start of this year and she is so artsy and original. For me, she represents exactly what I said the other week about challenging your self-imposed boundries.

I really loved this episode. I am about to go back and listen to it again. I have taken Stacy’s Twelve class this year as well as Shimelle’s Cover to Cover. I have historically scrapbooked out of order, picking out the first picture I come to that inspires me to make a layout, without worrying too much about how new or how old. That is more often newer ones, because their story is recent and exciting, but I mix it up a bit.

At the start it was easy to keep everything in order, then as I got more layouts, they started to pile up, and the inevitable happened, layouts got damaged from lying around in piles. So I started my longest lasting system of putting them in an album almost immediately and in the order they were scrapbooked.

That system has some big pluses for me that I think need to be pointed out to anyone not actually accomplishing a grander plan – if you are very time poor and spend all your spare time making actual layouts, then putting them in an album AT ALL is much much better than leaving them in a pile / box.

Having said that, all of the panelists today use albums as part of their motivation to create, and that is very inspiring. The biggest downfall in my system (or non-system) is that it is not very inviting when someone wants to sit and look through an album. This is something Shimelle discusses in cover to cover, when she says she wants to be able to feel that she can take the album off the shelf and it is a clear story, even if it is a work-in-progress. Similarly Stacy talks about how much her children enjoy the scrapbooks about them or about the people they love, and gives a clear picture of how they love to read them. Izzy has said the same of Noells albums many times on the show. Ashli talks on her blog about how her journalling from her first layout was read by her parents, making them laugh, which was part of her motivation to continue and value her journalling.

Clearly the point of scrapbooking is not just one thing, but it is very motivating to have your layouts in an inviting album set up so that someone else might actually enjoy them.

I wish I could say that the combination of classes and inspiration has motivated me enough to make the time to sort out my albums, but I must be honest and say that (while very inspired by the different kinds of layouts I might make next, looking beyond the more obvious ideas) the best I have managed to date is to corral a number of layouts into loosely year-based personality albums for my kids for 2012 and 2011 albums and first year albums (mostly all together anyway, so an easy win there).

I really love the philosophical approach that album discussions bring to scrapbooking. They are a window through which we see the big picture of our work, the autobiography, the collective curated gallery of memories we consider important. I find that very concept one that motivates me to scrapbook, since it is more than just a single layout, it is a piece of the whole. Even when I know I am not scrapbooking something epic, whether my page is more about creative play or about deep introspection or both, that is a piece of me as the creator. As Stacy said, she is in all her scrapbooks because she is their author – Love it!! Stacy is such a genius.

Sorry for the massive comment, loved this episode and couldnt help myself from replying with something long and rambling!

I love Ashli’s blog! Her style is nothing like mine, yet she inspires me every time I see it! Great episode :)

Great show! I had started created opening pages to my albums – sort of like an internal cover… but never thought about the last page as Stacy described… very cool idea! I definitely agree that it’s nice to “complete” an album by looking at it in whole and finishing it off with these details. Nice!

I am listening to the “blahs” edition of PRT so had to stop to come and make a comment so you would know that one more person really enjoyed the show! This episode was extremely helpful and interesting! I love it whenever Shimelle is on because she in particular speaks into the way I like to scrapbook and create albums. Having begun to scrapbook just in the last couple of years and having many many stories to tell and photos to scrapbook, I feel very overwhelmed and uninterested by scrapbooking my life chronologically. I am doing this just for me, but I hope my children and grandchildren will be interested in looking at the books some day, but it’s ok if they don’t (I won’t be around to be disappointed about it anyway). So I make notes whenever an idea for a story pops into my head, and I am beginning to work on these. I have several albums going right now and just add wherever a LO fits. I have an album for stories about each of my grandchildren, but I am not trying to do that chronologically either, although the temptation keeps popping up. I just want to focus on the stories as told by their grandmother since this is MY life and perspective. Just adding to the albums by subject or individual works the best for me. Also, then I have more albums, so it looks like i have been doing more scrapbooking than I really have. :) (I have 7 and only 5 of them are “in process.”)
I love it when Stacy is on the show too, because she always makes me feel that if I just keep working at it, it will be ok and I should do what works for me.

Actually, while I am handing out compliments, I also love the way Noelle scrapbooks and of course love all the help I have gotten from the videos. I did enjoy the party episode, but only as entertainment…I come here to talk and learn about scrapbooking.
Please keep doing what you are doing. if your goal is to educate, entertain, and encourage, you are going a fantastic job. Looking forward to your interviews at CHA!