We moved into the new exhibitor area to check out this company with lots of great scrapbooking papers, coordinating embellishments, and albums.
Posts Tagged ‘scrapbooks’
CHA 2012 – Grant Studios Is a Newer Scrapbook Supply Company to Watch For
Monday, February 13th, 2012Transform Your Albums Into Unified Stories – Part 1 – Paperclipping 175
Monday, August 22nd, 2011
I’m all for scrapbooking however and whatever makes you happy.
That includes how we organize our scrapbook pages into albums. So I understand this comment on a recent Paperclipping blog post:
At one point I tried to put my layouts into albums chronologically. Now it’s a free for all. When I fill up one album, I just buy another and put the layouts in. I just don’t want to spend the time putting things in categories. I’m just not sure anyone is really going to care in the long run.
Whatever keeps you scrapbooking is priority number one for me, so if all you’re interested in doing is slipping the next page you made into the next empty page protector, I say go for it.
But before you say, “No one is going to care” or “It doesn’t make a difference,” just ask yourself whether that’s really true.
What if you could tell a larger story by the way you organize your pages into albums?
Scrapbook Albums: How You Can Tell Bigger Story
My albums have topics, which make them like memoirs!
There’s a topic connection between all of the layouts so that when an album is full there is a complete story. You see how the home has changed over time, and how it fits the personality of the family in an album about home. You see how a child’s personality develops over time — how parts of it seem to change in some ways while other parts remain unchanged and immovable — in an album about that child’s personality.
A mix of topics such as vacation, sports, personalities, weekend activities, everyday moments, and holidays crowd out the bigger story that is hiding for each of those topics.
In an album about things we love to do as a family you see over a number of years how our activities have changed with our maturing ages. Or I might be reminded of something we once loved but have forgotten.
You don’t get these broader revealing stories when you put all the pages into strict chronological albums that mix topics. And not when you place layouts in the order of your scrapbooking either.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that! ;)
There is just more story you can be telling! And discovering!
Turning Your Scrapbook Albums Into Visual Memoirs
As an album gets close to its full point, I spend some time with it to flesh it out and turn it into a viewable finished story. In the process I deal with all the tricky pages — the backs of the odd-shaped pages, for example.
In this week’s episode of Paperclipping we go inside one of my albums to see…
- the story that has developed naturally by having a purpose (such as the personality of the album).
- what’s missing from my story
- the problems in the album, like die cut shaped and transparent pages
I then share some solutions for dealing with those tricky pages where we don’t want the stuff to show through.
If you’re a member, you’ll find this video in the Member’s Area.
Think you want to jump on board to get your membership and watch the tutorial? You’ll get the video immediately, along with access to all 175 videos in the membership!
Click here for membership information or to sign up!
Five Things That Could Be Missing From Your Scrapbooks
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
Ever since I went through my old-school scrapbooks from high school and college a year or two ago, I’ve been on an escalating (though quiet) rampage regarding Life-Stuff — in other words, memorabilia and ephemera. I realized I enjoy my old scrapbooks — void of cute papers and embellishments, but packed full of stuff from my life — as much as my current ones, which were heavier on the “cute,” but lighter on the “life.”
Some memorabilia can tell the parts of the stories that our words and photos leave out. Skeptical? You’ll see some examples below.
Life-Stuff Worth Keeping
In addition to the obvious ticket stubs, play bills, and post cards, there are other types of memorabilia/ephemera you might not have considered. Here are five qualities that compel me to save some memorabilia while tossing the others:
1) Tells something about your life.
While the left pocket in the memorabilia protector below holds the common concert memorabilia, the pocket on the right is holding ephemera from my favorite clothing store. Those items say a little something about me right now. Eventually these pieces will move onto a layout or mini-book.
Some items tell a more subtle story about things that are going on in your life. At the end of the school year, Aiden’s teacher sent home a bunch of his first grade schoolwork. As I fished through the pieces, deciding what to toss and what to keep, I found the page below in a Valentines book where Aiden drew a picture of himself handing his great grandmother a heart.
At first I thought it was strange that he depicted Grandma Holt in bed, until I put the clues together and remembered that the month before he drew it, we had been visiting her in hospice. She died a couple weeks before Valentine’s Day. This drawing means that our visits, and Aiden’s relationship with Grandma, had enough of an impact on him to include it in his Valentine’s story two weeks later.
2) Captures handwriting
The handwriting alone doesn’t do it for me, since we’re talking about collecting current ephemera, and there are a lot of possible pieces to save based on the handwriting criteria alone. But coupled with something else on the list, it’s very cool. Below is a story in Blake’s handwriting. He is a natural writer and I noticed that he used story-writing as a way to deal with a frustrating scenario involving a sibling.
Actually, I’ve noticed he’s not the only one in my family to deal with situations this way. I may (or may not) want to combine these stories about various family members into one scrapbook story about family tendencies.
3) Demonstrates learning and progress of a skill or natural talent
Aiden is also a writer — actually all five of us are — and after he wrote the “book” below, he pointed out to me that he included a problem and a solution in his plot-line, something he had recently learned.
4) Demonstrates a person’s interests, natural tendencies, personality
Trinity draws almost every day, and most of what she draws has bright colors, hearts, and rainbows. I want to share her common art subject in a future scrapbook page, and I decided to save one that also included characters from her favorite movie, Hairspray.
5) Shows a relationship
Below is something I saved that my Dad wrote to me, way back in 1980.
When I was around fourteen, I decided to save this playful piece of paper my sister and I occupied our minds with during church. I could just journal something like, “My sister and I loved to play and tease, even during church,” but that doesn’t say it the way this does . . .
And this is something I found in a paper pad. It’s the score sheet kept by one of my kids’ favorite babysitters from a game she played with Trinity. I love that Emily’s teasing personality will be forever implanted in our memories with this one piece of paper.
Are you ready to start USING your memorabilia and need some inspiration? Below are some links to episodes with some layouts and mini-books. Paperclipping Members can watch the corresponding episodes in the Member’s Area, but if you’re not a member, you can see the projects in the blog post. If you want to see the tutorials as well, please click here to learn to learn about membership.
Everyday Items (for memorabilia specifically, look for the Starbucks mini-book)
Using Newspaper Articles on Layouts
Vacation Mini-book
Love Notes Mini-Book
Click here if you need my Cheater’s Guide to Scrapbooking Ephemera to help you get going!