Lessons

Lesson Info

Typical Scrapbooking Process

What I would like to talk about now I alluded to a little bit earlier is why doesn't let me just say something about that these air all scrapbook pages they have a photo they have a story there's no pretty stickers on there there's no pattern paper and yet these are amazing stories that you shared with us very powerful I feel like I know each and every one of you better just from this little seven minute exercise so I want to just encourage you again when we get lost in the bigger picture to go back to the fact that it's really about telling our story so thank you for sharing those I really appreciate it and they could be something that's baseball or could be something about a friend the dear friend we've lost that our stories cover the full gamut between the starbucks cups and the you know, the people we love and it's all important it's just whatever you feel like telling right now so this is a cool hobby right it's really fun and why doesn't everybody do it? What are some of the excu...

ses that you guys here a scrap bookers just shot him out? Just you know what do you hear? You don't have don't have time not creative too expensive I've heard it's easier just to put the photograph in an album yeah, it is easier to do that definitely definitely um yeah, that was a really common ones that I hear not enough time. I don't know what to use, I have too much stuff it's expensive, and those are those are probably things that you've heard before, maybe even thought yourself at some point if you've ever stopped scrapbooking for a period of time, so I just ran out of time on dh, those are good, good points, but through the process that I'm going to be introducing, hopefully we'll be able to cut down on the amount of time that we spent on pages. We're going to be able to show you that it doesn't have to be expensive, that you can do it with paper and photos, the stuff you probably have around your house or can purchase pretty inexpensively at, you know, a big box store or online specialty store, but you don't have tio invest and hundreds of dollars of specialty materials, so here's something that I asked on my community ask people, what are some of your challenges? And this was an interesting when that natalie said and she said, I just spent so long trying to put a page together and pick what looks right, I usually give up and do nothing and isn't that sad that her family might miss out on the's? Because of the overwhelming it's really common and I understand it and that's why I put this class together for the next two days because I don't want natalee's family or her to miss out on telling these stories, and then this one came in. I don't have a lot of scrap book worthy stuff going on in my life, just boring stuff like working and cleaning the house, and that was from lisa. Does anybody kind of relate? You feel like you're doing the same thing and not taking these marvelous trips and it's just, you know, just doing the same old, same old. I definitely feel like that some days and what what am I going to scrap book? You know, the the grocery store run now, I want to show you how that can become a really cool story, and this was louise who says I make scrap booking more complicated than it needs to be. It seems too hard to start, so those are all things that I hear constantly as an instructor. People get overwhelmed, they don't know where to start and that's because my what I maintain is we're we're starting at the wrong place when we try to tell our stories and so what I'm gonna be proposing to you. Is a new method for starting and giving you a starting place that will make it easier and cut through all this other stuff for you I'm just curious has has anybody here at home have you ever stopped scrapbooking for a period of time and why did that happen if you if you did jane shaking her head over there angela to have you stop for a while okay and what was what was going on with you? My mom and I were avid scrap pickers we did it all shed like once a week would go to crops I do it you know as often as possible and I mean I have dozens of books of my kids and family um my grandmother passed away on and we had we would go on this yearly retreat and scrapbook for three days straight and it was already booked and everything and we still plan to go and it was only a few months after my grandmother had passed and it was it was tough because that's what was happening in our life right so we had all the you know, old pictures and you know recent one you know had seen family recently that we had seen in a long time it was just it was tough like we took you know, a bunch of breaks during the weekend and yeah, I just put it all away didn't want to look at it anymore yeah and then just stopped right? It was sort of a life event then once you got out of the habit he just paused yeah, yeah, you have you listen, if I started dating my now husband and I didn't realize I had stopped at the time way were living eighty miles apartment so seeing him was, you know, a scheduling challenge, right? I wasn't in my house very often every second I had it wasn't work, I was with him and I didn't really realize intel I went to go scrap wedding pictures that oh, wait a minute, I haven't scrapped e didn't take pictures are dating I didn't hear the engagement just none of it ever got scratched up too busy making the memories and enjoying the time tio in the craft room right at that time and I think that you know that's really common you might have a new child. A new baby is hard to find time to scrap book when you can't even find time to take a shower and or other busy times you moving or whatever is going on so it's really common because of life events or because of the emotion involved that you might just not be able to scrap book for a while and you hear me talk a lot about permission and imperfection that that it's ok to do that but you could still be a scrapbook you're still making stories and the stories are really the starting point for our scrapbooks, so even if you're taking a month or two months or two years off, that doesn't mean you're not making stories and that doesn't mean you're you're missing that time so it's okay to take breaks if you need tio if you don't feel like for whatever reason too many other things going on it's basically just giving you permission tio make it part of your life that doesn't have to be your whole life and you can still identify yourself as a scrapbook er especially when we talk about those other methods for documenting our stories, whether it's through block posts or e mails or that sort of thing too. So just tio, keep your eyes open to the idea that it's a hobby that can doesn't have to be every day for the rest of your life, or even every week or every month that there may be periods where you do more and do less and that's ok and just keeping your eyes open to the stories and we'll be talking later about some ways to document those stories so you don't forget them. So? So the traditional process for scrap booking is what I think tends to get a stuck and this is my kind of basic process where I'll take a picture, I'll develop the picture, I get them in the mail I sit down to scrap book so I choose a photo and then I choose the products, make the page, and then if there's time the horse space on the page, I'll add a few sentences of journaling that was pretty much my traditional process up to about two, three years ago, and as a result, some of the pages that I created were pretty when I look back at him now pretty bland, actually there's not a lot of story there there's not a lot of emotion, there might be beautiful pages, and I'm to show you some of them, but there wasn't a lot of emotion and feeling in them and to me, what I liken it to is going to the refrigerator five forty five he'd throw open the door, you say I gotta make dinner it's got to be on the table fifteen, twenty minutes and you have to deal with what's there if there's not time to run out to the store. There's not time to do any major prep work. It's too late to throw something the crock pot so you're faced with whatever's in the fridge, so this person looks like they're having pineapple and hershey's syrup for dinner, but, you know, have you ever been there where you're like, ok, we're having spaghetti again because that's, what I have and then you know you're bored with cooking at your family's bored with the eating it and that's how your scrapbooking can end up too because you could only scrapbook with the photos you have if you're starting with the photos so the process is going to be talking about it again a different starting point that's going to get us out of the five forty five dinner right? So you don't have to make a meal plan on sunday night, but it will help you plan ahead while the while the rest of your life is going on, you can be mentally scrapbooking and we'll talk about that. The reason this process doesn't work is a few a few reasons when it only tells part of the story. If you're scrapbooking directly from your photos, if you don't have a photo, you don't have a page if you're limiting yourself to the photos what tracy said earlier just because I don't have a photo doesn't mean it didn't happen we're going to talking more about that, but as far as our scrapbooks go traditional process, you gotta have a photo but we're gonna move away from that also it can feel like a competition like how many pages did I get done? I mean you probably gone on message boards where people have their page count down at the bottom of I'm gonna make four hundred seventy two pages this year roman and I, you know, and it's that's, grace, but I would rather have one or two meaningful from the heart pages and four hundred seventy two that air beautiful pages, but don't say a lot that they're basically glorified photo albums. I'm also we focus on the visual rather than the emotions, and that may seem weird because scrapbooking is very much a visual hobby we're dealing with things we can see, but when we only deal with these things here, we're missing all the things that are going on here and in our hearts because we might not have photos of them on dh also, we many times I can miss out on the real stories again because we don't have photos of them because they were so encompassing to us or they go beyond the photo, they're the bridge, time and space, and they might be a progression over time, or it might be the way to things came together that's impossible, even document in a photo um, and they don't end up in our scrapbooks as results, and then it can it can also pull into our, um, our tendencies towards perfectionism, where when we're focusing on the stuff than the stuff has to be right, and I also think that when we're focusing on the outsides then rather than the meaning that we know that at some level that there's something missing and we try to make it up with more stuff on the page whereas when you have a real story it stands on its own with nothing on the page I mean and if you could put those pages in your albums and they're going to be meaningful pages and sure it would be nice if you could put a title on and do this and play with the font but it doesn't need it whereas a page that's kind of empty like the empty calories where you know your hungry and so you eat the non fat thing but really you want the chocolate and the non fat thing didn't fill you up so you go on and eat something else and keep eating because you weren't satisfied that's how I feel about scrapbooking sometimes when we focus on the pretty stuff that's fun and it's really can be very rewarding but if that's all we're doing there's something missing from our pages so if we feel stuck and we start feeling guilty because we're spending all this time and money and it doesn't feel like it's good enough we feel lost in the stuff then is it any wonder that sometimes we don't want to scrap book because our emphasis might be in the wrong place so as a result we start scrapbooking because we feel like we should like well I scrap booked two albums for my youngest so I better or my oldest so I better scrapbook more from this one make sure they have the same number of pages and and it becomes an obligation first is something that we're doing from our heart and also the pages can be inauthentic and you get those pages that say oh we had a great time at the zoo and everybody was happy and divided it up and you know in your heart that it was a lousy trip to the zoo because a little one was throwing a fit the whole time the middle one wouldn't put his shoes on and the oldest one got thrown up the right cause he spit on somebody those those are the stories that I would like to see in your scrapbooks because that's what's going on much scrapbook that makes you a real person not just it was a lovely day we looked a bit giraffe so anyway also it could take longer because we're trying to get to this story but we're going around about way and if we start with the story it just smooth the whole process out so I just want to do at this point a quick check in and see where you guys are does this make sense to you any questions popping up right now? Are you kind of resonating with this? Anybody at home heaven haven't thoughts about what's going on people in the chat rooms kind of sharing their obstacles that kept them on the ground looking so I'd like to read a couple of these now this one comes from scrappy towns and they say I am in the mist of getting back in the scrapping but the past year has been very busy a major move from overseas back to the u s new house, new school stuff in storage the list goes on I found that scrapping is also a hobby that relaxes me but in order to enjoy the process and the trips down memory lane I need to have all of my to do list done where I can get to the enjoyment of act relax it's strictly guests to four to nine nine being a perfectionist I always hesitate to get started seems like the end result never quite matches the ideal scrapbook in my head and that's why they are enrolled because they hope they can get over the hesitation to get start awesome I love that one more that just came in this one's good from katie scott. They say I've done less scrapbooking this year because my son has had a hard time adjusting the middle school so I've been spending a lot of time helping him with sixth grade math but we only have eight more days of school, so I should be back to you at once school is done so that's exciting summer time they will give some people some more time to get into scrap booking that's great that's, wonderful! And again, we talked about earlier how there may be times in our lives where we can do more. We can do less and that's okay, and what we're gonna be talking about strategies for documenting the stories as we go along and really simple manners. So when we do have time, whether it's next month or next year, when the kids graduate or whatever it might happen, then then we can go back and have some some props for those those lines were taking some of the photos and writing down the stories and dead getting that prep work in place. Then when we do have time, it becomes much, much in here and it's fun seeing some familiar names there too. That's really fun. So how about here? What do you guys think in any questions or comments about what we're talking about? Does this make sense? Or is it raising some red flags for you? Are you were just talking about the zoo? I'm going through all my pictures that used to be in the magnetic yeah, those all out, so I'm putting in a moment I have a whole bunch of new pictures e I did, and I just want I just toss him because I don't remember anything about the day right why I want to take that they're like wow I don't even know the year all right now so yeah is get the story down because I mean I don't have that many pictures anymore because they think it's funny sometimes all of that like botanical gardens I'll see some somebody taking pictures of like every flower and like you know you could buy a postcard so that maybe there's another reason I'm missing there but sometimes yeah we get caught with them some people are photographers and that's that's what they enjoy that process but I think about it from the scrap bookers side of things is like you know what I'm going to do with forty seven draft pictures it looks you know I can't tell two of them apart so yeah yeah that's interesting and then again that goes back to to the idea that we don't have to scrap book every photo that's ok tio stick him in a photo album the roma way which a lot of people especially from my generation and above is like you throw away a photo because they were so precious because our family didn't take a lot of photos now photos air disposable but I have to change my mindset to that as well so anybody else any tracy I find myself taking photos with more intention so I have a bunch of snapshots that don't really mean anything but then I have that one photo that really captures the moment and what was going on and those are the ones I end up scrapbooking because they have the story. So I have all of these photos that I don't have a story to go with, so I add stories that don't necessarily go with the photo, too, just to the scrapbook. Yeah, the story is a big part in my scrapbooking too, so classes great, thank you, thanks a little bit later going to see some of the pages I did with from my youth that's all now with them, I feel like I'm eighteen, um voted just like that their photos from that time here, they don't necessarily match that particular story, but they're the same time period and that that works really well because we'd like to have that visual component tio to our pages. So what's going on with you any thoughts or questions? Is it? Well, yeah, a couple years ago, my mother in law dumped gigantic box totally under sort of familiar site asked like yeah, baby picture to see and and so my put all man scrapping aside and sorted by the four kids in the family made albums for everybody well, and they were grateful, but of course I didn't have any of the stories and so I basically left spaces that nobody told them like write it in or tell me and I can write it in because all it is here is just organized but they were of course grateful yeah but it was in the process I found pictures of my husband all these ages wearing jerseys that all had the same number on them and I asked him why why do you always wearing eighty nine or whatever the number was and I asked his his mom and well I don't know either I know what do you know how it is from nineteen seventy seven to nineteen eighty two I got number no my god so the stories last uh there might have been a reason at the time yeah wow I think you've earned your angel wings making all those problems for people but you're you're going to scrapple kevin a definitely how about over here taking angela any any ah ha's or questions are is this resonating at all or no definitely similar story my grandmother before she passed sent boxes upon boxes of pictures that were unorganized she she valued her photographs very much I mean you know took them with intent and you know it was not cheap to print right back then you know they printed the ones you know that they took and for the longest time I had them in books and I had spaces for her to write and she would not right, because you're not like her hand, and she said she was going to ruin s so I don't have. At the very least, I want just, you know, who the people are and some of them, like a lot of them. I know because they're my answer. Yes, but some of them, I don't. And and you know, so I made an appointment with my dad to sit down and go through those books and at least document, like, uh, who those people are. She had dates and stuff on some of the pictures. And so, you know, there's post it's in the book and stuff what she had written on the back, but, um, yeah, I so wish that, you know, I didn't keep saying we'll do it. Yeah, the next time I see her, you know, whatever it is it's not done a word about handwriting. If anybody here at home is feeling that their handwriting is ugly or it will wreck the pages. After my mom died, I came across a christmas tag and all it said was to lainey from mom and dad with my mom's writing on it was probably the last thing she had written for me. And I kept it because it was it's a piece of her it's a piece of you so never feel like you're going to ruin a page with your handwriting. It's it's something that your kids resonate with that other people recognize about you just like your smile and you might think you're smells not perfect or whatever embrace your handwriting and at least get it on some of the pages if you feel like you're going to ruin the page, put it on a tag behind, but get your hand writing in your book really it's it's so it's such an emotional connection, so ok, taking anything to add there, I'm just really looking forward to doing some pates without pictures. Oh yeah, my parents between the two of them did not have a single photographic jean there's probably I mean, twenty pictures of my childhood up till I got the first camera at age twelve there's nothing and so there's a lot of stories that I remember, but again, if you don't write it down it's gonna go away it's so true it really is okay, so thank you for those it's always good to do a check him and just see where everybody is, make sure you're tracking and you haven't thought I've gone off the deep end and two more days of s o basically what I wanted to do next was talk about what this new processes have been alluding to it talking about stories and things like that, but I haven't really presented exactly what that looks like, so I wanted to dig in with that a little bit and so when we go back to our mission statement that's really where it starts with that idea of what we're trying to accomplish and for most of us here was about documenting stories and documenting memories. Sometimes we said with photos, sometimes we said with other other elements as well, either for ourselves, for our legacy's, whatever that might be, but nowhere in our mission statements I didn't hear anybody say spend five hours on a page and make sure I use at least forty two brad's or, you know, twenty dollars a product for page or you know any anything like that. So when you start going in that direction, it's really natural too, because when you go online and see see the pages in the galleries, a lot of the eye catching ones are done with a lot of product or with a lot of technique and we can start feeling less than so I just want to remind you of that mission statement how important it is to remind yourself of why you're doing it it's not to create this forty eight to seventy two pages in a year it's not to use up all your stash of ribbon before you know june so you could buy mohr whatever it is those might come in secondarily because sometimes I'll do promise and challenges like that it can be fun but what it really comes down to is those memories in the story so keep your mission statements handy and then also I just want to make sure you guys have permission everybody here everybody at home if you've got a wall full of albums that you've done chronologically birthdays, anniversaries you know all even based and you're thinking, oh my gosh, what am I going to do with that? Because I've been doing it wrong all these years forget it. I've got those albums to in their precious just like we were talking about the sticker sneeze and the scalloped scissors and that's all part of your journey as a scrapbook er and that is a gift to yourself into your family whether or not you decide to change your direction as a scrapbook er or whether you decide to go in that method, that manner from here on out totally ok and also you know I'm so thankful that you're here listening to me when you go home, you may find that parts of this don't work for you that you think you know what the whole scrapbooking with no photo that doesn't really work for me that's okay, too. It's, your scrapbook. You're the one who's going to live with it. I'm not going to come to your house and check. I promise. Ring the doorbell. Do a home check unless you want me, teo. Like they've avon calling lane. Colleen, what do you scrap? Okay, it's up to you. You're the one you're the boss in your own scrapbooking. So make sure you know your full permission, tio to take this and adapted and go in a different direction. Go beyond whatever you want to do. You really are in charge of that. So we talked about the traditional process with the photos first moving on to product and design and then story really coming last because journaling. Oh, do I have room? And sometimes you like there are no room on the page to journal gets that one doesn't need anything. Have you ever done that? E j nothing over there guess I don't have the journal on this one, but we talked more about how this limits it. Because what about the stories that don't have photos? What about stories that don't come immediately to mind? Because I look at it and and I can't remember what was this about? But it may come to me later I make might need to get input from somebody else t get out a story of why I took that photo or what was she thinking when she had that weird look on her face, that kind of thing? What about photos with more than one story? Because one of the traditional rules is that you only scrapbook of photo one that you would never go back and use the same photo again, but we're going we're going to do that to, uh we're breaking all the rules. What about bad photos? It's also kind of ah unwritten rule that your photos should really be awesome and you should edit them and put in filters and all this stuff if it's slightly blurry shouldn't be using it but that's not that's, not necessarily in service of our mission statement that scrap occurs if the on ly photo you have is of your little tiny child on the big stage and, you know it's slightly blurry use the photo I mean to think that I can't scrap book it cause the photos bad no, not true also there the hidden stories that we talked about things were thinking or feeling that you can't take a photo of or that that might be difficult to photograph, and if we go with the photo centric process to scrap booking, we lose all that but if we start with story um, we really can can move on into deeper elements of of our storytelling that we go beyond the idea that that were limited to the photos that if we can't see it, we can't scrap book it and it brings a whole new element to what we're doing we're going to talk more about that in the next segment, so I just wanted to present that to you and then in the next segment we'll be going deeply into that and I just wanted to see if any other questions from anybody is have you here's a good question have you created a page with no photos before that's a good one to start with? Have you done that? I know I have uh your mother will like scrapbooking a photo more than once or broken that yeah, I loathe about the bad photos you don't seem like a bad photo would slow you down oh no, I put those in no yeah, you bad? Yeah, bad photos I think are very important, especially especially if they're not in your flattering pose or something like that. You know it's like I do have a double tio right about that and I did write, you know, so that wasn't really a bad photo of me specifically but not filters or you know any of that now blurry but just of what I thought I thought this is going in right because this is an important time that's great that's great tracy what do you think is your quite a photographer I've seen some of your photos do you feel like you have to use just the good photos? Are you okay using ones that aren't aren't quite on if I don't have any other option I will that I normally take like if I take one photo I'll take three and successions only one will come out and I'm kind of obsessive about that but if I only have bad photos which happens a lot if especially if I use my phone right and I do use right that's really a good point because when we're carrying around those big cameras I think the cannon dslr was like the foot the camera for scrap bookers and ah a lot of people have progressed onto their from there but we're carrying those around chances are you're going to get a better photo but most of us now I talked to a lot of scrap pickers who rarely take their big camera most of the time it is with their their phone and then we're limited somewhat we make might not get that great quality but we get more photos often because they're easier to take and we get some of those moments that we might have missed otherwise yeah yeah and it's less obtrusive you know, you bring out the big one, everybody knows you're taking a vote, everybody cheeses, right? Right, exactly. And it could be a little stealth. The phone? What about you? Are you a rule breaker now? I just got bad photos because I'm not a good photographer. I don't have a lot of choice in the matter. I'll tend to print them very small and then do other things to kind of disguise. But the fact that, like this is a large print and I already scrapped the small print even makes me a little queasy, little nervous like I've you know, I told the story, I put the photo in the album I have ten thousand other photo, right? Why am I spending time on the same photo again? Yeah, yeah, well, we're going to do it, but you hyper video that's good, though I mean also, it depends on our story of scrap bookers where hang ups are because some people don't consider themselves writer writers, so they get hung up on the word. Other people like photography has always been my weakest part as a scrapbook, or I'm not a great photographer. I don't really want to spend the time, tio make myself a better photographer, and so I end up with a lot of so so photos and if I get a great when it's scrapping that puppy five times because that was a good now it really is based on this story and sometimes there's one story that's from the perspective of right now and there will be another story from later that's going to be a completely different story but I didn't realize that story started then we don't really tell months or years and this one photo my husband and I met at a community service volunteer thing at a food bank the second harvest food bank in san jose and we had both volunteered to sort food for homeless shelters and they have a group photo of all of us taken like within fifteen minutes before we met and we're standing like a different area and I was able to get a copy of that photo from have time for but who would have known and I might have scrapped looked if I if I have been a more dedicated scrapbook or scrap booked it from the event the perspective of oh I went and volunteered and our time good person but then I would want to scrap book this is when we met this is it this is like my life was changing then and that is just so cool to be able to do that and have the freedom to do that and that's really what it's about until a breaker yeah my nine eleven spread is all work I mean, I kind of felt a little like, you know, pictures was we didn't I didn't need the visual yeah, yeah, so I hear you know me and it was actually my mom kind of prompted me to do it because she's, you know, everybody always wants to know her generation. What were you doing when you heard jfk that yeah, so she said, you know, a story to tell this story that, you know, how did you find out what right? You know, what were you doing? Yeah, so that's that the one that I can think of right now, that's just all where it's great, another rule breaker over here. I started doing the layouts without store without pictures because the stories need to get told, but my newest thing and you didn't mention that yet is stealing pictures using the internet to get yet, uh, album covers to get, you know, pictures of an event like the nine eleven pictures or somebody else's picture, I mean, you're not doing anything with the mix up museum to save your memories, but they're out there, right? Exactly, and they're very easy to find to have a really great story about how I found when actually, that we're using during our layout a day challenge this month that a bunch of my community members are going through where we scrapbook a page every day for the month, based on a prompt. And our theme, this month has passed perfect going back and scrap, booking our stories from, um, our childhood or college years. Orjust, oftentimes we are focused on the photos we're taking now. And so going back a little bit further from that. And it can be hard to find photos, either because our parents didn't take them. Or they were lost. Or somebody else has them. And they're not giving him up or whatever. So, yeah.