My Scrapbooking Journey

All this scrapbooking had got me thinking about my scrapbooking journey. Where I started and how far I have come since then!  I have often pondered why I spend so much time (and MONEY!) on scrapbooking. I absolutely LOVE to do it so as a hobby, it works out very well for me. I think on top of that, I have always felt like memories when they occur are so fleeting that I try really hard to grasp and hold onto them. I think at times, I could be accused of holding onto them too hard but in the end, that is not a bad thing. I had so few good memories when I was a kid, I feel like all the good ones that happen now might disappear if they are not somehow stored in a real concrete way.

I am so glad I do it. While taking the pictures for this post, I took some time and leafed through all the hard work that I had done to preserve these special moments. So many memories forgotten right now but brought back through pictures and words.

I think it is fun to go back and take a look at everything that you have created so I am hoping that many of you will come along on this journey with me. Stay tuned on more information on that.

I would say I was born to scrapbook. I have a lot of memories cutting up magazines and gluing lots of sayings and pictures around pictures from a young age.  My first attempt at scrapbooking came with one of my first journeys in life. When I was 16, I participated in a french exchange program and documented the WHOLE thing along the way.

I painted the cover. This book shows signs of LOVE. It is falling apart at the seams and it stuffed to the gills.	Documenting where we sat on the plane. I even saved the barf bag and there are notes on there from the students as we passed it around.
Saved clipping from the local paper	When I say I saved everything, I meant everything. Looking back, I probably did not need to save the wrappers my snacks came in but I can't throw them away now!

I documented every moment and everything that happened that I could jam in the book.  There are notes from my friends and letters that were exchanged. I am SO SO glad that I did this. There are memories preserved that would have been lost without this book.

My next scrapbooking attempt did not come until college. I must have said something to one of my good friends about wanting to scrapbook.  I learned a LOT from my college roommates, they are just good good people. One of those lessons being that a great gift does not take much effort at all. All you need to do is listen. For my birthday, she gave me a blank black scrapbook and when we got back from our Senior break trip to Jamaica, I went through and documented around the pictures.

Front of the scrapbook

I often tell the story about this scary old bus and I forgot I had a picture of it!

This scrapbook made me laugh and I was quickly reminded there were pictures in here NOT safe for small children!

As soon as I had kids, I decided to pick up scrapbooking. With just a few pieces of paper and a black marker, I was on my way. Here is my FIRST scrapbook page. My baby girl was only 5 months old. Check out them cheeks!

I have been pretty good about keeping up. There is a year span where having two small children and a part time job sort of took over and 2008 is NOT documented and 2009 is incomplete. I am sure I will finish them someday.

I used to be even BETTER about keeping up with day to day doings around our household. I kept a (different) blog and would update it about once a week. When I was scrapbooking the pages, I print out the pages that were associated with the pictures and I was on my merry way. What a brilliant idea! Why did I stop?!?!?

Here is a page from what I will call B.C. (before Cricut). If I wanted large lettering on my page, I had to do it the old fashioned way!

I am proud of the pages that I make these days. I have spent some time working on my photography skills so there is a lot of pride that comes from scrapbooking well taken photos as well!

A page from recent days (featured on Scrapbook Challenges)

Now, it is YOUR turn. I want to see your scrapbooking journey. I want to know why you scrapbook. Take a picture of some old pages and post how your style has changed. Not a scrapbooker? Even your development in card making skills can be documented.


To anyone who participates, I will pick one lucky winner of a Dunkin' Donuts $5 gift card. I know it is not a lot, but I hope that you get a lot out of taking a look at your journey.

Rules
1) Post a link below of your blog post about your scrapbooking/craft journey with a reference back to my blog
2) Leave a comment below
3) Follow me!!!!

If all three requirements are met, I will chose a lucky winner in 2 weeks 1/25/2011 in the morning at 10 A.M. CST.  Now, I know I don't have a lot of followers (YET!) so please help me pass this along to anyone you know! (It would be really sad for me if no one did this :))