National Scrapbooking Month

May is National Scrapbooking Month. This is a wonderful time to start or continue on a scrapbooking project. Do you have a pile of photos you want to preserve but don’t know how to get started? Contact me, I’d be happy to help you.

I got started in papercrafts by creating my first scrapbook for my husband on the anniversary of our first date. He was thrilled and I continued to do these annual pages for many years. Now I still do either an annual book or sometimes I combine years. The books not only capture our memories but serve as our family almanac. When we can’t remember the name of that cute little town in Canada we visited or when such and such event took place, we just browse the scrapbooks. I could never seem to keep straight how old our cat Casey was since we got her as an adult. I just had to look at the scrapbook to find out.

When I went back to our first scrapbook to take these photos, I was surprised to be reminded of our first trip together to Missouri. I didn't remember going that first year we dated. I thought it was later on. Also, I had forgotten about taking Lenny's Mother on an outting from the nursing home to each of her children's homes. My journaling contains my first impressions of Bertha and of Lenny's brother and sister. The photo above is a of Lenny's sister, Velma.

These other pages are from 1993 and 1994. Look carefully at right and you'll see the 'pink' bathroom I just finished redoing! Our house was a huge topic in 1993. Travel has always been a big part of our lives and our scrapbooks.

Often I've thought about redoing these books with current papers and embellishments - like I would actually have the time! But my real reason for not doing it, is the books themselves preserve not only memories but how my hobby evolved. Early on, I relied on my computer for journaling and eventually clipart. After the first year I started doing themes. I took few photos so I did a lot of journaling. It is our history and my hobbies' history, too.

Currently, I’m working on 2008. The page from yesterday was part of that book. And I’m trying something new this year, I’m doing 2009 month-by-month as we go. I’m also doing these pages digitally using Photoshop Elements (if I have no hair left at the end of the year, this software will be the reason why!). I really like the results; I’ll share them in a later post.

The biggest change to my scrapbooking process is having multiple scrapbook projects going on at once. When I started in 1991, I did several pages for a year at once over a couple of weeks. Usually now I give myself a deadline like finishing before Lenny's birthday or Valentines' day. Now I'm working on what pages I want to when I want. The tortouise method rather than the hare. I won't let it go on forever; I love the freedom though.