Tag Archives: stories

What’s the Story – Journaling Your Life

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For those of you who enjoy keeping documenting your life and those around you with photos, don’t forget to write the stories, as well!  Previously, I’ve written about journaling in memory keeping in this post: The Palest Ink is Better Than the Best Memory

Kristie Sloan with Tracie Claiborne

Kristie Sloan with Tracie Claiborne

During a recent “family” reunion with my ScrapHappy group, we were fortunate to have Tracie Claiborne of the ScrapGals Podcast join us in person. Tracie allowed us to be the first participants of a new class she is putting the final touches on, regarding journaling and telling the stories of our lives.

She offered so many ideas to capture memories about not only special events, but to go beyond the surface of a photos and use them to tell so many other stories.

I’ll let you know when the class is available to everyone, you’ll want to be sure and take it; especially if you are someone who usually steers clear of adding anything but pictures to your memory keeping.

I hope you will also look into joining our ScrapHappy group, and perhaps coming to our next reunion!

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures!

KS

 

Scrapbooking Sad Topics

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Not every scrapbook page has to have an entire journaled story. Sometimes it seems rather therapeutic to write down sad stories, and sometimes you just can’t do it. How do you deal with it on a scrapbook page? That depends on how you feel about others reading your journaling. If it is a private scrapbook, you can do what you wish, it’s yours! If it is an album that is primarily for anyone to look at, you have to decide if you are comfortable letting others read your journaling or not. If you don’t want others to read it, you may like to hide your journaling by tucking it behind elements on your page, or tuck it into a little envelope.

The other option you have is to create a layout with very little or no journaling.

This page is of my sister, who died of liver cancer when she was just 14 months old. I don’t have many photos of her, and have never made a layout with any of the photos I have. I was not very old, and my parents pretty much shielded me as much as possible from their grief and sadness.

She was a pretty baby, and I love these photos. To never acknowledge her seems wrong. So here is a page as an example of turning a sad story into a page I don’t mind sharing.

Scrapping a Sad Story

Since the photos all had such different coloring, they were converted to black and white so that they were not so distracting.

What stories have you been holding off telling? Share your comments with us!

KS

 

Tell YOUR Own Stories – not just your family’s!

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KS-smOver the past couple of years, there seems to be a real trend in scrapbooking circles of telling everyday stories. We learned that it gets tiring to just capture the high points of the year, as they tend to just look the same, everyone is just older! I mean really, how many photos of a kid and a birthday cake look different? Or how many holiday photos with someone looking down at a gift they are opening do you need? People are learning that sharing snippets of life, and everyday stories is more true to capturing what our lives are about. Not only our families’ lives, but especially our own individual stories!

My nature, my mom seems to be a basic scrapbooker. She has gone through all the old photos she has and written who the people are on the backs, and has slipped into albums. Even though it would be easier to enjoy the pictures if we could see the picture and read the info without having to slide the photo out and read it, at least the info is there! I know that is a lot more information than some people have of their families, and I am grateful for her efforts! However, we are missing the stories.

sample my story

This story is about making my wedding cake, and how I burned up two mixers while taking cake decorating classes; and chose to make a spice cake with cream cheese icing!

During the last two or three years, I have been making more pages about myself, telling my own story. At first it seemed a little odd to telling about myself instead of my kids. However, it always was so fun to see my kids read one of the pages and say, “I didn’t know that!” Imagine, I was Kristie, before I was ever a wife, mother, or grandmother!

If you are thinking that you could never tell your own stories, or you don’t even know where you would start, I have a great plan for that! I’ll be joining scrapbooking friends online during May, where we will get prompts to create pages! Trust me, you never know where the prompt will lead your thoughts for a page! I have had some of the best pages and stories come from this process.

Whether you have stories that are short, fun, long, or hard… they are YOUR stories to tell. Head over and check out LOAD 514 (Layout A Day). It is for all levels of scrapbookers, and all types (digi, hybrid, etc.). I invite you to join us. It will change the way you think about scrapbooking. Hurry over, learn more, and capture the Early Bird discount available for the next few days!

Click HERE for more information!

Imagine creating 31 layouts in just one month. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful addition to your scrapbook pages? Now YOU can join Lain Ehmann in this month long journey, which includes daily prompts, videos and so much more.

Register NOW through 4/10 and pay only $35 
(a savings of $15 off the $50 regular price).

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL GET:

  • 31 daily prompts on the topic of Past Perfect 2: Yesterday’s Memories, Today’s Pages
  • 31 daily videos
  • Private message board
  • Private gallery
  • Interviews with cool scrappy folk (guest stars announced soon!)
  • PRIZES
  • Inspiration, fun, and companionship galore!
LOAD514
Click HERE  for more info or to sign up! 

Mother, May I Scrapbook?

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In today’s segment of getting more scrapping accomplished, lets talk about

Step 6:  Give yourself permission to be your family’s memory keeper. 

Some of you may remember the childhood game, Mother, May I? where you had to ask permission to move ahead or do various activities. Since scrapbooking is generally considered a hobby, many people seem to feel that it should only be done if _____, or _____ (you fill in the blanks). Realize that scrapbooking your personal memories, your family’s history, or whatever memories you want to document can be richly rewarding for you, your family, or maybe someone else.  You deserve a few minutes to document and save memories.  It’s such a rewarding thing for everyone to look back and be able to remember special moments.  Children especially benefit from seeing themselves in scrapbooks!

Documenting memories may not always be about “happy” times.  As part of the human experience, we have good times and not so good times and those experiences are all part of the story.  You don’t have to delve deeply into painful experiences, but to completely leave them out will leave holes in your story.  Sometimes just a sentence or two may be all you care to share.

MAKE the time to document and keep the memories.  While you are deciding how you will make time you may consider these questions:

  • Do you like to work with paper scrapbooking, digital, or hybrid (a combination of digital and traditional)?
  • Do you need to save time by using pre-designed sketches, templates, quick pages, or even pre-designed books?
  • Which style or size of scrapbook will work best for you and allow you to actually complete pages?

Select a method or format,  you think will be manageable and will work for you, and give yourself permission to jump in and make a page, or two!  Yes, I’m a mother, and I’m giving you permission.  Why?  Because I said so.

Stop back by because next time we’ll talk about how to make the story memorable.

May Layout A Day – Day 7

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Today’s layout was suppose to be done within 30 minutes.  I saw one of my Quick Pages that had come with a digital kit, and decided to use it for the layout inspiration.  I had to do it from scratch because it needed rotated and rearranged.  But I thought it would be pretty quick, because I knew most of what I needed to select!  All I wanted to use was one picture and a conversation between my 5 year old granddaughter and her aunt, my oldest daughter.  Things were going well and I was finished.  I have been doing so many pages and hadn’t restarted my computer in who knows when, and it hung up when I was trying to downsize the file so it would work well on the web.  I finally decided to just restart my computer.

When I tried to open my page, it was only the first layer – a plain white background I had saved with the file name!  Well, there went my 30 minutes down the drain!  At least I knew what to do to complete again quickly!  I must add, it must have already been having problems the last time I had saved it.  Oh well!  I still have another memory saved!

Digital Kit: Rule My World by Irene Alexeeva.