You may know from my pages or a visit to my blog that I’m definitely not someone who is “cutting edge” when it comes to scrapbooking and paper techniques. I like to try them, but you’ll never see me being one of the inventive ones for sure!
My forte in my creating seems to be the journaling. This is not just writing down the who, what, where and when, but telling the full story; the meaningful story of our lives. Sure, I love gluing paper together, but I get more excited when I get to the journaling part, which for me often comes first when creating.
I hear scrapbookers say that this is the most important piece for them when creating, but becomes the most difficult when it comes right down to putting pen or word processor to paper. Describing the event is easy, but going beyond that becomes the difficult part.
That’s what we’ll be focusing on for this week: getting to the heart of meaningful journaling. I have a few scrappers who have graciously offered to share their work along with their process for this so everyone can get a “peek” into this.
If you were fortunate enough to be near grandparents, aunts and uncles you may have loved sitting and hearing about their lives, such as how they met their spouse, where they lived, what life was like, their siblings, etc. I find that as my own girls go through the pages and books that I have made that it’s the stories they love to read and remember the most. Of course they like seeing event layouts too, but we reminisce the most about the time I try to pay my oldest daughter, Maya, to sleep longer….
or the time my youngest daughter, Ella, decided to have a full out fit in the middle of a bike path on a busy road…..
We love stories and the more details and emotion, the better. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the story of when I left my beloved blanket (“wanky”) at my aunt’s house in Michigan when I was but 4 years old. The way my mom describes my constant crying for 4 days, what they all went through to retrieve said wanky in the mail and the celebration we all had when it arrived is always full of gusto and maybe a wee bit of dramatics too! But I still get whisked away to that time period in good ol’ 1977 and enjoy hearing about me and my wanky! I have stories like this I want my children to remember and I re-tell it both verbally and through pretty papers and photos.
So that is my prompt and task for you today. Look through some of your photos you have on hand or on your computer. Don’t just recall the who, what, when and where, but the feelings and emotions that stir up when you look at it. If you immediately smile at a certain photo, why is that? If you get butterflies thinking about what happened that day, describe it. Was the weather that day significant? Was what the person was wearing in the photo peculiar? Is this your child’s “signature” smile or pose, if so, when did it start and what happens when that smile or pose comes out?
I would love to see some of your photos and memories of those photos if you are willing to share. Link me up in the comments section to your photo on your blog or flickr and what comes to mind with that particular photo.
Tell me a story.
