The scrapping world is often filled with children, documenting their everyday life and milestones. Seldom are they about the person scrapping, and of course there are the exceptions, but more often than not, it is dominated by children and families.
This brings me to why I engage in it. I don't have children that I want to document my life for or their life for them. But I scrap for me. To me, it is a journal of my life and my own memories, for no one but myself. I enjoy pulling out my books and flipping through them and remembering the past memories. This is mainly because I like to put my layouts in albums the minute I'm done with them.
They either go in the 12x12 album or clear frames where I can look at them longer, but never just left there. This is for practical reasons as I scrap memories and don't want them damaged, which they might if I leave them out. I put them in, sometimes moving them around (but that is for another blog post).
The key thing for me was to have a place to store the many photos that are taken. In this digital age, we snap many photos but we do not look often at them. I am a big offender as I often go for trips, take loads of photos but struggle even to load them to my computer. Even when I do, it sits there, as I loathe photo editing. (perhaps this should be my resolution for 2012 to organise my photos better) And I never ever look at them.
Since scrapbooking, I at least have images printed out and ready to see by just pulling out my album and viewing them. A little disclaimer here, this my be just me. Images are powerful and now at least I have them in tactile form, ready to evoke memories that I have squirrelled away in a corner of my mind.
Of course the pretty paper and embellishments are a big draw and I do get the satisfaction from playing with pretty things. I occasionally do pages that are simply just to get a creative fix, but most of the time it is to document something. The exception is when I share creations for other people, because it really would be weird to be journalling on their pages.
Long post, but just some thoughts I have had. And because as much as it is about documentation, we all do still like pretty things, here's a layout made with Crate Paper:
Made this quite some time ago but haven't put up here.
Other supplies: Studio Calico, American Crafts
What motivates you to scrapbook?
This is so true! Thank you for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteI scrapbook for the same reason as you, and I want to remember me and my surroundings :)
Beautiful LO!
ReplyDeleteComing over from Scrappin Studio to say a big congrats ! As for me, I scrap as a creative exercise (not having kids either, memory keeping isn't a big deal for me).
ReplyDelete