Doing It My Way

Moving from “Product” pages to “Story” pages – are you loosing focus?  Do you scrapbook for art?… for the story? or just to make your albums pretty?

I am sitting at Chili’s listening to PCRT (Episode 033) and during the “Male reads the Mail” section they are reading a letter from Jennifer Stewart.  Jennifer is remembering about her dad’s battle with cancer and on the way to one of the chemo treatments she asked him if he wanted to write down some words of wisdom for his grandchildren?  Even though he wanted to to he was just too sick and weak to focus on his answers.  Jennifer dad only had cancer for 9 months.  Since loosing her dad she lost interest in making each page “balanced & beautiful” and decided to really focus on just recording stories. She even changed her album format to 8x11 to celebrate a new beginning in her memory keeping.

Here is the question:  Are you product driven or memory driven?

Me:  I love the products that make my memories pretty but I am memory driven! I do not even begin the artwork until all of the photos for each project are organized and journaling is done. Once all of my memories are documented then and only then do I give over to the creative side of me.   

I have lost so many memories in my family because no one took photos and no one talks about the “old times” or “growing up”, I do not want that to happen in the Perry Family.  So, do we want our stories pretty or recorded? I WANT IT ALL!  I have been scrapbooking for 9 years and I have many finished scrapbooks that are pretty but I am reaching a point of growth that along with pretty I want more of the back story.  I can still do the deeper storytelling but still have the pretty factor and all of the memorabilia in my albums.  I need to think on different ways to make that happen but I can have my cake and eat it too.  This is my hobby and I can DO IT MY WAY.