Digital Scrapbooking: Part 1 - The Paper Years

A few weeks ago, I mentioned in a Sunday Salon post that I had been doing some scrapbooking instead of reading. Aack! Is that even allowed? Anyway... On that post, Kathy (one of my favorite bloggers) asked me to tell more about digital scrapbooking. That sounded like lots of fun to me, so here I am!

As I started putting this post together, however, I found that it turned into a marathon post (who knew I had so much to say about scrapbooking?). So I am breaking my love of scrapbooking into multiple posts. Today's post is about my beginnings in paper scrapbooking.

I started scrapbooking almost 12 years ago when my girl was about 6 months old. I got started with Creative Memories, making scrapbook pages with cool papers, stickers, fun pens, etc. I loved all the paper colors with the pictures, especially the primary/bolder colors. Trying to find the right sticker to go with my pictures was an event unto itself sometimes. Or finding the right pictures to go with the cute stickers I just had to buy!

And the journaling! Colored pens. Fat pens. Letter stickers. All fun! I usually had quite a bit to say about my pictures. You know how when you are sharing pictures with someone, you want to tell them the things you can't tell from the picture or why the picture was even taken. That's what I tried to write on the pages. It's so fun to look back now and see my handwriting. I had such nice handwriting ten years ago. But the best is reading the little quirks, filling in the memories that the pictures bring to mind. The journaling is just as important to the page as the pictures! (Stepping down from the journaling soapbox now.)

Over the next 8 years or so, I made about 15 scrapbooks for my family. I have always taken ALOT of pictures of my family and our activities. Scrapbooking was a natural progression to document the things that I surely would forget (and definitely have!).

I was a Creative Memories consultant for five years and totally loved it. I loved helping ladies make their scrapbooks. Helping them to document the lives of their families. I was a consultant during 9/11 and it was my mission to make sure folks wrote in their scrapbooks about their thoughts and feelings before they changed over time.

I completely loved scrapbooking. It combined my love of my family with my love of photography, giving the gift of memories to my family. I have family albums, birthday albums for each child, and 'growing up' albums for each kid, starting with their baby books. Everyone in my family enjoys going through the memories!

Here's some thoughts I have for more on my scrapbooking series: my transition to digital photography and later, to digital scrapbooking, my scrapbooking style, different ways to scrapbook, what to include in any scrapbook. I'm excited to share!





Edited to add:
Part 2 - From Paper to Digital
Part 3 - What I do
Part 4 - Making a Page