Scrapbooking yourself

Once you become immersed in the hobby called scrapbooking, you become aware of the little moments and events in life. With camera in hand you make sure birthdays, vacations, your children, grandchildren, close relationships and holidays are all taking center stage in your scrapbooking albums.

But what about you?

If you look back at your photographs, you will note that you are the one behind the camera and therefore, the majority of the time, left out of your scrapbook pages because there are no photos of you. You may think you don’t photograph well or you need to lose that extra 10 pounds or your hair isn’t right, but I can guarantee you, that you are harder on yourself than you need to be, not that any of those ever occurred to me. I, too, have to make myself get in front of the camera. As I cherish any or all photos of my ancestors, I have come to conclude that your descendants and ancestors will not care about any of those things, they only want to see and cherish the photos of you.

So you need to make sure you get front and center in the photo.

Not only that, while you are concentrating on keeping up with current photographs and events, you haven’t thought about your childhood photos and the story of your life. This is going to come as a surprise to you, but eventually your children and grandchildren will want to know about the good old days. And what better way then to tell your story through scrapbook pages. This phenomenon is known as “All About Me” or “Book of Me.” There are albums and journaling prompts that will help you in getting all your childhood memories out there. Or those memories you want out there. Since you are telling your story, you can put as much or as little as you want out there. And believe it or not, its FUN.

Let’s start easy.

• Where were you born
• Where was your childhood home
• Where did you go to school
• Who was your best friend
• Who was your first boyfriend
• What was your first car
• Did you move at any time
• What games did you play
• Did you stay with your grandparents, aunts or uncles in the summer
• What was your relationship with your grandparents, aunts or uncles
• Did you have siblings and what was your relationship with them
• Did you play an instrument, march in a band
• Did you finish high school
• Did you go to college, join a sorority/fraternity
• Did you have a summer job? Where and how much did you earn?
• Your birthday parties (or lack thereof)
• Your summer vacations (or lack thereof)
• Where you raised with a faith, church home
• How did your fiance propose
• What type of wedding did you have
• Favorite books
• ETC...

The topics are limitless. However, I’m sure as you read through these, sights, sounds, smells are assaulting you and your stories are begging to be told.

There is no right way or wrong way to put together your “All About Me” or “Book of Me” memories. You can make a special album putting all your pages in one place, and making it cohesive by using the same line of papers and embellishments. I have mine scattered throughout my albums using several techniques, because that’s how I scrap. One day, and because I use 3-ring binders, I’ll sit down and gather them all in one place. Or not.

As you create your pages, again, there is no right or wrong way. It does however, involve journaling. Journaling for your childhood stories are a bit more than who, what, when and where. Its about how things were when you were a child growing up and what that means to you. Again, its up to you how much you want out there for everyone to read. You can incorporate a technique called “hidden” journaling, where you can pour your heart out and hide it behind a photo, embellishment and tuck it inside an envelope. Also, in order to keep your album personal, try to use your handwriting as much a you can. Once you hide the journaling you can then point to where its hidden or just let people find out on their own. Like a treasure hunt.

For example. (in no particular order) These pages are just to give you an idea and hopefully a jumping off point to begin your journey in documenting your childhood memories.

Favorite Place is a hybrid scrapbook page - part digital, part scrapbook embellishments. Its about my favorite place being my grandparent's house and why even to this day was a special place to hang.

Home - This is our home in the country which turned out to be one of my favorites as well. I used numbered/bullet journaling for these memories.

Friend in the 'hood - is a page about a friend I had when we lived in the city and about our relationship.

Faith is about being raised in the my grandparents and parents faith, and how I thought it was normal that my grandparents each attended their own church (same faith).

For Me - Because of the way life shook out, and while my first marriage didn't work out. this is a wonderful photo of my grandpop walking me down the aisle.

It's in the air - This page is about family vacation at the shore with prompts beginning with "I remember". I chose that phrase because its about what I remember and other family members may have different memories.

It's a gang thing - Living in the country was different and somewhere along the most of us were related in some way, shape or form. And we all hung together, had fun and each other's back. It was the most amazing thing.

I hope that this has given you lots of inspiration!