Thursday, February 08, 2007

Re-assessing...

I've been receiving Ali Edwards' weekly newsletter, AEzine. And each week she really inspires me to look a bit deeper into my life and into my scrapbooking. This week's challenge is to create a personal creative 'manifesto' or mission statement really. By asking ourselves a few questions we should be able to see what our scrapbooking really is, why we do it etc. However, what my manifesto is and what I really want it to be are two separate things. I still struggle to create things that are 'me'. I don't even know what me or my style is. And I don't really think I like whatever it is anyways. My scrapping really is so empty. If I look through my albums (of which there really aren't many pages anyway) everything is so higglety-pigglety and it really doesn't really tell many stories. And that's NOT what I want my scrapping to be. I seem to be scrapping just for the sake of it lately, and I want to do it with more purpose.

So that's what I'm going to do. No more only-photo layouts with a nice smile or what-have-you - unless its really called for it. I want to get meaty and deep and record those MEMORIES that go with the pictures.

Erica Glover has ALWAYS inspired me with her journalling. Her layouts REALLY tell the stories - she's going to have so many wonderful things to look back on and not just pictures, but she'll be able to relive the memories too. And that's what I want.

So from now on, I'm planning my layouts ahead of time. Too many times I print pics I *think* I might want to scrap, not really thinking about colours or sizes I might want them when it comes to the actual scrapping part. And due to this, many of these pics don't end up being scrapped coz I just can't get inspired when I get em out. So I'm going to plan my sketches, photo sizes, and even colours ahead of time so I'm not just 'throwing' things together like I seem to do these days.

I want to be creative again.

I want to tell stories.

I want to capture the memories.

That's what scrapbooking is all about essentially isn't it??

5 comments:

Gayle said...

Go for it Nat. I think we all want to have more meaning in our pages. I'm looking forward to scrapping again...I miss having a good photo unit in town that I can pic all types of sizes to print...have to have 4x6 or 6x8...I love little pics.
I am looking forward to seeing the LO's you create with your new goals.

Anonymous said...

Natti, you already share the stories day after day on your blog. Why not cut yourself some slack and use parts of your blog entries as journalling. Read back through a few posts, find something that interests you and then find the photos that fit the story.

If it was important enough to blog, or everyday enough to blog, or funny enough to blog or cute enough to blog then it sure should be scrapped!!

Hugs
E xx

Nat said...

Yeah exactly Eck! Thank God I've blogged hey (which I think is why I haven't bothered too much if I couldn't find the right way to include the memories on the LOs). I just have sooo many memories to go back and use for my layouts! Its just to start sorting now... and then getting them on my pages.

lusi said...

Great post Natti! Eck's right - you already record like that - all the beautiful things that flow out of your heart - now its just putting them down in an album huh!
Seems like it was a *moment* for ya hey.
Love ya :)

Gayle said...

wow E! I had never thought of doing that! Gonna see what I can find to scrap from my blog now
Thanks