Keeping a Good Thing Around

Last year I started a new method of scrapping, just for fun.

I loved it.

As of last night, this is the full (very full) 2009 scrapbook. I'm thinking of using it for workouts.

Everyone scraps differently. That's the beauty of the hobby. Each person's style is her scrapping fingerprint.

My style is sort of a chronological journalistic style. My scrapbooks are an extention of my journals - with pictures. That's why I do separate books of major events...like my vacation to Hershey...my weekend in Brown County...my niece's high school graduation. I want to be able to write out the details of the stories that happen, and I just don't have room in the already-way-too-big yearly scrapbook.

Last year, for Christmas, my sister gave me a wall calendar that doubled as scrapbook background paper. Best gift ever, as it inspired my new scrapping idea for this year. Sometimes I have one or two pictures too many for my page covering an event in my life. Or sometimes I take just one picture of something and I don't have a page that covers that event. This used to frustrate me when scrapping, and I'd been known to waste an entire 12x12 page trying to use those random pictures.

No more!

The calendar pages became "month-in-review" pages. As I worked my way through my scrapbook this past year, I'd save one page at the beginning of the month, and along the way, I'd tuck in those extra pictures, ticket stubs, nametags...whatever randomness I had. At the end of the month, I'd crop them, mat them, arrange them, and write beside them the people in the picture, and the date it was taken. Each page also had a journaling box, which allowed me to summarize the highlights of the month.

This year, I searched for a similar calendar, but couldn't find one, so instead I'm using standard background paper from Hobby Lobby to accomplish the same purpose. I'll just do the journaling review on my computer and print it out in a coordinating color.

The page opposite my month-in-review page was this calendar page, which is another idea I loved so much that I'm keeping it for this year. I found these blank pages at Hobby Lobby. They came printed with the calendar grid and the days of the week. I added everything else. I used a big, whimsical stamp set to stamp the name of the month at the top, and then I stamped around it something that coordinated with the month. I stamped the dates in the boxes and then kept a journal of sorts of things that happened - whether or not they were covered elsewhere in the scrapbook.


I included everything from births to events I attended to random trivia to news items. I also stamped something alongside every item just to spice up the page a bit. Loved the way it looked!

And finally, the bulk of the pages were the actual events that took place. I stamp every background myself - using random stamps that coordinate with the event. This page was of my scrapping day at the Craft Hideaway, so I used stamps of scissors and rulers. I crop my pictures into squares, rectangles, circles, and ovals, and I mat each one for a more finished look. Somewhere on each page, I include a journaling box, where I explain the event. And then I write the names of the people in the pictures around each one so when I'm old and senile, I can remember who they (we) were. I create a title for each page (or spread) and use the same stamps on each title bar, so they all match. Down in the bottom corner of each page, I also write the date of each event so I can easily keep track of it.

So that's how I scrap! I love this method much more than the old scattered version. I'm excited to see how it looks down the road when I can pull volumes of books off the shelves and relive each year!