Scrapbooking Confessions

84 posts / 0 new
Last post

LilyAnn: I get the words on the lines by having a text layer for each line, I so hear you, resulting in me usually not giving a second thought and just writing on top of the lines or brushing them away. It is faster than fumbling with leading.

This is a cool thread. I don’t really get clusters either. I guess my confession is that i’m more about memories than about the actual scrapbooks and as such my pages are all full of photos and journaling with not too much space for anything else except a title.

My other confession: I don’t scrapbook in order or by event or anything as organised as all that. I just grab a photo album (physical or digital folder) and “flick” through it til I find photos I want to scrapbook and do that. And.... I don’t consider myself to be behind. 😳

I hate journaling! But I know that it is such an important part of enjoying the creation in the future. Sigh.

It was fun reading thought all your posts- I can relate on so many levels. I would like to scrapbook from a single kit- seems so much easier. But years ago when I decided how to organize my supplies, I broke up all my kits into separate files. This has it's pros and cons. Sadly, it is only recently that I have started keeping a copy of each kit whole.

Kit- I love that you don't consider yourself behind and that you scrapbook what appeals to you in the moment- with no apologies! That is fantastic!

I have always been hopelessly behind with my scrapbooking and am almost finished with a project that is taking the guilt off of my shoulders. Over 10 years ago, my amazing sister-in-law died of cancer and left 3 teen/young adult daughters behind without even a letter or note. My husband and I have watched the girls experience all the major events (weddings, babies...) without their mom or any of her advice. This inspired me to start a Mother's advice scrapbook. On one of the facing pages I have one photo with space for words of advice, affirmation or encouragement. On the page opposite, I have a collage of random pictures (there is no rhyme or reason, no chronology or event- completely random). It is a very fast way to scrap. And if these pictures never get scraped in a more systematic way, at least my kids have access to the photographic evidence of their life as well as words directly from their mom.

I'm a fan of even at the very least, one sentence and a date on every LO. Someday our actual memories will fade, or someone may not be around to have the memory, so it's nice to put at least a little something down. I actually look at fonts and wording as just another design element on a LO too.

I am NOT a kit scrapper. I know most people are, I actually find it really tough to do! I love plundering through my ten years worth of supplies until I find exactly what I want.

This is a fun read!

My layouts are ALWAYS two pagers. I can't seem to do a single page layout because I need the facing pages to match. Lol

Gosh, I can relate to so many of these points. I should just ditto everything here and say they all make up my scrapbooking confession. LOL

But I guess my biggest one is that I rarely put a single photo on a page. I have so many photos I want to include on pages. When/if I do put a single photo on a page, it's usually the "title" page to another page(s) that has a whole bunch of photos like 4 to 9, maybe. I like using filmstrips or those multi-photo frames. I do admire a lot of single photo pages (in fact, I just finished one) but the next page will have several photos on it. So, I usually scrapbook in spreads - when there are a lot of photos. I'm with April on that one.

But here's my more embarrassing confession...I haven't really scrapbooked or been a part of a scrapbooking community in over 20 years and I'm just now getting back into it. Sooooooo...I really have no idea what lots of things are like: blog trains, Junk Journals, Travelers Notebooks, etc etc etc So, I'm educating myself on new and different scrapbook-y things. smiley

Got to agree with Linda, about the multi photos. Didn’t even occur to me that might need to be confessed!!!

Also, I will say, i’ve only been out of scrapbooking for a couple of years and it’s all different! Fun getting to grips with the new terms styles and ideas though!!

As to the single photo scrapbooking, I think we've seen, that we each do this for different reasons.

For me:

1. Designing so others can create.
2. Creativity. Creating for the enjoyment and stretching of my creative brain.
3. Exploring that creativity.
4. Hobby.
5. Memory keeping. (kinda.....I don't really print anything...I should change that.)

Don’t get me wrong: I love seeing single photo layouts and I do get it, i just never manage to do it. Even when I sit down with a layout to scraplift and a photo the right size, it never seems to work for me.

I just meant that for me, it’s not “confession” worthy. It’s just a thing - personal preference.

My confession is that I find it difficult to scrap a page with more than one photo. Any layout that I do with more than two photos doesn't feel artistic - it just looks like inventory. I also struggle with journaling in an interesting manner. And my pet peeve is a button without thread!

Here's mine.

I often use overlays (ones I've made myself or other peoples') for backgrounds and I usually I pull a colour from the photos rather than using predesigned paper. (Only occasionally now do I use a predesigned background.)

Although I admire layouts with many things on them and the artistry of them, it's isn't my style. For myself, I prefer cleaner layouts with few elements and straight lines.

Journalling is really important to me. I've looked at photo albums that have been passed down from family and I can't always identify the people in them which is sad (I got my mom to identify some of them in the past but she has Alzheimer's now. My mother-in-law can't identify all the people in her late husband's family albums). My mom did a couple of paper scrapbooks herself a number of years ago about her genealogy and childhood before she got Alzheimer's, has them with her in her long term care home and looks at them. (They are really helpful for stimulating memories of the past and they've been read by all her grandchildren.)

I've done layouts even with no photos because I don't have any. For example, I recently did a layout about my adult daughter's love of Beanie Babies when she was a child. I didn't have any photos as we didn't take any of them. So instead I downloaded photos of Beanies she once owned from the website, extracted them and used them as embellishments. (I did the same for My Little Pony although I did have a photo of her with her ponies.)

I really like using photo objects as embellishments and I have an old set of Hemera Photo Objects I often use in addition to other embellishments I've purchased (like brads, stitching, frames etc). I have a a number of Dover clipart CDs I use for embellishments or to make my own brushes. I never stick to 1 kit when doing a layout. I have a weakness for anything with vintage style illustrations.

I don't scrap chronologically and I only scrap when inspired ( never want to feel compelled to scrap Therefore my output of layouts scrapped isn't very high. I'm only now just getting back into scrapping after an almost 5 year break (we lost our son in July 2015 to SUDEP - sudden death in epilepsy so I didn't feel like scrapping for a long time.)

I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your son. Welcome back to scrapbooking.

I also love journaling - but I spoke to my mum about it recently and she was flummoxed by the idea. She often wrote the “who, what, when, where” in the memo section of her photo albums but it never occurred to her to write a story on a bit of paper and shove it in a photo slot.

Even when I mentioned it she just looked bemused and said she never thought of it. “It’s a photo album. It’s for photos” was the best she could come up with in response, although I wasn’t criticising. I was just curious why she didn’t add the stories into her album as she was very interested in scrapbooking but “i’m no good at that kind of thing”. Yet, she does share anecdotes when we look at albums.

Scrapbooking, mostly for me, is creating a glorified photo album. I will spread a subject across multiple pages to allow the photos to have their spotlight. Favorite photos will sometimes get a page to themselves with little ornamentation. This is especially true for photos taken on camping trips, vacations and special events. I like journaling and will use it to tell the stories of places we visit. I really love local history. When we go ghost town hunting, I like finding archival photos and researching these forgotten places. It adds poignancy and depth against the photos of tumble down walls and the wilderness around them.
I have created what call "fancy photos" by choosing a standard size page (8x10, 11x14 etc) layering backgrounds adding the photo and maybe a few elements like a tag or brads. I buy the all acrylic frames to put them in. https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/sites/default/files/styles/1000/public/s3fs-user-content/layout-image/user-144604/node-248636/fancy-photo-layout-1-big-gingham-leather-texture-navy-blue-brown.jpg

My confession is that I still working on our digital scrapbook from our wedding photos. (Married in november 2008) smiley

Yeah i’ve not finished my wedding album either and it’s almost 10 years for me. But i don’t scrap chronologically anyway I just scrapbook whatever I want whenever I feel like it.

Yes Kat that is for me also.

My confession is that after following Shannan Manton for a while on Insta now that photo books are probably a better way to go and that ring bound albums are mostly a big space hog so I am probably going to stop using those and look into the blurb trade books she uses (though I have just recently picked up some Simple Stories Flip Books but they are a fraction of the cost of a ring bound album and I will see how it goes with it)

I also am very VERY bad at paper scrapping LOL, and that's why I lean more towards digital scrapbooking LOL.
I just cannot get clusters like some of you guys either. I seem to be very minimal and simple in my pages HAHA!

I thought I'd commented on this earlier, but I didn't, so here's a few confessions:

- Single photo layouts are hard for me. I tend to average 3 or more.

- I'm seriously considering redoing the bulk of my old paper scrapbooks digitally. Partially because I like my digital style better (I was on an extremely tight budget for the paper scrapbooks, and this site makes budget scrapbooking easy!), and partially because flipping through them recently while looking for something for the ABC album challenge made me realize that I left a lot of those pages unfinished. Like not even sticking the pictures down.

- I may have a hoarding problem. While transferring files to a new computer this weekend, I learned that between my supply files and the backup that my PSE made, that takes up nearly half of a TB. Yikes.

Here's my confession

I will really want a kit then buy it - which is more expensive for me because I am Canadian and have to pay the exchange rate - use it once or twice and then get bored of it.

I confess...I'm still scrapbooking my son's baby pictures (he's 30) lol

I'm a serial scraplifter (thanks, whoever further upthread who used that term), I NEVER use less than 4 pictures on a page, rarely use less than 3 kits per layout, and scrap exclusively with freebies.

I'm also about a year behind - finishing up my 2019 memories as 2020 closes! I need to start my baby's first-year memories book. She's my pandemic baby - born in April 2020. This is the latest I ever started a baby book.

But, to be fair, I never had 5 kids home straight through a pandemic before, so maybe I'm excused a little bit.
I'd like to scrap 2020 and 2021 at the same time - like, I should work on my January 2020 layout through the whole January, and then January 2021 and Feb 2020 through Feb. 2 layouts a month is not too bad...

(I work in spreads, not pages, so 2 layouts for me is really 4)

I use anything, anywhere, anytime. I marvel at people that can use one project life kit, or paper set for one thing - but I can't. I mix and math and throw it all in and my themes changes from page to page even if the photos are from the same event.
I also have boxes of project life cards just sitting in a cupboard in my craft space... fun.

I have almost all of the photos from my 20 years of marriage just waiting to be scrapped -- and some from my childhood, too. And I've been dragging my feet because it was all disorganized enough that I was afraid of doing a layout and realizing later that there were other "parts" for it somewhere else. (Y'all have inspired me to get into it again, and I've spent hours this week getting it all into a logical order so that I can just grab a stack of photos and scrap them.)

If I buy a kit it's because I love the individual elements, because I rarely ever -- in any area of life -- use something as a whole/as it's intended. lol

And I think I put off scrapbooking sometimes because of a certain type of perfectionism. I don't stress too much about whether my pages look perfect, but as the family genealogist, I'm acutely aware of things like what we didn't think to ask my grandmother while she was still around, what we wonder about the photos that were left behind, etc., and I feel like there are things that should be in my books that aren't because they take more thought or effort. Like longer journaling, explanations of who the people are and how they're connected, etc. It's as if I get so bogged down in the big picture of what I want my scrapbooks to eventually be that I'm paralyzed into doing nothing.

That's an easy one to get bogged down into. I figure as long as I have names of people in the photos and what occasion the photos were taken for, plus a date (preferably more than just a year, but sometimes that's all you've got to go on), I'm doing good.

I've been trying to make lists in my personal scrapbook with that info--something as simple as a journal card, tag, or piece of notepaper with the date and 6-10 words about each photo is enough to cover that info for a page, with the event as a page title.

As far as the things you didn't ask, or the photos you wonder about, those are great journaling prompts to include on the pages with the photos. An "I wish I'd asked you..." title with a photo of your grandmother could be a jumping-off point for a list of fantastic, thought-provoking questions. A photo of a couple of people you recognize and can name, but have no other info about what was happening when the photo was taken, could make a great page of "What were they doing?" And even pages like that have a place, because they can be jumping-off points for the next generation of family genealogists who might have access to info from other parts of the family.

Ha! I LOVE the term 'scraplifter'! That is totally me! I like to browse the gallery...and find inspiration for layouts!

Also....I just created my first page (uploaded to the gallery a few days ago) in about 7 years.... smiley

Scrapbooking confession:

How inspiring to read your "Confessions". Yes, everyone is individual and has different reasons for scrapping photos.

I used to draw and I was very excited when I bought a computer in 1996 and later found out that there were inexpensive graphics programs since flat rates (telephone costs) had existed, and that these programs could then be learned in forums.

Since 2005 I was able to get started with Photo Impact 8 /Ulead.( Now PI X3/Corel and PS CS3+5)

I still love the 3D realistic style and have a particular weakness for metal elements. I don't like journaling that much, but otherwise many styles and also mixing kits.

But creating it yourself is more fun, but I don't want to imitate styles, I prefer to adapt the layout to the photo, that should remain the main message of the layout for me.
I had a blog until 2012, but then Jesus came into my life and He then took my main focus for a few years. At this point, I also had the graphic external drive crash. All of my kits and layouts were gone. An expensive recovery was only possible with the other folders on the drive, but not with the graphics folders! I was very depressed.

But now that this leaden lockdown came, I took up my beloved graphics again and had a lot of fun with them and now again enough and found you guys to learn again. Now I can make my family happy with scraps in mobile phone format (800x450px across look at)
Thanks for your inspiration. We have nothing to confess, all styles, preferences or ignorance of parts of a style are OK. The main thing is having fun with joy!

Happy Scrapping smiley)

My confession is that I'm a scrap hoarder. I gather kits and elements like a squirrel storing up for winter. lol
I did a scrapbook of my life and children for my mom for a Christmas gift. I was so thankful that I did because she went into the hospital on Dec. 24 and died Dec. 30. I gave her this gift in the hospital. She carefully looked at each page. I used papers, 3D stickers etc... She appreciated it and I have it still as a reminder of that special time watching her carefully look and touch each page.

With all the digital pictures I would really like to do digital scrapping and maybe add some 3D elements if I print them off and put them in an album. I want to put them on a CD as I do them so I have a protected copy if anything happens to my computer. I have 2 copies of pics on different Xhard drives just in case. I too had a computer crash and I lost a LOT.

Here's to memory making!

What a sweet memory with your mom Deana. smiley

My confession is that while I do have a copy of Photoshop CC, I am finding it really hard to get to know and use.

As a 50 something middle aged female, I am finding it really hard to change up my technology. Something I am actually rather surprised about. I didnt think I would have this much trouble. I have been using PCs since 1982!!!

I think it may have something to do with the fact that I do not have a personal one on one tutor. The (Photoshop For Dummies) book does not always answer all my questions. And it also looks intimidating.

I currently much prefer to use the simple yet free scrapbook program that I found. it is simply called PAINT (dot) NET.

It does have its limitations. I can use JPGs and PNGs but I cannot use PSDs and Masks.

I really wish i can learn to use Photoshop CC so that I create the Photo Masks that you all do well.
I love the look of them, but I just cannot use them.

I'm with you Robynne. I have an older version of PS but never was able to learn to use it. I just needed some easy basic tutorials, I think. lol
Holly tried to work with me but my computer just wasn't cooperating for a long while. Even the techs couldn't figure out what was wrong.
My hubby, who is NOT a tech guy, figured it out... rofl

I don't want to pay a monthly fee so I ended up buying Affinity Design and Affinity Photo.
It is very similar to PS but yet a bit different. I'm determined to learn it but life keeps getting in the way lol.
I usually need a bit of hand holding at first and then I'm usually able to get by ok unless I have questions.

If you need a mask or psd made into a png or jpg, I'd be glad to assist you and I'm sure plenty of others would change things for you as well.

Pages