Simple Stories – A Smile

Hi everyone!

When I saw that one of my themes this month was “simple stories,” I smiled. For me, that was the same as saying “make a layout.” All my layouts contain stories because, to me, that’s a core part of my scrapbooking.

The first thing I do as I sit down to scrap is to pick my photos and story. To decide what my story is, I look at my photos and think about why I am scrapping them. I take a ton of photos each month and there’s no way I can scrap them all. I prefer to scrap the ones that have stories. The ones that speak to me on a deeper level than just a technically-nice photo. So I spend some time looking at my pictures and think about why I want to preserve these particular ones. What’s the story behind the photo? Years later, what would I want to remember about these particular moments I captured? What would I want my son to know about them?

This is my regular process. Once I’ve decided what my page is going to be about and picked my title, then I can scrap. Here’s the page I did for today’s entry:

I had these two photos of my older son David and here’s what I thought of when I was deciding my story: I take a lot of pictures of both my children. David is six and there are times when he’s had enough and has no desire to smile at the camera. But even at those times, I tell him jokes and, despite himself, he ends up breaking into a smile. This is so David. It’s a part of his sunny disposition and it’s one of the millions of reasons I am grateful to have him in my life. So I wanted to make sure to tell this story as I scrapped these two photos.

As soon as I have my story, I think of a one-line summary. That one line ends up as my title. I figure even if you only read my title, you’re still getting more of a story than just looking at the photos. I then add some lines to tell a bit more of the story.

The journaling on this page reads: David, I know I take too many photos of you and that sometimes I drive you crazy and you just don’t want to smile at the camera any more. But what I love so much is that you can’t help yourself. A few seconds and you break into a smile and then laugh like crazy. I love you my son.

It’s not pages and pages of journaling but it is meaningful and shows you what’s special about these particular photos and helps me preserve a particular memory of my son’s current personality. You don’t need a lot of words to tell the story. You just need to decide what the story is and make an effort to put it down. However simple.

A quick review of the products on this page: Passionfruit Cushies. Daily Junque Tickets, Map and Tabs papers and Ephemera. Soiree Words and Music papers, Dimensional Stickers, and Mini Notes and Labels. Sweetness Alphabet stickers, Doodads and Clear Cards.

I also wanted to mention one more thing. Up until last year, I never ever handjournaled on my layouts. I hate my handwriting and couldn’t stand seeing it on my pages. I felt like I ruined the page as soon as I scrawled on it. But, then, I decided to do a layout a day for all of May and there was no way I could type journaling every single day. So I found an old journaling stamp, cut it up so all I had was the lines and decided to use that on my pages.

The nice thing about that is that the lines are small and close together so I can stamp it several times on my page and blend it into my design. I can also stamp in a color that fits my page. And since the lines are close together, my handwriting is pretty small and doesn’t bother me anymore. It makes the scrapping process much faster and it has the added benefit of leaving another piece of me on my pages.

If you’ve never handwritten on your pages, I highly recommend tracking down a simple journaling stamp (there’s an excellent one in the hometown summer set) and challenging yourself to use it. It takes a few layouts but eventually I promise you’ll get used to it.

Even if you never use your handwriting, I hope you take the time to journal on your next layout. To me, it’s what makes your pages unique and special. And, most importantly, meaningful. Make sure to show your simple story pages to us in the Live Pink gallery!

Thank you for letting me share and have a wonderful day!!