Celebrations and other stories

Is it really the end of the year already? Christmas has been and gone in a flash...so much laughter, colour, good food, great presents - it's been special. I am still working on my Christmas pages and will share some more of those when they are all done.Even using a smaller size than ever before, I am still not as up-to-date as I would like. There are just so many stories to tell. 

2012 has been a momentous year in lots of ways, not least because it's the first year I have ever had to use two albums for my pages. After discussion on one of my forums, someone pointed out that it means I've had a really full year. The fact that every single page represents a happy memory for me is very special indeed.

Journalling my Christmas

The Christmas lurgy has struck early and my crafting has definitely suffered. I am very thankful that I decided to do a small, no pressure album for JYC this year!

The first couple of spreads are done, in their pockets and ready to go in the album. I have a fairly simple system - prompts where I want to write just a few lines get the 'layering' treatment like the one above. Prompts which inspire me to write a bit more get a 6x4 card which I printed a border on, just to make my journalling look neat. And then the other slots are taken up with photos - some of them inspired by the photography prompt, some of them a record of daily activity.

These 12 slots cover days 1-7. Some days I have lots of photos, and other days there aren't any, which is why it's irregular - but I don't mind at all. I am just thrilled to bits with how the pages are growing, and how the cards all work together to make an interesting spread.

It takes a surprising amount of consideration to make the pages balance - photo, journalling, embellishment, what goes in which slot - and I am not sure that I could do this all the time. But for recording lots of smaller memories, it's perfect.

Nine sleeps!

So this is Christmas

Well, here it is again my friends. The festive season means Journal Your Christmas, and my attempt to document (almost) daily thoughts about Christmas past and present. This is my sixth year of JYC, and some albums are more complete than others, but however much I have completed I am always glad to have this record of the season. It's not just a daily record either, it's an opportunity to ponder on different aspects of the season and do some reflective journalling.

My format this year is slightly different. Most of my albums have been 6x6 or 8x8, and last year I experimented with a 6x8 sketchbook. I've realised that I'd like to try including these JYC pages with the rest of my pages for 2012, so to do that I am using divided page protectors with 6x4 slots. My hope is that I will be able to adapt by using them for photos, text, or a combination of the two. If the topic really grabs me I will have the freedom to use more pockets, and if I miss a day (or two) it won't matter. It also means that if I really want to include a 12x12 page, it's easy to slot that in - and that's exactly what I've done with my manifesto page. This paper was just too nice to cut up and I wanted to make a bit of a 'statement' to identify these pages. 

The banner at the top has taken...most of the day. No kidding. Cutting each individual shape, layering them together, putting them in place and then leaving it, before coming back and tweaking it to get it 'just right'. I won't be putting this much into every day. But sometimes it's worth it. 

Here's to finding the magic in Christmas all over again!

Stories of all sizes

Does the New Forest count as travel? We had to go on a ferry, so I think it does. We've had quite heavy frosts here the last couple of days, and autumn seems like so long ago.

I have SO MANY pictures that I want to work with at the moment. Hundreds. Quite possibly thousands. They are all carefully stored in neatly labelled folders in date order, and it's not the amount of them that makes me feel overwhelmed. Rather, it's the act of prioritising - how do I decide which story to tell next? From a memory-keeping point of view there are some stories that are surely more important than others, but sometimes telling those big stories seems so daunting. Sometimes, I am inspired by particular photographs, a product or an artistic style...but it almost feels wrong to do that instead of focusing on something more significant. 

If I only have a limited time to scrapbook (and work does get in the way) then how do I make sure that the pages that are in there are the ones with the stories I really want to tell? And I suppose there are two parts to the answer. Firstly - I read my albums. Occasionally I sit down and flick through the album from a particular year and realise that I have missed out an event/person/occasion that was very important. The first time I did that I realised I rarely scrapbook birthdays, and because Christmas is a separate album then most years' albums ended in November. I am making an effort to correct that as I feel inclined. I did a bunch of Christmas pages earlier this year and it totally killed my enthusiasm for the season, so now I just do little bits here and there.

And secondly - I don't worry about it. I scrapbook whatever inspires me at the time. Whether it's the story, or the photos, or it matches perfectly with a new piece of paper. Sometimes something that seems significant might be a page that in a few years' time I will throw away. And other times I won't realise the significance until months or years later. The most important thing to me is that a page in my album is better than a memory in my head.