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Images courtesy of (from left to right): cocoadaisy.com, mugsyboo.typepad.com
If I am being honest, 2015 was the year I failed at memory keeping. The past few years I have faithfully scrapbooked events, made travel albums, and created pocket page albums for our daughter. I even tackled creating albums for the month of December where I captured and recorded daily memories. This past year I started off on the right track, I completed some layouts and started my pocket page album for the year in a new format, 8.5 x 11, but only made it a few months into the year. For a few weeks I kept faithfully printing out my pictures and then even that stopped. Most of 2015 was spent working on compiling all of the necessary paperwork to adopt our second daughter from China. Instead of paper crafting, I was paper chasing! After months and months of waiting and preparing we finally traveled to Inner Mongolia a few weeks ago to bring her home. When we met her we were given a large bag of items from her foster family one of which was a scrapbook. As a paper crafter and memory keeper, this item is so precious to me and was also a wake up call. The album is filled with pages of pictures decorated with stickers, embellishments cut out with deco scissors, and handwritten notes with dates. I have always been so focused on getting my pages just right and having the newest embellishments when what was really important was preserving the memories so this year I am going to complete an album for our family of not only our trip, but to also document this first year as a family of 4.
Image courtesy of mugsyboo.typepad.com
Now that I am committed to jumping back in, I am choosing to do pocket page albums for both our travel album and our family album for this year because, for me, it is a quick and easy way to complete pages. If you aren’t familiar with pocket page scrapping, it is a system of albums, pages, and pre-printed cards so basically it is as simple as printing your pictures, slipping them into the pages and then adding journaling to the cards. In addition to pocket pages, there are other ways to jump back into documenting your new year.
Image courtesy of lisamoorefield.com
If you are planning to create traditional scrapbook layouts, I found these 20 Simple Scrapbooking Ideas and Tips to be very helpful. Sometimes the “less is more” approach is hard for me to achieve and this post helped me see how I could actually keep up this year if I streamlined my approach. Maybe you have jumped on the recent planner craze, if so you can incorporate memory keeping into your planner. Add a little journaling, pictures, and ephemera (either daily or weekly) and at the end of the year you will have your year documented! Before you can streamline you approach, you might need to streamline your supplies. I recently purged a ton of supplies out of my craft room and have a rolling cart set up with everything I need to complete my pocket pages this year. Having it on the cart means I can move it from room to room…sometimes I may be in my craft room but at other times I may be catching up at the dining room table or in front of a movie with the family, not being tied to a certain area will hopefully give me more flexibility to get pages completed. Check out my post from last January on how to get your craft room organized for more ideas.
Are you caught up with your memory keeping or you behind like me?
Martha Bonneau
I started scrapping in 2006 and was quickly addicted!I was an avid scrapper until late summer of 2010 when we started our adoption journey, at that point I was overwhelmed with paperwork (and emotions!) and I had to put something on the back burner in my life but I knew I would eventually come back to it.
We welcomed our daughter home from China in December of 2011 and a few months later I found my groove again and pulled out all of those supplies that had been tucked away.
I started out scrapping again doing traditional layouts, but at the beginning of this year I jumped into Project Life and I love it!
When I’m not scrapping I am usually spending time with our daughters which means library time, going on walks, thrifting (they love it as much as I do!) or watching Kung Fu Panda for the millionth time.I also have an Etsy shop Panda Eight Designs where I sell scrapbooking flair that I design.
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