With the holidays quickly approaching and special moments with friends and family around the corner. It's easy to get caught up in the moment and some of you may be like me and just trying to survive bouncing around from home to home on Christmas Eve like my family has done for years. So this episode encourages you to slow down and be proactive about capturing some of these moments you are about to experience and keep them everlasting. I hope you enjoy this wonderful conversation with Alice, a scrapbooking enthusiast who loves to travel. She shares her strategies on how you can create lasting memories of your adventures with your loved ones and also shares how you can get started with a special limited-time holiday gift she is offering.
Topics covered in this article
Meet Alice and the Scrap Happy Community
Alice Boll has been a scrapbooker for over 22 years and is the facilitator behind ScrapHappy.org where you can find the happiest online membership community for scrapbookers, special events, and the ScrapHappier Podcast!
When scrapbooking comes to mind, you may feel like you don’t even want to start because the expectations can get overwhelming, yet we still value our memories and want to make them last forever… so what do we do?
How to Get Started with Scrapbooking
How can we as parents even get started and how can we make scrapbooking more convenient or easier on ourselves as busy parents?
“It really comes down to why are you scrapbooking and what do you want out of your scrapbooking? What is your purpose for trying this? What is your purpose for, you know, creating these pages, if you just want to put your photos into an album and you're not worried about the story, telling part of it, buy a photo album, print some pictures, and put them into a photo album, there's nothing wrong with that!”
“But if you want something more, and you want to take your stories and put them with your picture and marry those two together, then Scrapbooking is a great place for that. And there are so many different ways to do it. You can go super simple, you can use digital tools, you can actually go crazy artistic, where you're designing your papers and stamping and using mixed media and artistic stuff. So I think the number one step is to think of your why. What do you want to accomplish of this? And when you know the why it really helps you focus on what is important.”
So do what works for you and your passions. For me, I love to craft, but it’s also time-consuming and I have many other commitments for my creative time at the moment So I would look more into digital print books to save time and I personally feel like that is more convenient for me.
How To Find Time To Scrapbook
How can you dedicate the time to creating a scrapbook or a digital book with your busy schedule?
Try to incorporate bits and pieces into your day. Alice recommends having a travel-size notebook handy or making notes on the calendar hanging in the kitchen, and just adding notes about anything funny or memorable that happened that day, or something your child said or did that made you smile. Take pictures along with those moments on your phone and when the time arrives where you can sit down and put the two together, it won’t feel so overwhelming because you have most of the information right there. You have at least an outline or series of events to choose from and the notes already taken. You can also create digital scrapbooks while watching a show or when you’re winding down for the evening and your kids are asleep. Whatever you do, don’t “force” this task on yourself. You want to do it because it is enjoyable, so however you can work your life to have fun with it, take that approach!
“Photo books are probably the first thing I would say to turn to. And there's nothing wrong with saying that that scrapbooking. If you want to take that up a notch, there are great resources for digital scrapbooking. There's a program called Artisan. It's run through a company called Forever.com.” - Alice
Persnickety Prints is also recommended where you can get your scrapbook pages printed and then add them to your book.
Another photo book printing service that is even simpler is Shutterfly, where you can get the whole book printed along with your notes added. There are many companies out there, so feel free to search for more options if this is something you’re interested in!
Digital Scrapbooking Links
How to Manage Too Many Pictures On the Phone
So I have thousands of pictures on my phone, how can I make it easier for myself to know which ones to pick for the memory book? Alice shares some strategies on how you can make scrapbooking your own experience and how to take those thousands of photos on your phone and decide which ones to pick!
First off, it could be a good idea to start a new habit of deleting the images you don’t like immediately after taking them, so that you are not scrolling through 25 of the same image, not knowing right away which one was your favorite! But if you’re like me and haven’t mastered that habit yet, the next best thing is to look at your images through the lens of a story.
What Alice describes in the interview is an opportunity to document and share stories in your scrapbooks, and ADD NOTES to the pictures. As you are scrolling through your pictures, find ones that spark a specific memory or fun moment in time. Those pictures are going to be your starting point. Then don’t forget to write down some notes about that moment and add them to the book. Alice’s biggest regret after decades of scrapbooking is that she wishes she took more notes! So start your scrapbooking with the intention of telling stories through the pictures, and don’t forget to add some simple yet valuable notes of what you felt in the moment, or what happened at that time that made you pick this picture.
“Have you ever looked at old photos from your family and wondered what was happening, maybe a picture of your mom or your grandma, and you don't have the details from it. And maybe you didn't have somebody there that you could just ask but you're looking at this old photo? And you think, Gosh, I'd love to know where they are or what they're doing or why somebody took that picture? Or why are they all laughing right here?“ - Alice
“You look at these old pictures and you don't know the details. My job as a scrapbooker is to add the details that you can't see in that picture. And so even if I had a plain notebook, and I stuck a picture on there, and then I told the story of what happened right before or the reason I wanted to take that picture. To me. That's scrapbooking. It doesn't have to have the stickers and the embellishments and the mixed media and all of the fancy things. Those things are nice. They're super fun. But when it comes down to the basics, it's bringing that story so that you have that memory recorded. And I always have to take myself back to that.” -Alice
How To Scrapbook Your Adventures
Alice highly recommends bringing along a traveler's notebook for taking notes, you can even scrapbook on the go while traveling, or on vacation (Alice brings a mini portable printer with her!). The technology out there today for crafting on the go is truly impressive, even the Cricut Joy is a fun tool you can bring to make your pages pop :).
When you’re traveling you can use your notebook as the scrapbook and leave space for pictures once you get them developed. This is something I am going to try to start doing for my trips because I can never seem to journal consistently, but if I’m just captioning pictures, then I feel like that is a much more do-able and less overwhelming task that will make the photo album so much more valuable in the future.
Alice recommends this local small business: https://rockyournotebook.com/
For more options, you can check here! https://www.etsy.com/market/travelers_notebook
Your trips are also a great way to start scrapbooking, Alice recommends not starting with a big life event (like a wedding). Start small and simple, and have fun with it!
How Do you Theme A Scrapbook?
Don’t go chronologically, it can get overwhelming and you can easily feel like you will never catch up. There is a system we talk about in the conversation that was introduced by a
Stacy Julian. She talks about creating scrapbooks around themes.
“And so I would make a scrapbook about my son, I would make a scrapbook about our family, I would make a scrapbook about our travel, I would make a scrapbook about my other son and one for myself. And once I started theme, scrapbooking, it really helped me feel like there was no pressure because I could make any page that I wanted, whether it was from something recent or something old. And I knew where to put it, it would go into that book. If it was a page specifically about my son, it would go into his book, if it was a page about our family would go into that book. And that took a lot of pressure off.” -Alice
Thank you to anybody who has promoted the podcast. Podcasts grow the most through word of mouth. So if you have spread the word for me about my podcast, and have shared it with a friend, thank you so much, that is the best thing that you can do.
What Size Scrapbook Should I Choose?
“My preferred size is 12. By 12. It's kind of where I started. It's also the size of the scrapbook paper. So if you've ever been into a store that sells scrapbook paper, it's usually 12 inches by 12 inches. And that just became the size that I'm really comfortable building in. That being said, I dabbled in almost everything mini albums, eight and a half by 11. So that is a regular book size. There are lots of fun sizes that have come out in the past few years, six by 12, nine by 12. And lots of smaller books like the traveler's notebooks, and I love I really do love the traveler's notebook size, they're very small, you stick them in your, into your purse or into your bag, and you can just take it to go. And then if you're, you know, waiting around somewhere, you know, you get stuck at a piano lesson and you're sitting in the car waiting for your kids to do their piano lesson, you have that book and you can put a few little notes in it. And that's been a really good thing to have. For me is options. Okay, so I tend to do most of my scrapbooking 12 by 12. But when we travel, I do the traveler's notebooks. And I always have a notebook with me.”
How Can I Join A Scrapbooking Community?
Where can I find a good scrapbooking community to help form some relationships with like-minded crafters and to also feel a sense of accountability?
You can join the scrap happy community
“Our community, the scrap happy we call us a family because we kind of get to know each other. And we do different classes every month. So we have a class, sometimes two classes. We have different sessions where we hang out, we have different challenges that we do throughout the year. One of the big challenges that we do three times a year is called LOAD where we scrap a “lay-out-a-day”, for a whole month. A layout is one scrapbook page.
“We started a big event online called the scrap smarter experience where I brought in 10 Different teachers and a keynote speaker. And we did this big live virtual event. And we open it up to other people to come and join us. And it was such a hit. We did the first one in 2020. We did two last year, and I have the next one coming up in January. And it's so exciting because you bring in these teachers, and sometimes it's somebody that's really big and famous in scrapbooking." -Alice
Limited Time Holiday Deal
Visit https://sales.scraphappy.org/christmas/ With the Code: MYGIFT
Sign up for this online course and in December and you'll get daily reminders of the special moments you need to photograph and capture.
Then, on January 1, after the chaos (and fun) of Christmas is over we will start the scrapping process. 25 Days to a Christmas you won't forget.
Here's what this course includes:
In December you'll receive:
Daily email prompts with your mission of the Christmas moment you need to capture and a link to the daily class page.
Daily class page will contain more information about your daily mission, there may be alternate ideas and ways to interpret the prompt as well as a link to more detailed ideas about journaling and photography for this prompt.
Daily Tips to keep you on track and be sure you are ready to scrapbook your memories in January.
Organization:
This will help you plan your Christmas scrapbooking in a way that is super simple and easy to carry out during the month of December.
You'll learn how to do the bare minimum so you can scrapbook your memories in January.
- A PDF Printable Checklist so you won't forget to take important photos.
In January you will receive:
Daily prompts for 25 days to start scrapbooking the memories! Access to all class information on a Master page so you will have access to everything you need conveniently in one place.
New in 2021! Updated prompts! Access to a new community to share your Christmas layouts!
Visit https://sales.scraphappy.org/christmas/ With the Code: MYGIFT
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