This past week I had a boost of productivity. I scrapped three whole pages. For some, that’s all in a day’s work and for others it calls for high fives and “are you feeling ok?”
For better or worse, guilt is a pervasive feeling in scrapbooking. Guilt can stifle as much as it motivates as we struggle with a little voice that begs us to do more.
We try to let go of the nagging feeling, to accept it or to let it push us forward. It leads us to ask, however, how much scrapbooking is enough?
Three reasons to scrap more
- Leave more of your story behind for future generations
- Refine your skills and try new techniques with each page
- Derive more pleasure from the creative process and the social response
Three reasons to scrap less
- Scrapping takes time away from making memories
- Not every photo is critical for documenting your life
- You’ll be forced to tell more complex stories on a page
Enough is a highly personal decision, but can we throw this on the table? There is probably a healthy range for enough.
To me, enough is a delicate balance between pure enjoyment of the hobby and satisfaction in documenting our family’s story. You’ll know the sweet spot when ideas come quickly and scrapping doesn’t feel like work.
What is enough for you? How do you recognize your happy point?
Enough is enjoy, I mean, I know I have to stop scrapping when I’m no longer enjoying it because either I’m thinking I should be doing something else, or I’m feeling forced to do it.
When I’ve done too many pages to fit in a shutterfly album!!
I do an average of 23 to 30 layouts per month. I have alot of photos and enjoy trying out new kits. I am on a CT team, but less than 35% of my layouts are CT related. Some would probably say that I scrap too much. I don’t scrap when I am feeling overwhelmed.
Enough is when I start to agonize over design elements and embellishment decisions. When I’m enjoying myself I ‘glue & go’ and don’t really worry about putting the right embellishment in the exact right place on the perfect patterned paper, etc. I just enjoy playing. Once I start noticing I’m starting to get caught up in the nitty gritty details I stop and take a break -sometimes a few minutes, hours or even days. Then, when I go back to scrapbooking I feel refreshed and can play once again!
Guilt in scrapbooking? I don’t understand this – if it’s guilt about not scrapping enough. I know everybody likes to emphasize the “importance” of memory keeping and all, but for me it really comes down to this: I make scrapbook pages because it is fun.
Sometimes I feel guilty when I feel like I have spent too much money, or I bought kits and then didn’t really use them. But mostly any “guilty” part is more to do with the online addiction part of this hobby – constantly checking email and my reader, wondering if people like my layout and did they leave comments? Any new posts going in the forum? When you’ve become addicted to those little rushes you get, than that’s when it is TOO much. And yes, this is an issue for me right now.
I feel a lot of guilt over not scrapping enough. For a long time, I was able to keep current, because I don’t really do every day pages. I would go through a frenzy of scrapping an event and then be done. Then I didn’t do anything for awhile and got months and months behind. I’m currently almost done with 2009, but other than being done with 2009, I have no desire to actually do anything about it.
And the thing with the scrapping guilt is that it is preventing me from taking more pictures. Typically, unless we have a big trip(then we are talking at least triple), I average around 100 pictures a month of just randomness. Since I know that I haven’t done anything in months, I’m starting to question the need to take the pictures. We went to Chicago and Indy both last week and in Chicago, I took the camera with me but never got it out of the car. I didn’t even bother with taking it to Indy. It is sort of like “I’m not going to do anything with these so why bother hauling the camera around”
Hopefully, I’ll be able to find some happy medium some day but for the time being, scrapping just feels like another obligation. 🙁
So sad that you feel that way Carrie. I just print 4×6 and slip into a album to stay “up to date” I scrap the pages I want to and challenge myself to finish things eg bub’s first year monthly page. But only the things I KNOW I really want to do.
For me, I think it will never be enough. I have so much to do…. I craft all kinds of things in my life so everything will be beautiful in my album.
I have so many photos so I hope I will be able to finish a few albums…
Everything depend on my health, if I feel good, scrapboking will continue to florish in my albums….