The Simplify Your New Year free mini course from Simple Scrapper offers a guided path towards memory keeping that feels joyful and easy.
If there is one concept that I talk about as much as celebrating victories, it’s understanding the nuances of why you scrapbook. They’re both that important to simple scrapbooking.
When you can see how memory keeping is weaved throughout – and deeply impacts – your life, it becomes easier to make time for it.
This next step in your journey pushes this concept even further. Armed with wisdom about your successes, I’d like to invite you to take a bold leap for your memories.
I want you to choose joy over guilt.
I want you to choose fun over obligation.
I want you to proudly shout “This is important to me!” and really believe it.
I want you to commit yourself to memory keeping once more, with feeling.
Here’s how to do that:
It’s easy to feel excited about scrapbooking when you’re among peers online. It’s often another thing to carry that enthusiasm offline – and maintain it all year long.
It turns out there’s this little thing we do that contributes to this challenge. We diminish our hobby.
This hobby, this craft, that we adore… we minimize it to our families and our friends. We know they don’t always get it, so we keep our passion bottled up. But, all this does is drag us down.
Instead of diminishing, we should be elevating. We should be openly declaring why combining words with photos means so darn much.
When more people understand the joy of scrapbooking, especially your people, it becomes easier to take the time.
When you commit with joy, your entire year opens wide to the full spectrum of pleasurable possibilities.
Leave a comment sharing one way you can add more joy to your scrapbooking in the coming year.
I think my joy is going to revolve around photos this year.
I’m going to:
– Let myself pause shooting and start showing my family the photos I’m taking on the back of the camera – they seem to like that!
– Take more photos in public even though I feel reaaaallllly self-conscious.
– Take more environmental shots rather than close ups (something I’ve seen Ali Edwards and Noell Hyman talking about lately) even if some ugly stuff gets into the shot – I need more context in my scrapbooks
– Let myself run upstairs at the end of the day and print that day’s photos if I’m excited about them, instead of forcing myself to batch them.
– Spend extra time editing and/or reprinting photos if it helps get the look I want.
– Scrap event photos or glamor shots with just captions – it’s nice to just have them in the scrapbook even if I’m not ready to tell a deep story right away.
I love how you’ve identified photos as a key personal motivator. This sounds awesome!
I am going to embrace how I scrapbook and not feel inadequate in comparing it to others that I deem as better at it than I am. I am going to continue to learn how to not overcomplicate things and just “go with” my unique style of scrapbooking. That is one thing that slows down my process; trying to “keep up” with trends and not going with what I know. I also find more joy in reflecting and writing the stories of my life. As my family has grown up and I have more time to think about our lives; traditions and stories that have brought us to who we are today.
The more you focus on the stories, the easier it will be to end the cycle of comparison. Great approach!
I am going to accept that we are making memories RIGHT NOW. Despite being tired with work, kids, social lives, school, homework, etc., life is wonderful! We are making memories NOW. Documenting them now – even if in some small way a few times a week – will make me happy. And I will be even more happy down the road when I have a better memory of these times … because I document life. 🙂
Love this. What an important reminder!
Joy – that’s why I wanted to do the December daily album. I’ve wanted to for several years now, and I just decided to do it. I have been transitioning over the past few years as an empty nester; but since we do most of the traveling, I don’t decorate as much, cook, or even shop the same way that I used to. ( All the things that used to bring me “great joy” over the holidays.) And I must say it has taken some of the joy out of the holidays for me – I thought that if I did a December daily album, I could get some of that joy back – by just documenting the smaller “joyful moments” of the season I could gain momentum and let that joy grow and find new ways of enjoying the holidays. So far it seems to be working.
I know that joy is always within reach, all I have to do is touch it…I think that I find joy in taking pictures of little moments, odd moments, things that just “touch” me…and then try to capture that moment which brought me joy. I think scrapping that way will last at least through mine and maybe through the g-kids generation. How much joy I would have looking over their little shoulders and explain why Grams took that picture…(sorry for waxing poetic). So, I think I am sure how I want to approach scrapbooking in 2015.
SO YES!! >> “I know that joy is always within reach, all I have to do is touch it.”
I always feel joy when I am learning and/or trying a new technique. I have so many “stashed” classes that I haven’t really explored yet. In 2014, I want to take the time to learn new scrapbooking skills.