Scrap Journaling! What a Concept.

Well isn't this a challenge, why on earth would anyone want to create a scrapbook page without a picture on it. Well why not. How about the school project you and your child slaved over for hours and all you have to show for it is a piece of paper that they hand you and with a proudly displayed A adorning the front of it. Oh yes those kindergarten years with all those wonderful paper projects that you just have to keep. Remember you don't have the pictures but you sure do have the memories. This sort of Scrapbooking, well as I call it Scrap Journaling is a great and wonderful way to incorporate those art projects and those memories that are in your memories but you don't have any pictures to tell show for them. I can see this going to a whole other area of scrapbooking for us Journaling nuts!

How about that spontaneous drive to the beach where you all got out of the car and waded through the waves of the water watched your children build the big sand castle. After hours of fun trying to keep them away from the sand so there clothes would dry off before they got back into the car. Now I know that everyone has moments like these. Everyone does. Now the question is: Just because you don't have the pictures to show for it, does that mean you waste the memories? Heck NO! Let’s turn those memories into one giant layout about the day!
Let’s not forget the About Me pages we need to make about ourselves. Most of us don't have too many pictures of our childhood. I know that each of you have some memories of those days that you would love to incorporate in your books if you just had the pictures! Don't let that stop you go and write your story.

So how do you do all this? Well take a moment and think about it. Use your imagination and yes your journaling powers!

Let’s take the beach trip. How about starting with some paper that you might be about the beach, sandcastles or better yet make your self a background. Keep motivating the project. How about some die-cuts of sand castles or maybe a paper piecing or two. Don't forget the sun and then there are those cute little shovels and pails. Or beach sandles! Jolees has tons of 3-D things you can pick out! Maybe some sticker or even some cute little brads. Keep thinking!How about some ribbon! Oh now we are getting there. So I can see the layout its all about the words on the center of the page. Maybe we have torn the edges of our computer or handwritten journaling and put a little ink around the edges.

Here is an example layout that I made because I wanted to remember the first day my youngest son went to Kindergarten. Its a good example of a reason to do a journal page.
As you can see I used a chalkboard paper and then embellished the page around my journaling. It was a pretty good story and I wanted to remember it. I do have a kindergaten picture I can put on it, but I decided to just leave it like it is. It was one of those days when there was not time to think and of course mom forgot her camera, but there was no reason we needed to forget the memories. So I jotted it down and told his first day of school story!



Hopefully you can realize that scrap journaling can be a great addition to your scrapbooks. If you have a series of photos you can incorporate one page of journaling to tell the entire story and then show the pictures. No matter how you see fit to use just words, go ahead and try it. Telling the story adds so much interest in your books and you will be amazed at how others just want to sit and look and read them.

Article by
Debbie Ruggles

Lets get the story straight!

Creating the perfect story!

Journaling goes right along with making that perfect scrapbooking page. I have said it a hundred times that if you don't identify the people, place, time and event, who the heck is going to know in a hundred years? It is so important to take the moment and keep it all together witht he perfect journaling about the page.Lets look at how you can accomplish some of this.You journaling needs to correspond with the photos.

Dates can be found in the corner of your photos, so be careful when cropping them. These are always a great way to put the date into your layouts. Remember if you need to put a date somewhere you can always use a date stamp. Love those things!

Remember to tell about the people in the layout. There are many ways to do this. If you don't want to plaster the names all over your layout try putting them in a hidden journaling box tucked under a photo mat. Or how about on a tag. There are many ways to add the names without cluttering your layout.As for the journaling the event.

There are some great ways to accomplish this.you can sit in front of a computer and whip off the journaling, or perhaps you can write something about each picture around the photo mat. Use sticker or titles to display the event. Cut out letters, or use letter stickers to give one word titles for events.

However you journal doesn't matter, you just need to do some on each layout. Think about all those old pictures we see in old albums. That is exactly just what they are, pictures in a old album.

It is always great to turn one of those old photos over and see names and dates written on the back. Now think about your scrapbooks, I know I hardly ever date anything on the back of the photos. So getting mine in a scrapbook with some good journaling keeps them in date and the memories preserved in my albums. Remember how important journaling is to your layouts. To me its just not a completed project until I see some on my layouts.

Article written by:Debbie Ruggles