Scrapbooking---Memories, Creativity, and Family bonding...

By:Jana J.

Scrapbooking is a great way to save photos and memorabilia that a person collects throughout their life. I've been saving memorabilia ever since I could move, and as a child I helped my Mom put greeting cards and other paper items I wanted to save into scrapbooks we purchased at the old "Five and Dime" store. As I grew older, and started taking photographs, I would place them into photo albums, with labels next to the photos as captions, telling who, what and when they were taken. I always was looking for a better way to save these items, knowig that the albums weren't the safest things to use.

As I learned more about the life and business of being an artist, I learned about using archival materials for the artwork I was producing. This also taught me that the ways I'd been saving my photos and other memorabilia was not the best. I was constantly searching for the "right way" to take care of these things, and was so thrilled to discover the products I now use today. I'm a real packrat when it comes to saving things---I have Christmas cards from when we first married, the wedding cards we received, ticket stubs from the movie theater, programs from dance, theater, and other productions we've seen, along with brochures and maps from vacations. Also being an avid photographer, I've been shooting photographs of our lives that help us relive all the things we've been a part of. These all are saved and now scrapbooked to help us enjoy those past memories, and for our future family members to learn about us and what we loved, and lived like.

Scrapbooking has become a wonderful means to catagorize our life, and save the favorite paper things we've collected, and it's become a great creative outlet along with my other artistic ventures. It has become something I love, and look forward to doing, and something my family truly appreciates---something artistic we get to keep and save for us! It is an important way to show how we've all grown, and changed---usually for the better, but also it helps show some of the trials of life we've been a part of.

Ever since I've discovered the wide world of scrapbooking as we now know it, I've become more knowlegeable about the products out there by reading information on the internet---this site in particular---and through magazines and from the people that sell scrapbooking products. I've created a space in my home devoted to working on scrapbooks, I spend countless hours reading the dMarie bulletin board, and I see layouts, and photo opportunities that I never would have thought of before. My life has changed for the better in a lot of ways since discovering this way of scrapbooking.

There are some negatives of course---the time spent perusing the internet is often time I "should" be doing other things. But I figure it all balances out in the end, and what is most important is how you and your family can benefit from all this knowledge, and how you can use it to make the world a better place one family at a time.

Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: Why Do I Love Scrapbooking, by shelia B.