The Story of a Scrapbooker

By:Jessica G.

Scrapbooking fills my need for self-expression and provides an intensely personal and creative way for me to preserve and record history. I have always loved pictures. Being a professional picture framer I am always framing photos and memorabilia of some type or another all of these memories belonging to other people. But with Scrapbooking the keepsakes I create and memories I put into words are my own.

I call myself a "Scrapbooker," and refer to my art as "Scrapbooking," but it is so much more than that! Whether I'm creating a heritage layout for my great-grandparents wedding day to add to the pages of our families albums which go back to the late 1800's, or I'm working on a "Teletubbies" page for my dear daughter with pictures I took last week, I think of myself as an artist...with a twist. What I'm doing… what we are all doing...is creating our own family histories. You gotta love that!

To me the stickers, paper and die-cuts are essential, I see them as reflections of my personality…almost as important as the photos. Although there are two primary elements to memory albums (beyond the albums themselves)…the photos and the journaling. All albums must have these two things. The rest is up to the artist, I call an Historian. I'll keep on adding the patterned paper, stickers, die-cuts, and fancy lettering, it's what makes me happy.