April A to Z Challenge: S is for ...

S is for Scrapbooking!
    I have loved putting mementos in scrapbooks ever since I was a young girl. Matchbooks, napkins, movie notices and tickets, concert announcements, notes from friends...they all went into my scrapbook. Back in high school and college though, I kept photos in photo albums and scraps in scrapbooks. Later, I learned the fine art of mixing the two, and haven't looked back since.

    Back when I had a real J-O-B and lots more money to spend, I would set aside some of my paycheck for scrapbooking supplies--glue sticks, binders, page protectors, stickers, photo processing, and decorative elements. I never lost that desire to take scraps of my life and paste them in a book.

    Scrapbooking has become quite an industry with "scrapbook professionals" showing us how to do it correctly---where to place the photos for maximum punch, how to arrange elements so that colors "pop," and how to effectively journal the events being commemorated. I am no professional, and don't have an artistic eye like many scrappers. Ever since I got a digital camera, and because I no longer have the financial resources to spend money on the art, I have taken to creating video scrapbooks, complete with music. Hence, I am about seven years behind on scrapbooking my photos. Here are a few of my favorites that mean a lot to me.

Here's a two page 12x12 layout that I did, documenting the fact that I was constantly making Weston pose for pictures. I used labels from his new blue jeans for tags in the upper left and bottom right corner. On the upper left tag, I placed some denim-themed stickers spelling out the word "pose." I took actual belt loops from his outgrown jeans to use as accents in several places. Finally I typed out a poem that I had written as my journaling for the page. Here's what the poem says since it's hard to read here:

"Woe is me, I've got a scrapbooking mother,

Always being asked to pose in someplace or another.

Posin' with my lunchbox,

Posin' in the chair,

Posin' on the back wall--

Hey, there are wasps in there!

I'll probably be posin' until the day I die,

And then I'll still be posin'

For the great scrapbook in the sky."

     Another of my favorites involves children and bright yellow dandelions. I've always loved the vivid yellow of dandelions and regret that they have to be such lawn-wreckers. Every year, I'm drawn to take photos, hoping that somehow I can capture the beauty. 

I used my decorative scissors to cut out the grass and adhered some paper and vellum flowers. I found a poem online:

"Many times a dandelion is a weed in the green grassy sod.

But a dandelion is a flower divine in the hands of a child of God."

[no author listed, but was found on Provocraft.com]

 The next one is special to me because it's a picture of my late mother. She and my sister were models in a turn-of-the-century fashion show at a local museum. I was lucky to find some dimensional stickers that went along with the theme perfectly. I typed the title on vellum, which added a romantic flair.

    I enjoy keeping albums of photos, hoping that descendants will some day find them of value. The rare photos that I have of my ancestors are a treasure, and I am grateful to those people who have preserved them and made them available to me over the years.

Happy Birthday on April 23, to my late grandfather, born in 1896!

My mother is on the front right. [Eleven more children were still to come!]