Journaling on Your Scrapbooking Pages
Almost all scrapbooks are a combination of words and images. Images are terrific because they bring to mind so many associations. They trigger memories. But recording thoughts and feelings about those memories is what journaling is all about.
For some, that effort will be a simple recording of the events of the day or occasion: who came to the Christmas dinner, who brought what presents to a baby shower. Those words, even when plain, do more than just record the facts, though. They themselves will trigger memories later on down the road.
But many will want to go beyond the simple facts surrounding the images in a scrapbook. They will want right away to go to the personal meaning of those images and events. Anyone who does is in good company. Journaling is much the same as keeping a diary and that has been done by some of the world’s finest writers for centuries.
But don’t be intimidated. Your journal doesn’t have to be a world-class literary effort. After all, it’s for you and maybe a close friend or loved one. It only has to be what you want to put down and the way you want to say it.
You’ll find that over time your thoughts will flow more easily than they do at first. Like anything, writing is a skill that comes more easily with practice. The first day you may struggle to come up with anything beyond the bare facts. But before long, you’ll find your words flowing out to capture just what you want to say.
To help prompt your journaling you can look to any number of sources of inspiration. A cherished novel, a personal poem, a great song, a moving movie…. It could be anything. A simple search online will allow you to find a thousand quotes in a few seconds. Some of them will express just the sentiment you were reaching for. Use them freely.
Sometimes you’re in the mood to journal and sometimes you’re not. But whenever you can, take that passionate thought you just can’t hold back and put it down as soon as possible. That will make your scrapbook journaling so much easier because you’ll be on fire to get your words on paper. Use that emotion to drive your pen.
Don’t feel that you need to be limited to writing in formal sentences and paragraphs on one part of the page. It’s your scrapbook and your journal. Write around the edges. Start in the middle or at the bottom. Write upside down, if you want!
You can tell a story associated with the images on the page, real or invented. You can write a poem just for you. You can say how happy you were or how angry. Read what you wrote later and add to it, cross it out, paste a photo over it, or tear the page out and burn it. Or, share it with all your friends. It’s your journal and you can do whatever you want.
