Somewhere along the way from learning there is this amazing hobby called scrapbooking, to actually calling yourself a scrapbooker, a lot of people pick up the idea that they must journal, and it must be deep and profound.
While pages with that type of journaling are a great way to provide context and emotion to your scrapbooks, not every page needs that kind of thought and energy.
Another implied rule that scrapbookers pick up along the way is that they must use their handwriting (and it must be beautiful) or they must have gorgeously designed computer generated journaling.
Again, while those things are nice, they are not must-haves in order to create wonderful scrapbook pages.
What do you need to have a scrapbook page?
Just words and pictures.
In other words, keep it simple!
Case in point: this little album I created about myself as a 10-year-old, thereabouts.
To start off, I looked through the photos I had, and jotted down any memory the photos triggered. These were not deep, meaningful thoughts, but simple “what’s in the photos and why should anyone care” recollections.
I used a font that appealed to me at the time, and created little blocks of text. Oh, and in case you were wondering about my opinion regarding “good” fonts, if you want to use comic sans, or papyrus, or ariel, or any other font that you love but that font geeks love to hate, use it! The only time you should worry about whether the font you are using is cool and hip is if you are doing graphic design. You’re making a scrapbook! Make it to please yourself, not the arbitrators of fashion. The only caveat? Make sure the font you choose is easy to read.
Don’t feel like you have to tell every story inspired by your photos, but do share things that make you laugh, or smile, or sigh. Include details about things that have changed, and things that have stayed the same.
Journaling doesn’t have to be hard. Keep it short and sweet, and you’ll have a scrapbook to cherish.
If you want to see the full album, you can find it in my Flickr gallery here.