Scrapjournaling & Creative Bookmaking - A New Class

A page from one of my Scrapjournals - a letter from a man I'll never forget

When I am interviewing creative people, one of the questions I often ask is,"What was the first project you remember doing that ignited that spark in you and made you think . . . I want more of this?"  Mine was using wrapping paper scraps that I found in a closet to cover a box I was creating for a babysitter that I had not met.  I was sure, positive, certain that when she saw it, she would have dizzying disbelief at its magnificence.

An agenda of sorts that I made using brown paper bags

But that sort of ended my creativity for a long time.  You see, I am the youngest of 6, and every single one of my siblings is MAD, WICKED creatively blessed.  They were the artists, not me, so I stuck to writing.  Thank the Lord.

Using a photo and more scraps to capture a moment in time

I tried daily journaling, only to fail over and over again at the daily part while I was growing up.  When I tried to scrapbook, it was hard for me to organize my creativity around a systematic, chronological order.  For example, doing the Baby's 1st Year album stumped my creativity, since it was more about putting everything in sequence, then about being creative.  I would spend more time trying to get the sequence perfect then working on the book itself. 

I wrote pages, added half pages and added strange things I could not let go of.

I started to make my own books that were completely free-form. Some were awful.  But I kept going.  I experimented with types of bookmaking, even using the sides of beer cartons as my book covers or some old UPS box. I bought nothing.  I used whatever was in the house and anything in my pile of scraps was fair game - the bookmark my mom gave me attached to a birthday card, an old button of my grandmother's, a feather that Lucy and I found in Colorado.  I started to look at my book as an artist's sketchbook that could include journaling, a photo, a painted page that was going to be the inspiration for the kids new bathroom.  It became my idea book, record of my life and journal all rolled into one.  I want to bring the JOY back to recording your life.

Join me next year for my class, Scrapjournaling & Creative Bookmaking,  Saturday, February 7th and Saturday, April 4th.

The only tool you'll need is your imagination & your random collected bits.