MOC9 - January 2 - Why I Scrap
962 words
Photo Pockets No. 1 by One Little Bird
Lemon Drop by One Little Bird
This is my 564th layout at TLP since the new gallery etc years ago. That is the reason behind my number.
Journaling reads: When I was a young girl, I always looked forward to spending the night with my Grammy. One of the many traditions, was looking at her scrapbooks. She had memory books that her mother, an artist, made in the 1890s - 1920s. These were the ones bound in leather filled with black paper and golden photo corners. Because my Nana was an artist, she also added ornamentation by painting on the black paper with metallic paints and even painting the black and white photos to colorize them. It was absolutely wondrous and magical! This was a glimpse into the days before television and pants for women. It seemed they picnicked a lot and always dressed up!
My grandmother continued the memory keeping in similar books once she was a schoolgirl. She included newspaper clippings from where she grew up in Whittier, California. She had ads from her father's "haberdashery" shop, Hill's Clothiers. She had numerous social mentions about which whom she went to dances or parts in plays etc. It was exciting and foreign to me. I loved hearing her stories about the friends in her photos and about their fun times like the "ditch day" where they drove to Balboa Island and skipped high school to frolic the beach all day in swimming suits of their time. It was fun to see her as a teenager and that she had been mischievous at times! I loved seeing her crushes and seeing that there were photos where she scratched her face out because she thought them unflattering. She was glamorous and so beautiful, so it was hard to imagine!
She had a photo book of her and my grandpa's courtship and life. It started "There once was a little girl named Virginia and a little boy named Howard" along with their baby photos... it progressed to a very glamorous photo taken about 1939 before she left work at I. Magnin department store in Los Angeles for her first date with him. She was wearing a gorgeous dress with feather trim on the sleeves! I poured over these books. There was one for each of her four children - filled with family vacations, birthday parties, holidays, family pets, ever shifting hem lines and home decor. She also had one for me, her first grandchild, along with a smaller "Grandma's Brag Book" which stayed on the coffee table rather within the closed cabinet below the coffee table.
Initially, I was too young to be trusted to handle the books carefully alone. It became our ritual to look back on these books. My Grammy said to me that I was the only one who ever really looked at and appreciated the books, and she would give them to me when she dies. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, which made the loss of Grammy even more traumatic. On the morning of our wedding, very memorably Dad and Kathy gave me the album from her high school days. I sobbed! The next day at our brunch, Auntie Lyn gave me a professional reproduction of Grammy's married life scrap book., which was the best present she could have ever given me!
I was bitten by the scrap book bug at about 5 years old. I knew the history of my life may be as dear someday to my granddaughter as my Grammy's and Nana's books were to me. When I was about 11-12 years old, I started a big scrap book on paper pages like hers. It was more mementos and few photos, but I managed to save a lot of things. Through high school I kept photo albums, but then in 1989 I was introduced to Creative Memories by Kathy and then I was hooked on the scrap book again. I was fully keeping memories on paper until 2005 when AJ was in Kindergarten a quilting friend showed me her interest into digital. At first, I thought "Ew, it's so unsatisfyingly flat." It's doomed to lack depth or the tactile feel of a real scrap book, which is true logically. However, after seeing some more talented artists working with layers and realistic shadows, I thought it held more promise, if only to clear off my dining room table for more than a dinner party! I liked that it was not cluttering my house or tempting my young children. After learning a lot, today I would never go back to the boring solid papers and cropped photos of Creative Memories, I love that my photos are not destroyed, and I can show the interested home decor and changing styles the way my grandmother did. I still love to look back on my own pages capturing the times in our children's lives, our own marriage, our travels and life. I scrap because scrapbooks share life with the next generation, act as therapy guiding us through emotions, and capture all of our joyful memories for our own pleasure!
A surprising side benefit of my scrapbooking experience is the many friendships I've forged with like-minded women - amazing artists from all over the world. They've served as inspiration, instructors, and support systems during difficult times. In 2005, I never would have believed that I would have ever met or shared personal information with someone met online. To date I have met scrap friends on four occasions, each time was a pleasure. Once was a girl's weekend in Michigan City where I met five of my online friends. Truth is from the gallery over the years we might know more about each other's lives than we know of people in person. We've watched our kids grow up, seen all the vacation photos, trips to Disney, birthdays and anniversaries. How many friends are so eager to see every photo? We have community - a really nice perk!
