Pocket Scrapping Out of Order
Hey all Polly Jewelle here! Today I want to share a little about my history of scrapbooking and how I chose to become a person who scraps out of order.
Many years ago when I was a teenager I got my first taste of scrapbooking. My mom, sister, and I got swept up in the popular trend of scrapbooking. We spent quite a bit of time together organizing our supplies, taking pictures or making layouts. As I grew older my mom and sister ran out of time to scrapbook, but I kept up with my hobby. Over the years I checked out books about scrapbooking from the library, because the internet wasn’t available yet. These books were my sources of inspiration. While perusing the pages in those books, I learned of a popular trend in scrapbooking know as “being current”. In other words you were only scrapping things that recently happened because you had scrapped everything else in your past. I liked the idea but didn’t know how to go about doing that so I pushed the thought aside and kept doing my own thing. My own thing was to pick out some pictures that meant something to me and scrap a page about it. Being a teenager that included sleepovers with friends, days at amusements parks, choral concerts I was in, etc. I never scrapped them in order I just picked and chose what I felt like scrapping at the time.
Fast forward quite a few years to 2008. That was the year I found digital scrapbooking. I quickly fell in love with digital scrapbooking and dove in. I was intrigued to find that the trend of “being current” was a part of the digi coummunity too. Many scrappers were current, but that still just didn’t work for me. Why put pressure on myself to be caught up? I enjoyed the process of scrapping and I enjoyed all the pages I created. Yes my scrapbooks had gaps in them but I was okay with that. I quite frequently reminded myself that if I chipped away slowly at recording my life through scrapbooking I would have scrapbooks that displayed overall what my life was about.
A few more years passed and then in 2011 I heard about this crazy thing called pocket scrapbooking. I actually scoffed at the idea when I first saw it. I didn’t like the way the layouts looked and I didn’t like the idea of having to always be “current” with your scrapbooking. But wouldn’t you know it pocket scrapbooking grew on me and I decided for 2012 that I was going to attempt this new project. I started off the year miserably behind. I felt awful about it, but I was determined not to give up. That year I created a total of four pocket pages. 2013 approached and I vowed to myself that this would be the year I accomplished my goal of having a beautiful scrapbook full of pocket pages. Yet again the year started off miserably, and I began to think this project just wasn’t for me. Then one day as I was doing a regular scrapbook page an idea hit me. What if I scrapped my pocket pages out of order just like my regular scrapbook pages?
I know that idea isn’t completely novel, but to me it was. Suddenly the pressure to “be current” was gone, and pocket scrapping had become joyful for me again! All it took was for me take a deep breath and be okay with what I was getting accomplished. Guess what? I don’t have a complete book of pocket pages detailing each week of the year, but I do have a selection of pocket pages that have details about our every day lives. These pages are priceless to me because they fill in a lot of the gaps in my scrapbooking albums. They provide small details that I might have not included on a 12 x 12 page, but are definitely worthwhile remembering.
In the coming months I plan to share ways of how I have streamlined my process of pocket scrapping out of order. Hopefully this will encourage more of you to give pocket scrapping a try and realize how fun these type of pages can be! So tell me, are you a pocket scrapper who has to be “current” or do you scrap out of order? Obviously I would love to be a “current” scrapper, but just can’t do that, so I scrap out of order. Leave a comment below about how you pocket scrap and lets discuss!
