Scrapbooking

creating a self portrait

April 26, 2011 By Mrs. Gleason

I’m often asked: Why Do You Scrapbook? And while there are 57854 reasons why, in the spirit of simplicity I usually say something like “I think it’s important to preserve our story”. Which is true, of course. But there is so much more to it for me. And one of those “so much more”s has a lot to do with this:

Recently I was thinking about my grandmother. This month marks the anniversary of her going Home and it is the month of her birthday, so as it happens every year around this time, everything about her was fresh in my mind. Life has a funny way of making people and moments vivid again for us around holidays and anniversaries and milestones doesn’t it?

So I was thinking about the way she laughed..such a beautifully vibrant laugh for such a small woman. I was thinking about how much she loved natural things and playing with flowers and digging in the dirt. I was thinking about how I never once (not ONCE) saw her look angry or sound angry. I was thinking about how much she loved my grandpa. And politics. And I was thinking about how she made everyone smile. She was one of those people who epitomized those words Tom Hanks used to describe his late wife in the movie “Sleepless in Seattle”: “She made everything beautiful”. And that was her story. As I knew it. It is her story, written by me.

And sometimes I wonder what was her story…written by HER? I ~~imagine~~ know it would reinforce the portrait I have of her in my mind and the one my mother has painted and my grandpa. But I’d love to know…how did she feel when she first became a mother? What were her favorite songs and books and what are her most vivid memories? What was it like to grow up in her shoes?

I am fortunate to have been given a glimpse of all of this. Shortly after she passed, as we were going through her things, we came across a diary of hers from long ago. What a treasure it was. And there we were, the whole family, gathered around the dining room table reading from age-stained pages. And her voice shone through so beautifully. And it was….nothing less than a gift to all of us. Because as much as we all knew her, this was her in her own voice.

So I was thinking of this the other day and remembering how it felt that day around the table learning more about this woman we so loved. And I was thinking about how much MORE I would love to know. And I was thinking about my own story. Am I telling it? Am I represented in the pages of my scrapbooking? Is my story there? Will my loved ones, gathered around a table one day, hear my voice?

Are you creating a self portrait?

{grow with love: letters} Day Fifteen

April 20, 2011 By Mrs. Gleason

Happy Wednesday! I’m so happy to present Day Fifteen of the Grow With Love: Letters project. This month has us putting pen to paper about “beginnings“. And this week’s prompt calls for us to get a little reflective and retrospective as we consider how a “beginning” of a relationship has evolved over time.

When I think of the “why” for my love of scrapbooking and storytelling, so often my thoughts land squarely on: relationships. As I am documenting our days, really what I am doing is telling the story of our interactions: the conversations, the events, and the moments shared *together* with those I love. Or I am gushing about or reflecting on the people I share my life with…and at the core of all of this is a portrait of my relationships.

Usually I am recording memories as they happen, preserving snapshots and details and connections in little windows of time. One day, taken together, they will reveal an entire history and journey of our relationships. But generally, as it’s unfolding in my storytelling day by day, the evolution of the relationships isn’t immediately obvious. And so this week’s prompt was refreshing for me. It inspired me to take some time to consider the entire history of a relationship and give the “sum up” as I reflected on how that relationship has evolved over time. And I’m really pleased to have scrapped it!

I was inspired to scrap about my relationship with my sister. This is a relationship that has, regretfully, not been documented in my scrapbooks as often as I would like. A huge part of that is the geographical divide between us. Living at opposite ends of the country makes it difficult to make memories together like we once did. And so that is another reason I really appreciated this prompt — I could focus on documenting a relationship that means so very much to me and has deep and long history, but fewer “today” moments than I would like.

I used goodies from the amazing new grab bag from Fruit LoOp Sally at Ninth and Bloom.

Coila was inspired to reflect upon her relationship with her husband:

And Lex was inspired to scrap the evolution of her relationship with her sister:

And Nicole was also inspired to reflect on her sister relationships:

As I was seeing the beautiful pages for this prompt I realized that several of us were led to scrap about our sibling relationships! What relationship’s story do you feel inspired to share?

Hope this prompt speaks to you today too! Happy Scrapping!

——————————————————————————————————————————

Grow With Love is a story-centric scrapbooking and journaling project. We hope it will inspire you to document your stories in a meaningful way that helps you live life more meaningfully too. Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time. You can access the complete Grow With Love archive and hop in to any past Grow With Love project or follow along with the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday.

Grow With Love Archive

today i…

April 19, 2011 By Mrs. Gleason

So. I love to play with paper. I love neutral krafty papers. I love pretty patterned papers. I love papers with beautiful color palettes. I love papers with realistic textures. I love papers that make you want to pet them even if they are digital. I love layering papers. I love cutting papers. I love using papers in fun shapes. I love using papers to frame photos, to blend photos, to mask photos, to create alphas, to use as mats.

And this love of paper probably goes a long long way in explaining just why I love Liz of Paislee Press so much (beyond the fact that she is completely made of awesome). She creates gorgeous papers that make my paper-loving heart go all a-twitter. She’s also a storyteller at heart I find myself effortlessly inspired by her beautiful work. So needless to say, when I laid eyes on Liz’s newest release (landing in her store on 20 April) I was smitten all over again.

I was instantly inspired to use the beautiful papers in Sorriso to create a design that framed and anchored this photograph of Bugga. I really wanted to create a balance of letting the photo AND the papers shine without one overpowering the other. And Liz made it easy by offering a cheerful and vintage-y palette and both big patterned papers and smaller patterned papers, as well as beautiful neutral papers.

And I knew this kit would really afford itself beautifully to my latest album that showcases a series of “todays” over time. I am scrapping a page every month or so that simply captures the beauty of one moment and then includes a stream of thoughts and feelings I have on that day. So this is “today i…” for 4.18.2011. In the end, these pages will be compiled together into an album mosaic of moments that will reveal the bigger picture and let my daughter and family see themselves and me through my eyes over time. It’s a fun and simple way to document the everydays and see a progression of our story.

So yeah. Liz has inspired me to create another page that helps me tell our story. And I love her for it.

For another peek at Sorriso inspiration that will no doubt WOW you, please wander over to Therese’s blog {HERE}. Therese is a dear inspiration to me and has such a beautiful and restrained voice in her storytelling. I think you’ll be taken in by her beautiful photographs and pages too!

Planting Roots in the Story

April 19, 2011 By Mrs. Gleason

I suppose I’ve always had a love affair with The Story. Although I didn’t always realize that’s just what it was. At least that’s not what I called it. I knew I loved to write. I knew I loved all the things that stories are made of: the characters and character development, the details of the moments, the plot, the tapestry of images and words and art. I knew I liked to collect memories. They lived in shoe boxes of stuff and in my photo albums and in my journals.

But it wasn’t until I started to document the characters and the details and the events in my own life, through photographs and through scrapbooking and through journaling, that I realized what I was really doing was: storytelling. Not in a fictional sense of the word, and not in a “sit right back and you’ll hear a tale” kind of way, or even in a “when I was a young gal, we had to walk uphill (both ways!) in the snow with no shoes” kind of way. This storytelling isn’t about tall tales or embellishments, it’s not about capturing, keeping or entertaining an audience.

It’s about documenting, about recording, about saying “I was here”, it’s about taking stock in life, it’s about celebrating the every day, it’s about finding your voice and getting to know yourself better, it’s about writing love letters to those I care about, it’s about keeping a family history, writing biographies and an autobiography, and it’s about building a legacy. It’s about things that matter. Not to the world. Not to Tom, Dick or Harry or Lady Gaga. Not to anyone else but those who matter to me. The ones I love, the ones I hope to teach and to learn from, the ones I share myself and my life with. I am recording our stories. And in the process, I am *writing* my own.

Anyway…all that is to say, I have a spark for telling my story and I feel there is a value in documenting our days that pours out beyond the page and into our lives. And I hope that this site will emerge as a source of inspiration and encouragement for anyone who finds themselves wanting to tell their own stories, whether they have a “pull” like I do, or if they feel like they don’t know where to start. I hope that, together, we can tell record our memories and document our days in a more meaningful way by planting our roots in the story.

{grow with love: letters} Day Fourteen

April 13, 2011 By Mrs. Gleason

Happy Wednesday! I’m happy to be sharing today’s prompt from Grow With Love: Letters. This month we are considering the stories of beginnings. In Day Thirteen we let ourselves get reflective in our remembering and we captured the feelings that come with the beginning of a new season of life (married life, parenthood, stepping in to the world on your own for the first time..). Today we will build upon that reflectiveness and the exciting energy of “begninning”:

This is what Crystal and I call an “act and scrap” prompt. These prompts are designed with the hope of encouraging you to let the story touch your life in a tangible way…to actually *write* your story, so to speak.

And there are so many possibilities for this prompt, so you can have fun with it! What little something (or big something) have you been thinking about beginning, but haven’t found the time or made the time for? What something New would you like to try? Try something new today.

Sara was inspired to share about a new lifestyle she is embarking on:

And Kelly documented her adventure in trying a new crafty project:

For more inspiration on scrapping the story of “trying something new” I encourage you to visit Peppermint and Christine as they document an entire year of New in a project called New 52. Each week they try something new to them and really embrace the journey of living life fully, trying new things and embracing change.

And be sure to visit next Wednesday for the next installment in the Letters series. We can’t wait to see your pages!

Happy New and Happy Scrapping!

——————————————————————————————————————————

Grow With Love is a story-centric scrapbooking and journaling project. We hope it will inspire you to document your stories in a meaningful way that helps you live life more meaningfully too. Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time. You can access the complete Grow With Love archive and hop in to the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday.

{grow with love: letters} Day Thirteen

April 6, 2011 By Mrs. Gleason

Happy April! And welcome to the first Grow With Love: Letters post of this month!

If you’re just finding us here’s a smidge of backstory: “Grow With Love: Letters Edition” is a collaboration of templates and journaling prompts presented by Crystal Livesay and Sara Gleason and rooted in and inspired by letter writing as featured in the Artisan Notebook throughout 2011. We will really explore the beauty of letter writing in our scrapbooking through letters to loved ones, letters to ourselves, letters as words into the cosmos. Letters that help us set our hearts to paper, help us to get introspective, challenge us to bring words and thoughts to action in our days and letters that guide us to share the fun, the little moments, the every day. So far we have penned letters that reflect upon setting direction and setting compasses, loves and relationships, and gifts. This month’s project has us considering fresh beginnings.

We hope you will enjoy continuing in this scrapbooking and storytelling journey with us! Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time. You can access the complete Grow With Love archive and hop in to the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday. The schedule for April is as follows, with all posts found right here on the Plant Your Story blog:

Week One: Wednesday 6 April – join Sara for Day Thirteen
Week Two: Wednesday 13 April – join Crystal with Day Fourteen
Week Three: Wednesday 20 April – join Sara with Day Fifteen
Week Four: Wednesday 27 April – join Crystal for Day Sixteen

Each day we will post a prompt and delve into it a bit more, sharing our own inspirations and pages and hopefully giving you a bit of a creative push for your own pages. We are thrilled to share in this adventure in scrapping and in storytelling with you!

So let’s get into April! April is a time when we feel the beginnings of change in the seasons. For many of us we are starting to feel the onset of Spring, for others we are feeling Summer’s end. With the arrival of sunnier days and warmer climes for Crystal and I, we began to reflect on beginnings. And how fun it is to look back and remember where things started. We grow so much in our lives in every area and as we move from season to season in our days, and it’s good to take a little time to pause and reflect. It’s good to to record where everything started and to reflect on our changes from the beginnings.

This month, we will reflect on the fresh beginnings, and the endings. We will take stock of the journey and our growth, how things have changed, what we have learned and what we have gained. There is a lot of story to be told when we go back to the beginning. And we are eager to do that this month.

Here is the prompt for today, Day Thirteen:

When you think of those moments of stepping in to fresh adventure, experiences, life seasons, what did you feel? Try to capture the essence of your fresh beginning in this page..be it through art journaling or pulling out a few “vintage” photographs, getting nostalgic and diving into your personal history, or reflecting on something new right in this moment.

Let’s take a peek at how the GWL Storytellers were inspired by this prompt. I really loved how each was inspired to reflect on different seasons in their lives:

Coila: