Wednesday Whimsy

Today is my day!  According to the great list of Days, Dates, and Things to do for March put up by Lulu over at Lost Thoughts, today is International Scrapbook Industry Day.  It's a day to celebrate preserving your memories, traditionally or digitally, for years to come and all of the fabulous products that are available to help you do this.

For years, I was a Creative Memories scrapbooker.  I loved their products but the company fell on hard times and shifted gears somewhat to the Ahni & Zoe focus, a format wherein page layouts were already designed for you which I liked less.  I had stockpiled quite a stash of supplies (albums, pages, and the protectors that go over the pages) but I did wonder what I was going to do when they ran out.  Along comes Our Memories for Life, spearheaded by one of the founders of the original Creative Memories company and part of the Youngevity/Heritage Makers group (I'm still a little vague on the relationship between Our Memories for Life, Heritage Makers, and Youngevity but all I really need to know is that products are available for me to order).  I should mention that Creative Memories has been reborn as CM so now I have two choices for supplies.

Here is part of my collection.  I've had to expand to a bigger cabinet as I complete more albums and I still have a lot to do.  On the top shelf are Sophia's Baby albums (pink), followed by some of the Family albums (they have a little house on the top of the spine).  Some years, we can get away with one volume but in other years, it has stretched to as many as three.  On the right side of the top shelf are the green Christmas Card albums as I have saved every card we have received (along with photos and family newsletters) since 1994.  The second shelf is more Family albums, followed by the third shelf which is a mixture of Special albums (Family Reunion 2004, Mackinac Island trip 2002, Kettlewell 2001, and Duns Castle, also 2001).  The navy blue albums on the third shelf with the compass on the top of the spine are Vic's Career albums, followed by more Christmas Card albums, and the fourth shelf holds Sophia's School albums and more Christmas Card albums.

I'm a traditional scrapbooker, using cardstock and stickers to develop my layouts.  There are a lot of resources online (Pinterest is an amazing resource for layout ideas) as well as scrapbook magazines, idea books, and classes and retreats to learn and share new ideas.  I dabbled in digital scrapbooking, but prefer traditional as I always have a large quantity of memorabilia to include such as tickets, programs, brochures, etc.

I love to scrapbook; it's my down time, something I can do while I'm watching a movie or something I can do with a group because that's one of the best ways to find new ideas, and I love being able to pick up an album and relive one of my family's favorite places or events.

Do you scrapbook?