Episode 63: Scrapbooking Yourself 2/10 Influences

Welcome to the Scrap Happier podcast, where we share quick tips, tricks, and techniques to help you create scrapbooks you love and be happier while doing it. I’m your host, Alice Boll.

I’m so glad that you joined me for this episode. We are diving into the second part of our series about putting yourself in your scrapbooks. So part two of our scrapbooking you series is about influence. Now let’s get real. Lots of times we think about the word influence and we think about bad influences.

And honestly, don’t bad influences get talked about a lot. We often think about that with our kids. But we also have our own bad influences, even when we’re adults. Right. And the thing we almost can’t avoid in this day of social media is influencers. Now I know it’s kind of icky thinking about people as influencers.

At least I find it really strange. I’m very uncomfortable with the term influencer. People have told me that I was an influencer. I’m like, you guys don’t have any idea. I am so not that person, but I really think that. As we look at influencers and people that influence us, that doesn’t necessarily have to have a bad connotation.

Let’s take this word back and look at influence for what it really is. It’s something that has an effect on your character, on your development, or on your behavior. And whether we’re talking about good influences or bad influences, these are things that affect who we are, the things that we think about, the things that we believe, and the actions that we take.

So I want you to think for a moment about who or what has had a significant influence on you. Maybe it’s your family. Maybe it’s friends. Maybe it’s a famous person, perhaps a celebrity, an actor, a singer, a songwriter. Maybe it’s one of your teachers. Maybe it’s one of the activities you participated in, education that you pursued, or a course that you took.

Maybe it was something that you saw through a TikTok or Reel. Maybe it was a mentor, or maybe it was you acting as a mentee to someone else. You know what they say, right? If you want to prove that you really know something, teach it with all of these sources of influence that we have, some in small ways, some in minute ways, right?

It can be just the tiniest little thing that has a grand impact on us. And some of them are huge, and they affect the core of who we are. Now, Here’s my question, have you scrapbooked about these influences, the things that help make you who you are? And I don’t want you to get overwhelmed here. I think that this is such a big category that it would be easy to think about, oh my gosh, there’s so many different influences that I’ve had that you could be overwhelmed by the idea of it.

This does not have to be overwhelming. I want you to do one thing. I want you to make a list. You’re going to write this list on a piece of paper or on a note on your phone or somewhere that you know where it is that you can actually refer back to it when you want to see it again. I personally keep a happy planner and I make little tab sections in the front of my planner so that I can add different categories of things just like this and keep track of pages that I want to create, stories that I want to tell, and one of those categories is people that have had an influence on me or activities that I’ve done that have also influenced me.

Now, I don’t want you to let this get overwhelming. In fact, I insist, keep this simple and don’t be scared. I want you to start with something that is a small action. Make a page that doesn’t feel like it’s one of the most compelling stories. Sometimes we kind of hoard those and save them because we’re so worried about making them perfect.

I want you to pick a small one. It doesn’t have to have elaborate journaling. In fact, I’ll share one with you and then you’ll understand how to make a start. It doesn’t have to be fancy to just get started. This layout is called Favorite Teacher. Miss Kremer was my favorite teacher. She was so nice and sweet and I loved being part of her classroom.

The great thing is that we are now friends as adults. And I have a little mark on there that says this was grade 4. Now, when I read back this page, I can judge it and I can say, Oh my gosh, I wish I had said more. But even if I never said more, the fact that I have included this teacher who is one of the first teachers I truly loved, I think she was wonderful.

I remember being in her class and I think it’s so cool that I know her socially as an adult now, so many years later, so many years later. And I think it’s just really great that I’ve made this page as simple and plain as it is. It’s not over the top. It doesn’t even have specific memories attached to it.

It does have a picture of her. I had the benefit of having a disc camera. Now, I don’t know if anybody remembers disc cameras. They weren’t that great of quality, but man, was I excited to have one. And I had the chance to take it to school one day. So I have these really random pictures. And one of them is my teacher sitting at her desk.

And so even if. I have this simple, simple page. I’ve done a little bit of watercolor wash on the background. I have a little, um, it looks like a folio, like a folder that says grade 4 and I have my journaling on it. It has a globe, it has a couple of words that say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Actually, I think the Monday is covered up. But having this picture gives you something to look at. There’s vocabulary words on the blackboard. There’s other stuff on the Bolletin boards. There’s the teacher with her little paper tray on her desk. And I think that it’s just such a cool piece of my childhood.

And having that favorite teacher is something that most of us can relate to. There was at least one person that taught us during our life that we’re like, Oh, yes, this person is great. So, uh, start there. Perhaps start with that teacher that influenced you. Perhaps it wasn’t a teacher for you. Maybe it was a coach.

Maybe it was someone that led an activity that you participated in as a child. I think any of these are great opportunities to tell a small story and document somebody that influenced you. And one thing I like to keep in mind when I make a page, if I’m really not. that happy with my journaling. If I think that I didn’t do a very good job, there is absolutely nothing stopping me from going back and adding more story to that page, adding an insert, a small insert to the book so that I can add some extra story, or even making a brand new scrapbook page to just tell the story in a brand new way.

These are our scrapbooks and we are allowed to change them and make them exactly what we want them to be. And that means if we aren’t happy with the way a story gets told, we can change it all that we want to. But one of the things I try to keep in mind is that I would rather have an imperfect story than no story at all.

So sometimes that imperfection is all that I get. Another layout that I made talks about my time as a cadet. In Canada, we have a program for youth ages 12 to 18. It’s run through the Canadian Armed Forces, but it’s more like an offshoot of that. It doesn’t necessarily become a feeding ground. for the military.

However, you do get a uniform and you have the opportunity to march and do trill and also participate in a lot of really cool activities. I wanted to bring a lot of my memories of that time as a cadet and some of the things that I had learned together on one page. Now I probably could have filled a book just with my memories, but I really didn’t have that many photos of my time as a cadet.

So I chose a few photos that I did have and I decided to write several different paragraphs that would allow me to talk about many of the different experiences that I had as a cadet. Now I could definitely dive deeper into some of them, but. I think that this page gives a really good overview of the lessons and influences that I had from this cadet program.

And because I had so many stories, this page actually has a giant flip out on it with a ton of journaling. So I’m not going to read you the whole thing now. I will include the whole page on the replay show notes for this episode. So you can find that at scraphappy. org slash episode 63. For right now, I’ll read you a small excerpt.

In cadets, you first learn how to be a good follower. You learn how to receive instruction and how to follow the commands of your superiors. This doesn’t sound like a good thing, but it truly is. You learn to respect others. The cadets that you work with, The senior cadets who have earned their rank, and later you also respect your subordinates because you’ve been there.

And as you advance through the ranks, learning how to become a good leader, you know that the best leaders walk the talk and lead by example. You respect the ones that are fair and true to their word. I learned how to use my voice. Not only from the diaphragm, not the throat, like a proper drill sergeant, but I learned how to address concerns that I had.

I learned that it was not only my right to speak, but it was my responsibility to. We also learned how to teach a lesson, and we had plenty of practice on our cadets. I learned how to deal with public speaking through teaching a class. and commanding a platoon. Just looking back on this page makes me excited to tell other stories that share other ways that I’ve been influenced in my life.

I’m thinking of song lyrics that have influenced me. I’m thinking of mentors that I had and groups that I’ve participated in. There are so many different ways that I’ve been influenced, and I would really like to tell those stories and put that into my albums. And I hope this has encouraged you to look at the influences in your life and get them into your albums too.

So that’s my challenge to you today. Look at your life. Create that list. Just create the list of People, things, activities that have influenced you and keep that list handy so that you can go ahead and start crossing off some of those things as you create your scrapbook pages. And if you make those pages, I would love to see them.

You can share them with me by tagging me on Instagram tag at scrap happier or at Alice bowl, and I’ll be so excited to see the things that have influenced you. And if you like the idea of using prompts to inspire your storytelling, please check out our upcoming load challenge. The layout a day challenge runs from May 1st to May 31st.

This is load 522 and it is called build your story. So we’re going to be looking at famous architecture from around the world and drawing inspiration from that architecture to help us tell our stories. for joining us. Load is just one of the ways that I tell really great stories for my pages. When I think about the story, I go ahead and I build my layout to suit that story.

And I think that that’s one of the greatest things about many of the pages I make for load. Now, there are days where I don’t use the story prompt. I just use the technique prompt that there is that day. And of course, with load, you don’t have to use the prompts. You can go ahead and make your own. A layout based on anything that you wish to scrapbook.

So a lot of people actually use load for accountability to, to get those layouts done every single day through the month of May. You can check it all out at scraphappy. org slash load. And of course, you’ll find a link for that in the show notes at scrap happy. org slash episode 63. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

If you’d like to leave me a speak pipe message and tell me about someone that has left a major influence on your life, you can find the link for that on the show notes page as well. And I would love to hear about it. Thanks for listening to part two of this Transcribed 10 part series about putting yourself into your scrapbooks, scrapbooking you, and I can’t forget to remind you, join me for the happy at home series on YouTube.

I go live every weekday in April for the happy at home YouTube series, and we are exploring all of the topics. all kinds of creative techniques and ideas. In fact, coming up soon, we have a day all about journaling. And so that will be a lot of fun. And if you’ve missed any of the live sessions, you can catch all of them on replay, go to the scrap happy YouTube channel, look for the playlist that’s called happy at home, and you will see every single episode right there.

It has been so much fun and I would love for you to check it out. I really want to help you have fun with your scrapbooking, making pages that you love. Until next time, happy scrapping!