The winter holiday season sits very differently with different people. From giddy love of the holidays, to the sadness of missing loved ones, to even sharing birthdays with all the festivities. Today I’m sharing how our Scrap Happy community approaches holiday scrapbooking.
We all need a bit of scrappy perspective that speaks to our experience and helps us learn from other’s experiences. Here are some thoughts on what holiday scrapping means to some crafters in our group. As always, if you want to share your point of view, do let us know in the comments! I think more perspectives makes for a richer pool of ideas!
Finding the Joy
Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love everything about it. I didn’t have a very good home life growing up so there were no pictures. Because of this I wanted my kids to have the best I could give them. I took lots and lots of pictures and have scrapped every one. I enjoy looking back to see what was the “in” toy, or what my kids were interested in at the time.
What I love most is being able to look back and remember what a great time it was.
I love buying themed supplies around holidays
[Stay tuned for Sonja’s struggle around this topic!]
I certainly love some good crafty shopping. Yet I avoid buying the holiday stuff since I know I won’t use it. (More on that later.) Instead I lean toward cooler colors and maybe some winter themes to fill in for my Christmas products.
How about you? What does your crafty holiday stash look like?
Mini—and specialty— Albums
Honestly I can’t imagine filling an entire 12×12 album with Christmas layouts. I’m sure there are scrappers who can, and do!, entire 12×12 books on Christmas. If that is you, please chime in since your perspective would be fun to hear. In fact, Laurie said she takes lots of pictures and scraps them all!
Now, big full albums aren’t the only way to go. Many people keep mini albums specifically for Christmas. December Daily is one popular option. Let’s take a look at how scrapping can go smaller.
I have done a monthly December album for years with varying degrees of success.
I have been doing a 6×8 continuous book of Christmas activities every year as we don’t know what we will be doing for the holidays. This year we met grandson, daughter, son-in-law and grandparents from [various states].
Nothing special I add to my chronological albums. Christmas Eve album is separate, as that is a yearly annual family day for me.
A Christmas Eve album?! How fun. Since Christmas Eve isn’t a big deal for me and my family, I’ve never thought of this. This can open up ideas to other ways to approach the holidays. Has anyone ever done layouts about the day after Christmas?? See, just reading a small quote from someone can get ideas started!
Struggles
In the opening of this post I mentioned the struggles that may come up around the holidays. Right away we heard from Laurie who contrasted her childhood holidays with the ones as an adult and parent. I know I felt some of my own childhood right there with her.
There can be struggles with celebrating the holidays initially, but then there are also the struggles with documenting the events. While I can’t solve the first problem, lets see what we can do about the second.
[I] wish there were more options than just the American [holiday themes]. Not a criticism towards the big brands, just an ask towards the scrappy universe for other makers/designers to offer more diversity. Personally, I’d like more UK and NL holidays. These countries do some of the same holidays but in different ways with different icons and language. And they also have different holidays. I’m thinking Guy Fawkes night in England or King’s Day in The Netherlands for example.
Before we move on, I think Sonja brings up a fantastic point. There are more holidays out there than just Christmas. Hanukah and Kwanza are mentioned often and yet we don’t see many products or layouts featuring these holidays. Plus, what holidays aren’t even mentioned at all? Drop us a comment if you celebrate something other than Christmas!
My biggest challenge is doing special things so that each year is a little special but not too different. I vary the projects from year to year.
[With December Daily] I have found that I have two ‘biggest challenges’:
- Making the time each day. It’s all well and good to do a little bit when and where you can, and say that you’ll catch up later but I still haven’t completed 2023! And 2019 is only a bag of memorabilia and nothing else. Which brings me to challenge #2
- As my kids have grown up and we have had less and less time in December to do all the fun things you’d want to take photos of, my albums became harder and harder to keep “merry & bright”.
As for myself, I have to admit I don’t enjoy holiday scrapping. Everything just feels too samey from year to year. I have however done a couple of layouts as compilations or then-and-now style pages. These make much more sense to me. They clearly show what has changed over time. Obviously these are not an annual scrapping task! Here is one example of different Christmas trees from the toddler eras of my kids.
Making Peace with Change
As some of the conversation got rolling in our community a bit of a theme emerged. Change. Many people expressed how the basic changes in life over time could lead to joys or struggles depending on the perspective.
I’m an empty nester now. (…) I only do a page or two with season highlights. Some years, like this one, might get a book or multiple pages. We did a lot this year.
A Helping Hand
Can’t fit one more thing into an already busy holiday season? We understand! Scrapbooking often is at the bottom of a long to-do list. But…
Did you know that here at Scrap Happy there is a class that helps you document the Christmas season without the stress? Alice’s class leads you through daily prompts. In December the prompts help you capture the moments in photos. In January, when the hustle has settled down, the prompts help you tell those stories. Best part about the class? Once you are signed up you will get these prompts automatically every year. Alice really does make it easy, and affordable! Check it out.
I hope you found some community in this post. From ideas you already implement to ones you might now try. At risk of being repetitive, if you have ideas that were not covered, we love to hear from you. Please drop us a comment.
Happy Scrapping.