Episode 34: Maintain the Joy in Scrapbooking | Happy at Home

Welcome to the ScrapHappier 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 you’ve joined us for this episode. We have a really fun topic. In fact, we’re going to be talking about how we keep the fun, how we keep the joy, in our scrapbooking process. Before we dive in, I just wanted to give you a quick reminder, have you hit that subscribe button? It is a really good time, because next week, we are going to be talking about Creativation Plus. This was the online virtual trade show hosted by AFCI, the Association for Creative Industries, and also featuring Namta, the International Art Materials Association. The online virtual trade show was held March 15th to 19th, 2021, and I attended the sessions, the panels, the virtual booth, the demonstrations, and even a fun after party, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. That conversation will be coming up soon, but for today, let’s dive into maintaining the joy in scrapbooking.

Back in March of 2020, when everybody was just starting to stay home, I realized we needed a chance to reframe how we’re thinking about this time that we spend at home. I created a series on YouTube called Happy At Home. I went live five times a week so that we could all hang out together and make ourselves a little happier at home. Each day, we’d have a theme, and I’d explore different things, like the tools that we use, journaling, creating a theme on your layout, getting other people involved in your scrapbooking process, playing with traveler’s notebooks and other sizes, scrapbooking on the go, back when we used to do that, and of course, I dabbled in all kinds of mixed media, like stencils, spray, textures, stamping, using strips of cut paper, using washi tape, using water color. We played with stickers. We played with circles. And we delved into problems like how to create a mood on your layout and finishing up incomplete pages. It was such a busy month, but it was so much fun, so I extended it for two days a week during the month of May.

And just in case you’re envisioning a month of perfect scrapbooking and perfect demos, let’s just say it wasn’t that. There were times that things did not turn out as well as I’d hoped or expected, and there were things that were a little bit questionable, like when I tried the Vicky Boutin bubble blowing technique. It turns out the blowing the bubbles on my side was really uncomfortable, but what was even worse was you having to listen to the bubble blowing. But I’ll tell you, we’ve made some really cool that day, so you know, it all kind of came out.

As you could probably tell, part of my fun that I find in scrapbooking is trying all the different techniques. I want to dabble in every medium, and every skill, and play with every tool. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I use all of my skills all the time, but I don’t expect to, either. Here’s a question I’d like to ask, do you buy supplies that you don’t use now? Now, I’m not saying do you buy too much pattern paper and you have a whole stash of it? I’m talking about things like the fuse tool. Did you buy a fuse tool and never take it out of the box?

Do you have a mink machine that you’ve used all of twice? Maybe you bought the foil quilt to use in your Cricut machine or Silhouette, and you haven’t really taken it out of the packaging yet. Did you buy some Vicky Boutin distress crayons, Tim Holtz distress oxides, nouveau moose or texture paste, or pretty much any other crafty supply, thinking, “Gee, I’d love to give this a try or I saw somebody else do something really cool with this and maybe I will too,” then you might be a little bit like me where you like to dabble and try new things. Or you like the idea of dabbling and trying new things, but sometimes knowing how to use these supplies gets in the way of actually doing it, actually using them. Because we might’ve seen somebody use the supply, but until we have it in our hands and we’re actually using it ourselves, it’s a whole different game. Just figuring out how to use a new product can be enough of a headache that we just don’t even open the packaging.

Okay, I’ve been there. I get it. I am with you. I am bringing back the Happy at Home series on YouTube for April of 2021. I’ll be exploring all kinds of new topics for this season. Our sessions wIll explore topics like journaling, using our tools and supplies, color and shape, different types of mixed media, and exploring design elements and rules. We’ll create, we’ll play, we’ll definitely laugh, and we will have some fun. We will be exploring how to maintain the joy in scrapbooking by actually doing scrapbooking and having fun while we’re doing it. If you have a topic that you’d like to see covered during the Happy at home Series, you can leave me as SpeakPipe message by going to the show notes and clicking on start recording.

During one of the sessions last year, it was called Stamp a Scene, and I used stamps from a company called Three Rooms Studio to create a little scene at the bottom of a piece of scrap paper. I use two stamps sets, one called I Heart Books, and one called Lets Hygge. Both sets feature comfy chairs, reading, drinking, coffee or tea, and just give you that cozy and comfy feeling. Once I’d stamped the scene and use some very, very basic masking techniques. I really contemplated whether I was going to color the scene, but let’s just say that my coloring skills were not up to par. Thankfully, I left it black and white, which was a great choice. I added a photo and I left lots of room for journaling, and I’ll read that for you now. The layout is called One More Chapter.

I’ve always been a reader, from little golden books to Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley high, a short-lived interest in Stephen King books, and then onto murder mysteries with Perri O’Shaughnessy, and medical mysteries of Robin Cook. Eventually, I moved on to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series after Karen insisted I read it. And of course, I eventually devoured JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series multiple times. I was always the kid with multiple books in my desk and another on the go at home. I loved borrowing books from the library, and books I owned were read multiple times. These days, I don’t read enough. I have a huge pile of books, many business books, but a few novels, too. I love to cozy up with a blanket and a cup of tea or hop in the tub and read for hours until I’m a wrinkly prune in cold water. I never plan to stay long, but there’s always one more chapter.

I’ll post this layout on the show notes page, which you can find at scraphappy.org/episode34. One of the things I loved about trying all of the techniques during the Happy at Home series last year, was that not only could I share my expertise, but everyone that was watching could share their expertise with me, too. At one point, when I was stamping this page, I stamped a pile of books underneath the chair. Immediately, it felt like a huge mistake, and I was trying to figure out what to do to fix it. It looked so strange to have the chair looking like it was balancing on this pile of books.

And I thought, “Oh great. Now what? How do I fix this?” I think it was Mickey, McKenzie McGeehee, that came up with the brilliant idea of me stamping a cup on top of the pile of books so that the pile looked like it was beside the chair instead of the chair balancing on top of the books. It was the perfect solution, and it’s one of the reasons I absolutely love crafting with friends. So thanks Mickey for your solution, and I’m so glad that we could scrap it together even while we can be so far apart. Whether trying all of this scrappy textures, and mediums, and new tools is your kind of scrapbooking or not, I hope you’ll consider today’s tip.

I want you to think about what makes scrapbooking fun for you. How do you maintain the joy in your scrapbooking process? By figuring out what we like, we can do more of it, and then we can do more scrapbooking and have more fun. I hope you’ll join me on YouTube for the Happy at Home series in April of 2021. We’ll explore journaling, tools and supplies, color and shape, different types of mixed media, and we’ll explore some design elements and rules. Mistakes will be made. I’m sure I’ll create some messes too, but I’ll have no regrets, as the time that I spent being creative and crafty is always worth the time that I spend doing it. You can get the link for the ScrapHappy YouTube page in the show notes or head straight over to YouTube and just look for ScrapHappy. I hope this discussion will help you think about what makes your scrapbooking more fun, more joyful, and will inspire you to create layouts you love. Happy scrapping.