Episode 61: Now and Then Journaling

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 going to talk about now and then pages, pages that document some of the important stories and meaningful stories in our life.

But before we get into that, I just want to let you know about an event that we have going on all through the month of April of 2022, which is the happy at home series. This is a free series that I host on YouTube every weekday throughout the whole month. I’ll be exploring all kinds of creativity related to scrapbooking throughout the month.

Different techniques, products, styles, designs, you name it. We’re probably going to go there. You’ll be able to find me on the scrap happy YouTube channel at 1:00 PM. Pacific 4:00 PM. Eastern every weekday, not on weekends, just on the weekdays. And I hope you’ll join. And don’t worry if you can’t join me for all of the live broadcasts, every episode will be recorded and available on my YouTube channel in the happy at home playlist.

Now let’s dive into episode 61, all about pages that I like to call now and then pages. One of the things that’s really important to me is knowing why I scrapbook. And if you’re really not sure about your, why you can explore that with me, way back on episode number two, called why do you scrapbook? It’s one of the most important things that affects the way I scrapbook and it helps me set the goals that I’m trying to achieve.

It’s really important to me to make pages that are meaningful pages that tell stories that matter about my life foundational stories about my life and of my family. You know, when you get together with your family members and everybody’s talks about those good old times of days gone by, well, those are the kinds of stories that need to be in my scrapbooks.

And when I’m looking at my pictures and I’m only scrapbooking driven by my photos that I have, those are not necessarily the stories that come up to the top. The stories that get told on the pages. Part of the issue is that I don’t always have photos that help me tell those stories. I might not have a photo of all of the fun things that we did as kids, but that were really important to.

This is the perfect time to make a now and then page. You might have a current photo that shows something that is happening now, either something that you’re doing yourself as an adult, or you see your kids doing that you used to enjoy. Now, you’re going to bring the now and then elements together.

You’ll tell the story about now and why it’s so much fun, but as you’re digging into the why you tell the story about what was special about it, then. When I was a kid, we used to go to the west Edmonton mall, world water park. It’s an amazing indoor water park. And it was just so much fun. And the greatest escape from the horrible winter weather that we get here in Alberta, Canada.

After a recent trip to the world, water park with my brothers and my cousin, I documented the story of now us going as adults to the waterpark. But I also slipped in some of the importance of those trips that we did as children. My page is called slide into fun. And here’s what it says. The only time you’ll see me grinning ear to ear while racing upstairs is at the west Edmonton mall, water park, hanging out all day with my brothers, cousins, aunts, and uncles.

You know, the whole family. It takes me back to my childhood. We’d spend the whole day sliding. Fastest slides and screaming at the sound of the horn that told us the waves were starting in the pool. Now we take our kids and our parents too, and yes, I’m still grinning as I race much slower up those stairs.

I had a lot of fun putting this layout together. I use some watercolor paper. I watercolored fun shades of blue background. And then I used strips of blue paper. I tore a whole bunch of them, so I could create a mat behind my photo. I added my title, a few sparkly gems along with the story and this page was done.

And when I look at this page, I can see just how much fun my brothers, my cousin and myself are having at the water park. And it really takes us back to our child. This layout was really a now and then page that documented my experience as an adult and as a child. However, I’ve also done now, when then pages that document my kid’s story and my story.

Here’s a short example of that. This page is called too cool. It was minus 26 degrees Celsius. When I took this photo that’s minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit for my U S friends. I had to capture the varying levels of winter gear, Ryan winter coat, not zipped up. Jonas. My husband prepared for the Arctic Joe in a hoodie. Flashback.

It made me think of my teenage years. I spent some time being too cool, too. For anyone that lives in a warmer climate, you might not understand this. It is nearly impossible to get teenagers to dress appropriately for cold weather. They would much rather be cool than be warm. One of the things that now, and then pages are really good for is to document changes.

You can look for those landmark moments in your life where something will never be the same again. Sometimes these stories week might feel guilty for not having told them already, but sometimes it’s with the perspective of time that looking back on something makes it more valuable and makes it a better story.

So never feel bad that you haven’t scrapbooked some of this stuff. Just take the opportunity to do it now. One example of this is when I scrapbooked my son’s ninth birthday. All I did was scrapbook my son’s birthday. It really wasn’t that big of deal. It’s a birthday, it’s just another birthday. Right.

But when I’m looking back at all of the things that he’s done with technology, suddenly that ninth birthday had big impact. For his ninth birthday, we gave my son, Joe, a Lego Mindstorms NXT robot. It’s some really fancy robot technology thing. So he had the best time ever with this. And as he grew, he got more and more into different kinds of technology.

And eventually now he works in technology. So I made a layout to describe this change. Now this wasn’t something that I could have done if I had just scrapped his birthday. So yeah, I pulled out those old birthday photos from when he turned nine. I used photos of him doing different jobs in technology as an adult.

And bringing all of those photos together, it helped me tell the perfect story about how he became this person and maybe how he always was that person to begin with. And sometimes you might be telling that story that shows that everything really has stayed the same, and sometimes you’re showing the changes.

So now, and then stories aren’t necessarily just for telling one type of story. Let’s go over the different kinds of now and then stories that we’ve been talking about in this episode. First, you can tell a story about you now versus you. Then the second one is to do the same thing for your children or other family member.

Tell a story about them now versus them then. Number three is to tell a story about you now versus your children. The third is to tell a story about your children now versus you. Then back when you were a child, number four is to look for the things that are the same look for those similarities, really pay attention and notice those details.

And number five is to look for the things that are different. Look for the change and document that change. I love that now. And then pages really help us tell great foundational stories, important stories, fun stories about our lives and help us make those pages. Even when we don’t necessarily have photos that show what the action was.

And if you’re worried that you might be using the same photo more than once I would encourage you to listen to episode number seven, it’s called the same photo twice. And I think that any hesitation that you have about using a photo more than once, I know I’m just like you, I take a ton of photos and I have way too many photos.

I’m never going to get them all scrapped, but I think that that’s okay. And I think that there are good reasons to use some of those great photos that we have again. And again. If you like those tip for getting into some deeper journaling and you want to tell better stories on your layouts. I encourage you to check out my free email series called right on journaling.

You can sign up for that email series at scraphappy.org/journaling  You’ll find links to all of the episodes that I’ve mentioned today, and photos of the layouts that I talked about in the show notes for this episode, just go to scraphappy.org/episode61 If you make a now and then page and share it on Instagram, be sure to tag me @aliceboll so I can check it out and see your now and then page inspired by this episode.

And don’t forget to go and like the brand new ScrapHappier podcast account on Instagram. @scraphappier And as I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, don’t forget to check out the happy at home live series. That’s happening through April of 2022 on the scrap happy YouTube channel. If you want to stay up to date with me, go and sign up for the scrap happy newsletter.

It is where I send out my Friday five sunshine email. Every Friday or nearly every Friday, I send out an email with five fun scrapbooking things that are inspiring me right now. And I’d love for you to receive that. So you can go to scraphappy.org/subscribe I can’t wait to see what you make for your own now and then inspired page. I’m Alice Boll. Happy scrapping.