Congratulations to Melissa of Melissa’s Blog for winning a copy of The Scrapworthy Lives Guide to Market Research.
Thanks for everyone for entering!
I finished my Week in the Life album!
I built my background pages before the week began so that I could write my journaling directly during the week. I used my iPod Touch to take my photos. My goal was to just record 3-5 things from each day. I had no intent of recording everything. I tried to journal each evening.
I am glad i opted to use Instragram to take my photos on my iPod Touch. It was convenient and fun. I also like that they are designed to be printed small so I could include a lot of photos. Some pages are almost all photos!
I think I will participate in a Week in the Life again next year. I might do it differently, though. I might just focus on the food we eat or the places we go or something like that. Maybe each day, I’ll focus on a different topic. I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll just do the same thing. Either way, I’m glad I participated this year. Here are my layouts:
Opening
Monday 1
Monday 2
Tuesday
Wednesday 1
Wednesday 2
Thursday 1
Thursday 2
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Closing
Did you participate in Week in the Life? Are you going to do it again next year? Comment below or join the conversation on facebook or twitter.Don’t forget, you can always email me your questions and suggestions. Email me at stephaniemedleyrath at gmail dot com or contact me here (http://www.scrapworthylives.com/contact-me/) and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I will personally respond to your emails and may use your questions in future articles.
Stephanie
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to NPR and they did a story about a feature from Bicycling magazine. The feature was about the bicycle ride of a person’s life. I’m not much of a cyclist. We do ride our bikes in the warmer months quite a bit, but we don’t take cycling too seriously. I realized that I had never scrapbooked the ride of my life or really much of anything about my own bicycle riding. I rode my bike to my classes in college, so cycling used to play a bigger part in my life.
I thought I would share the story of my ride of my life here. Eventually, I’ll probably make a scrapbook page about it, but for now, I just want to get the story recorded somewhere.
In the summer of 1999, me and a group of friends went camping. This one our last group outings before we all went away to college. We decided to bring our bikes on our camping trip. I’m not sure whose idea that was, but it was a great idea. This trip actually involves a couple of good bike stories, but I want to share the story of the ride of my life.
For whatever reason, we thought it would be a good idea to ride our bikes on the horse riding trail. I don’t recall coming across any horseback riders, but I do recall our complete lack of planning for this ride. The trail was 13-miles long and it seemed none of us realized how far the trail was until we were in it deep. We took no water and it was summer. And, none of were really cyclists. We all owned bikes and rode on the country roads, but nothing like this before. Fortunately, we were a bunch of healthy and evidently physically fit 17- and 18-year-olds.
I remember being really happy that women are expected to shave their legs in our culture because, us girls, had no problem with ticks. The guys? Well, every time we stopped, they had to get the ticks out of their leg hair.
I know I ended up with chigger bites all over my legs from the camping trip. I can’t recall if they were from the bike ride or not.
Amazingly, we all made it over that trail without any injuries or illness. It was fun and I suppose an accomplishment of sorts.
I still don’t know if I’ll make an actual scrapbook page about this ride or not, but I’m glad I have it at least partially recorded here. I know at least a couple of my friends on that ride occasionally read this blog. Let’s see if they have anything to add in the comments.
And of course, what about you? What was the ride of your life? Did you scrapbook it? Comment below or join the conversation on facebook or twitter. Don’t forget, you can always email me your questions and suggestions. Email me at stephaniemedleyrath at gmail dot com or contact me here and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I will personally respond to your emails and may use your questions in future articles.
Stephanie
Each Monday, I discuss my Scrap Happy project based on Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun.
When I first brainstormed ways The Happiness Project could be adapted to scrapbooking, I wrote:
This one is tough. I fully believe that scrapbooking in and of itself, stimulates the mind in new ways. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that most people who don’t just scrapbook, but identify as a scrapbooker, come to view the world through scrapbooking and in this way, our mind is stimulated in new ways. For example, we make decisions about what to photograph, which piece of memorabilia should be saved, and ultimately which stories we want to preserve in a scrapbook. As we become more involved in the hobby, it might spur us to learn new things. For me, I now do some basic photo editing on my computer. I am working on taking better photos. I buy new scrapbooking items like glimmer mist spray (still figuring out how best to use this stuff), washi tape (which, may actually be my new favorite go-to item), or fringe scissors (which I still haven’t ever used on a layout!) just to figure out what to do with them.
I think my favorite new way of stimulating my mind through scrapbooking is by participating in blog hops. I host A Happiness Blog Hop based on this series and I participate in the Colour Combo Bloghop and Ten Things. Each hop, gives me a challenge to create a layout or a blog post around a specific theme. Yes, sometimes, this is work and can be frustrating. But in the end, I am satisfied with the results and am glad I pushed myself to create something I would not have otherwise created.
What about you? How do you stimulate your mind through scrapbooking? Comment below or join the conversation on facebook or twitter.
Related Posts:
If you want to read more about Scrap Happy project based on Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun or my Scrap Happy Project, check out the other posts in the Scrap Happy series.
It’s finished! My first e-book is finished!
The Scrapworthy Lives Guide to Market Research is finally available.
And guess what? I’m giving away one copy to one lucky reader! If you already purchased it, then I will refund your money. Comment below and tell me what your scrapbooking business is or what kind of scrapbooking business you would like to start. You have until midnight tomorrow night, Monday, October 24, 2011 at midnight CST (Chicago, IL, USA) to enter.
Read more about The Scrapworthy Lives Guide to Market Research here…
Each Saturday, I provide a compilation of links from the week’s posts.
This Week:
One Year Ago:
Ten Ways to get more out of Scrapworthy Lives:
on your Kindle!Stephanie
Each Friday, I write a post about Minimalist Scrapbooking.
A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a personal finance article about practicing mindful spending. The point of the article was getting people to think about the many small purchases that quickly add up. I immediately thought of scrapbooking.
One of the great things about this hobby, is that for $10 or $20, you can buy a lot of fun supplies. It’s easy to walk in your local scrapbook store, wander down the scrapbook aisle at the big box store, or go online and download some cool digital products.
I did this a couple of weeks ago. I suppose you could say, I fell off the Minimalist Scrapbooking wagon. I went into my local scrapbook store looking for an album that would work for my mother-in-law’s memorial scrapbook (still looking) and couldn’t pass up several yards of cool ribbon. I love ribbon and add ribbon to most of my layouts. I ended up spending $26.06, almost half of which went towards ribbon. This is why I started this minimalist project. The little purchases can add up very quickly because I used to not think that much about the little purchases. It’s not a big deal because I haven’t just picked up random items at my local scrapbook store in quite some time.
On the bright side, I didn’t buy one sheet of pattern paper. And, I was able to immediately put my new purchases away because it fit in one bag. I put them away so quickly that after the fact, I thought I probably should have taken a photo for you. Oops.
This experience got me wondering about what other people’s scrapbook supply weaknesses are. Mine is ribbon. What’s yours? Comment below or join the conversation on facebook or twitter
Want a free copy of The Scrapworthy Lives Guide to Minimalist Scrapbooking? Sign up for the newsletter and it is yours!
Publishers and Authors
If you are a publisher or an author and would like me to review your scrapbooking-related book or blog, please email me at stephaniemedleyrath at gmail dot com.
Stephanie
Each Thursday I review a book or blog related to scrapbooking.
Today, I reviewing Quick & Creative Quizzes by Wendy Smedley and Angie Lucas from Ella Publishing Co..
I would use Quick & Creative Quizzes for random photos that you don’t really have a story for. You know, photos like your department store portraits from your own childhood. I might place a date and my age on a layout with one of these photos, but with the ideas from Quick & Creative Quizzes, you should have plenty of journaling inspiration.
I would use Quick & Creative Quizzes to create pages of my child about how my child has change from year to year. Some of the quizzes are perfect to ask once a year (perhaps around your child’s birthday).
I would email some of these quiz questions to other family members in order to get some journaling from them.
I think of different ways I would use this book. One thing I don’t think I would be likely to do is just pick the book off the shelf for inspiration mid-scrapbooking. I don’t think that it is that type of book–at least not for me.
Regardless, I think this was $5.99 well spent.
Want a free copy of The Scrapworthy Lives Guide to Minimalist Scrapbooking? Sign up for the newsletter and it is yours!
Stephanie
Every Wednesday (at least most Wednesdays) for the last year, I have posted a tiny chunk of writing from my dissertation. My original intent for sharing my dissertation on this site (and creating this site in the first place) was to distribute my findings to as wide an audience as possible. I want my research to benefit not only the sociological community but also the scrapbooking community. Unfortunately, at this point, I have to take a break from publishing these particular posts.
Over the last few weeks, I have reached the conclusion that I should publish 2-3 articles about my research in peer-reviewed journals. One of their stipulations is that the content can not be published elsewhere first (outside of the dissertation). Right now, I have to turn my attention to these publications and that means I need to temporarily stop my posts based on my research. You can still download the complete dissertation or even just a chapter. You can still ask me as many questions as you want about my research.
The way academic writing works is that it needs to be published in a peer-reviewed journal first, then it can be published elsewhere (traditionally, in book form or not published at all. Blogging raises new issues. I do not want to risk losing a peer-reviewed journal publication by publishing too much of my dissertation on my blog. I don’t really want to be one of the first to have to make the case that my publishing here is distinct from my publishing there.
I am furiously working on my peer-reviewed publications so that I can get back to sharing my findings with you.
So why peer-reviewed publications? Well, blogging is not my career. Who knows, it could be one day. Anything can happen. Right now, I have a very full-time job teaching at my local community college. In most academic jobs, it is expected that you publish in peer-reviewed journals, therefore, I need to make sure I do some of this. I don’t know what the future could bring. I want to make sure all my bases are covered. I hope you understand.
In the meantime, I still will be posting to My Scrap Happy Project, Books & Blogs, and Minimalist Scrapbooking. You will also see other posts that do not fit neatly into one of these current categories.
Each Monday, I discuss my Scrap Happy project based on Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun.
Last week, I kicked off October’s theme, pay attention.
Today’s topic is examining true rules. What are the rules of scrapbooking? There is a lot of debate over what the rules of scrapbooking may or may not be. When asked, I tell new scrapbookers to:
Other than those three things, I’m not really sure what the “rules” of scrapbooking are. I think there are a lot of ideas about the rules and some will take issue with me even using the word rules. What we are really talking about are norms. What rules do you tell new scrapbookers?
So what are my personal scrapbooking rules?
I don’t talk about being behind or getting caught up. I don’t ever want to be caught up because it means I have nothing left to scrapbook. I do enjoy finishing a project, but then I usually start more projects. Some of my albums are all “caught up” and others are very much “behind.” And I’m just fine with that.
I scrapbook the everyday and events. I find value in doing both. I know scrapbookers who have done this for any length of time often get bored by “one more birthday or Christmas” layout. I don’t. I want to record my family’s traditions in addition to the everyday. I don’t scrapbook every birthday, nor do I scrapbook every holiday. I just don’t get too hung up on it. I don’t let myself feel obligated to scrapbook events, and I don’t let myself feel lame for scrapbooking events.
I like my albums organized chronologically. I like all my layouts about 2009 in an album for 2009. I like being able to quickly find a layout if need be and I can do that if they are chronological. I do not scrapbook in chronological order, I just organize my layouts in chronological order. (Un)fortunately, people are not clamoring to look at my albums, so I can keep a stack of finished layouts in a pile until I get enough layouts covering a certain length of time to add them to an album.
What are your scrapbooking rules? Comment below or join the conversation on facebook or twitter.
If you want to read more about Scrap Happy project based on Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun or my Scrap Happy Project, check out the other posts in the Scrap Happy series.
Stephanie Medley-Rath is a sociologist and scrapbooker who studies scrapbooking and memory keeping. Scrapworthy Lives is a blog focused on her sociological analysis of scrapbooking, with a sprinkling of posts about Stephanie's own scrapbooking projects.
