It all counts, it truly does

I recently started listening to a podcast from the creator of Paperclipping, Noell Hyman. Her website is set up to help others establish confidence and skill to create their own style of scrapbooking. With a membership you can view video tutorials that teach design principles, concepts and techniques. While I am not a member and cannot view most of the tutorials, I did check out their free podcast and If you haven't listened to the Paperclipping Roundtable, I highly suggest it. Whether you are a scrapbooker or not. There are some great discussions going on.

Like episode five. Originally thinking I'd write about the topic of why I don't scrapbook. Explaining my absolute NEED for perfection and how this hinders my process and flow. Therefore the time I am allotted to actually get scrapbooking done is rendered useless. Never getting down to doing it or finishing what I started. But then I started to think about the very first episode with Stacy Julian. I feel this discussion has effected me the most.

"Anyone can have a voice. [with blogging and twitter]...the idea of community," she said. A community that is moving online. And I totally agree. Especially in these last few years with the vast closing of local scrapbooking stores in my area. There is no longer a physical community of scrapbookers where we can mingle and share tips, tricks and ideas. Give advice, support and learn from one another. I almost gave up on scrapbooking being faced with this situation. Frustrated by the industry in that it seemed as if they were sending the message, east coasters don't scrapbook. Left with no where to buy my supplies or take classes, my husband opened my eyes to the online world of shopping. I hesitated at first. I am the type of person who likes to physically see, handle and try out products before I buy them. We've all been there. Bought something in a catalog or online and when it arrived, realized it wasn't what we thought it was and not at all what we wanted. I didn't want to go through this. Already having a room filled with scrapbook products I've hoarded and failed to use over the years. But I gave it a chance and oh am I glad I did.

This was my first true dive into everything digital. Yes I have been doing digital photos for years but never in my scrapbook layouts. At least not to this extent. It took me till recently to realize that I have always been a hybrid scrapbooker. Using photoshop to manipulate and add things to my photos, print them out and then add to my layouts. Very basic hybrid but, hybrid just the same. Now armed with the world wide web and all it's possibilities in the scrapbooking industry I have fine-tuned my process and discovered a wonderful community I never got the chance to really develop before.

With 5 online classes under my belt from Big Picture Scrapbooking and developed relationships with a handful of online stores such as Designer Digitals and Scrapbook.com, I've gained followers of my tweets, befriended classmates on facebook and received a small readership of my blog. I'm feeling inspired again. Knowing and seeing that the definition of scrapbooking is constantly changing. Stepping out of the box of traditional. Loving theme albums, mini albums, and who said just because you have a 12x12 album all your layouts have to be 12x12? Nor do you have to write paragraphs of journaling to tell a meaningful story.

Currently influenced by the ingenious talents of Ali Edwards and Cathy Zeilske, I have re-embraced the idea of simple scrapbooking. All you need to document a story is words and photos. Simple as that. Everything else is fluff. I truly feel that the most important thing is to get the memory documented. To record our past and our present. The good, the bad, the exceptional and definitely the mundane. As long as it is important to you it is a story worth telling. I've said it before in previous posts. It's these everyday moments that I want to remember. The ones that seem dull and uninteresting. Normal, everyday life. Because those are the moments, the memories we reach for 10, 20 years down the line. Sitting around the table at Christmas or chilling in the hot tub at the beach, reminiscing. We find ourselves saying, Oh my gosh. I forgot about that. But really what we are saying is, I'm so glad I got reminded of that moment.

Stacy Julian, founder of the now defunct Simple Scrapbook magazine and the ever popular Big Picture Scrapbooking online education site, said it herself. "We learn to live with our memories in different ways." By using all of the tools at our disposal such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. we are reaching out in ways we never could before. We are "validating your ability to see life." I see that with my blog and my facebook and twitter status updates. I am expressing my version of events of my life. Documenting these moments for others, so they may catch a glimpse and so that I can remember what happened at this particular moment years down the line. IT ALL COUNTS. I love that concept. Mostly because it does all count. All the ways we are sharing little snippets of our lives. In the class Everyone can write a little, we turned our facebook and twitter statuses into an album. AN ALBUM! How cool is that? I learned to utilize these sites, these tools at my disposal as not just a time sucker, but as a way to quickly document my everyday. It counts. My blog. It was originally a way for me to communicate with my extended family about our family, but ended up turning into my online journal. My place to put my thoughts, my feelings, my everyday happenings and document them so that I may later go back and use those memories that I captured and physically put them onto a layout if I so chose. However, leaving them where they are, it counts. I LOVE THAT. It frees me up to feel accomplished. To relieve the pressure to be caught up because I am telling my stories through my blog, my social networking, my layouts and the photos displayed in my home. And in the process learning to let go of my need for perfection. It doesn't have to be perfect because the stories; my stories, my children's stories are being told and that is the most important thing.