Help! Your Heart is Missing From Your Scrapbooking Journaling - Part 4
By Fion Lim
Do you find that humans have a tendency to state the obvious and this tendency carries over to scrapbooking journaling too?
Let's take for example. There's a photo showing your little girl doing a little tap dance routine at her dance school. Instead of journaling the obvious that she's dancing, why not list out the wonderful traits she exhibited from her dance practice? Like how she has displayed persistence in perfecting her dance steps by spending a few uninitiated afternoons practicing her moves at home alone?
Rather than harping on the obvious fact that she's dancing, you can have the chance to remind her of a wonderful trait of persistence you hope she'll carry into adulthood as well.
Not only can we do fantastic scrapbooking journaling on the non-obvious stuff, we can journal on our imagination and expectations too.
Take some quiet minutes now to image how life would be when all your kids are all grown up and how life would turn out for each of them. Journal about how you imagine your son's future girlfriend would look like. Write about the possible careers your girl would take on. Keep these 'imaginative' scrapbook pages and compare notes when they eventually grow up in 10 or 15 years later. See how you’re little 'predictions' turn out!
Scrapbooking journaling doesn't have to be confined to focusing on all the good and happy memories and thoughts too.
Make it a point to be realistic when you are journaling.
If you keep realism in check and didn't portray just a perfect world in your scrapbooking, your scrapbooks will reflect a much more humane side to life. And yes, that's scrapbooking journaling from the heart.
Journaling about mistakes and not so glorious events in your life will sure inject a strong dose of realism in your scrapbooks. Like the time your 6-year-old boy went up to perform onstage for his very first time and recited an almost inaudible poem to the forgiving crowd. Though he didn't perform with flying colors, you applauded his bravery to take on the challenge in his scrapbook.
It's not a matter of rubbing salt in the wound to journal about one's mistakes, but to seek for the good in the bad and to draw out the lesson to be learned from the experience.
Your kids will remember such things anyway. So why not take the chance to scrapbooking journaling from your heart to bring a degree of positiveness to the experience?
Throwing in your senses and feelings into scrapbooking journaling is another way to heat up your pages.
Instead of writing something like 'Keith excitedly open up his birthday presents and he had lots of fun that day.' Put in more emotions into your journaling.
Try something like 'Keith literally jumped up and clapped his hands in glee when it's time for him to open up his birthday presents. He had a hard time deciding whose present to open up first. There were 11 presents for him. You could see a little frown forming on his brows and how he eyes shifted quickly from one present to the next. Finally, he reached out for the biggest present from his Auntie Gillian. He gave the present a bear hug first before ripping open the wrapper. He broke into happy giggles the present revealed a bicycle! Keith ran round and round in excitement before throwing himself at his Auntie Gillian and wetting her face with his sloppy kisses. He almost forgot all about the other presents.'
Want another fun and creative scrapbooking journaling tip? Give the top 10 list a try.
Such lists will practically make you sit up and think hard to squeeze out ten traits, reasons, talents or whatever the challenge may be to hit the quota. And
people just can't get enough of such lists. I know I can't.
Top-ten lists are fun and a brain-teaser. And it's making you think and help you journal more interestingly.
Scrapbooking journaling from the heart doesn't mean serious business all the time. In fact, it can be fun and easy. It’s more of a matter of putting some thoughts and writing from your heart, and breaking away from the usual reporting style of writing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fion Lim is the creator of Everything-About-Scrapbooking.com - Beginner scrapbooking for you? Create pages you can be proud of with ideas for scrapbooking pages, free quotes for scrapbooking, articles, inspirations and more at Everything About Scrapbooking.
