I started scrapbooking in June 2004, but I didn't really hit my story-telling groove until early 2005 when I read Clean&Simple by Cathy Zielske.



This book changed the way I scrapped. I started telling meaningful stories about people and relationships and just general observations about life; I stopped scrapbooking every single photo I loved; and I started scrapping out of chronological order. I found my groove and haven't looked back ever since.

These days, I don't have much difficulty journaling on my pages, especially when I'm writing about things that happened recently. It's easy to remember how excited the boys were about the Olympics last month or how proud my older son was when a friend phoned him to ask for help with his math homework, but ask me about something that happened last year or the year before, and my memories are a lot fuzzier. Even worse, ask me what my son's favourite book or song or video was in 2003, back in my pre-scrapbooking days, and I might not be able to tell you. I often find myself stumped for meaningful stories to tell about my pre-2004 photos.



It's a bit sad, isn't it? My boys are now 7 and 9, and they don't have baby albums. I have scrapper's block when it comes to my boys' baby and toddler photos. Thousands of digital files, chock full of chubby-cheeked cuteness, are sitting on my external hard drive, just waiting to be scrapped. Where do I even begin? I had no idea.

Last month, in a seemingly unrelated part of my life (in my office at work), I was cleaning out the old messages from my sent email folder. The IT guys were cracking down on our email storage limits, and I was at risk of having my old messages archived onto an inaccessible drive somewhere in some dark, dank dungeon if I didn't clean up my files. Okay, I made up the part about the dungeon, but the rest of the story is true.

During this email clean-up exercise, I deleted thousands of sent messages about meetings, presentations, missing data, and other unimportant details of projects long since completed. What a dreary, time-consuming task!

But hold on… what was this?! It was a short, two-liner email I'd sent to my sister about the funny face my son made when he tried peas for the first time. Oh, look at this one… a message I sent to my husband about the cute little conversation I had with our then two-year old as we walked to daycare that particular morning. It turns out that I'd discovered a treasure trove of scrapbooking material hidden amongst the trash in my sent box.

With this discovery, I was inspired to create an email-related page, and I challenged two of my talented scrappy friends to do the same.

Lisa Kisch found an email that she'd sent to her friends and family when her daughter, Lily, was just a wee babe. She paired the text from her email message with an adorable photo from the same time period, and the results are beautiful and meaningful.



If you can't see the journalling on the layout, here's what the email said:

Lily is 8 weeks old now, and such a precious baby. She just loves to be cuddled and kissed, and she's a wonderful eater and sleeper. The other night she slept 7 hours in a row! (We won't talk about last night, though, ha ha!) She is about 13 lbs., and is already wearing some 3 month clothing. She is smiling, and following things with her eyes. She loves her mobile and Mr. Panda on the bouncy chair. She is very strong and can hold her head up like a champ! Audrey adores "baby sistah" and is a very big help. Here are photos of Lily, taken today, and one of Audrey, too. I am such a lucky Mommy to have two such sweet and lovely girls!

Stephanie Howell  took my challenge in a different direction and created a page about how her husband's emails from abroad help sustain her when he's deployed. The raw emotion she captured on this page gave me goosebumps.



This page must mean a lot to Stephanie personally, but it also serves to remind the rest of us of the sacrifices that military families around the world make so that all of us may continue to live the blessed lives we're accustomed to living. So to Steph and her family and to all the other military families out there, thank you!

Finally, I'll leave you with my project, created from the emails that started this journey of discovery. I transcribed a few conversations between my precocious toddler and me from email messages to journalling bubbles in Photoshop Elements and printed them out include on this page.

 
Can you read the journaling? I didn't think so. It says:

J: Mommy, look at all the clouds!
M: Oh, wow... what colour are the clouds?
J: Pink!
M: Ummm, I think they are mostly white. Maybe a little bit pink.
J: Oh, they are mostly white.
J: Mommy, I hear a bird.
M: Yes, I hear a bird too.
J: (pointing) Mommy, look there's a bird over there!
M: Yes, I see it.
J: Oh, another bird! He's flapping his arms.
M: (laughing) No, those are his wings. The bird is flapping its wings.
J: Oh, he's flapping his wades.
M: His wings...
J: Oh... wings!
M: James, look! A kitty is crossing the street.
J: I don't see him.
M: Over there, by the blue car.
J: Oh... hi, Kitty! (big smile)
M: He looks like our kitty.
(Cat rubs up against our legs.)
M: Okay, we have to go now. Bye, Kitty!
J: Bye, Kitty! See you a-morrow!

I had a lot of fun creating this page. It's one of my favourite pages with photos from my pre-scrapping days. I plan to search through the sent mail folders on several other email accounts I have, in hopes of finding the next meaningful story to tell.

How about you? Does your email account hold any undiscovered gems? I challenge you to do a quick search through your old messages and find a meaningful story to tell.

Psssst, it’s me. Barb. Sssssh... don’t tell Lain or Angie, but I have no idea why they asked me to host a challenge during this week’s Digi Days celebration. I mean, I’m the last person I’d go to for advice on digital scrapbooking. Seriously. My digital skills are limited, to say the least. I know how to edit (crop and color-correct) my photos in Photoshop Elements, but that’s about it.

But anyone who knows me knows I am not the type to go turning down a good challenge. After all, I was the kid who chose to play oboe because the music teacher told the class it was the hardest instrument to master. Without giving it too much thought, I said yes to Lain and Angie.

Fast forward a week, and here I am, writing this blog post about a topic on which I cannot claim to be an expert. Bear with me, okay? ;) I challenged the Ella Friends to create a scrapbook layout using one of Ella's awesome new digital frames, plus at least one other digital element. The page could either be 100% digital or a hybrid of digital and paper. As my inbox started to fill with these wonderful creations, I was in awe of all that was possible in the digital and hybrid scrapping world.

First up is Noel Culbertson’s page, which is 100 percent digital (you go, girl!). Check out the kraft paper and the beautiful white space. I love that it looks so very real, even though it’s a digital page. I’m going to beg Noel for some pointers on how to achieve this look.

Supplies: paper and elements (Sociology by Paislee Press) + photo frames (Ella Publishing Co.) + font (Helvetica) + digital layout by Noel Culbertson

The next layout that appeared in my inbox was this one by Moon Ko. She tells me she’s a digital newbie, but I wouldn’t have guessed by looking at her page. I love the simple elegance of the design, just like her paper and glue pages.

Supplies: paper and elements (Photogenic by Paislee Press and Audacious Designs) + photo frames (Ella Publishing Co.) + fonts (Lapland Light, Peajay and Impact) + digital layout by Moon Ko

Our fearless leader, Lain, created this page for my challenge. She’s a girl after my own heart, with her use of bright colours and her mixing of digital and “real” scrapbooking supplies. The background paper, embellishments and photo were printed out from a digital file, and then she trimmed it down, adhered it to the yellow patterned paper, stamped the zig zag stitching around the edge and added the trim and bling. A great way to cross over between digi and your paper supplies!

Supplies: patterned paper (October Afternoon) + ribbon (Rusty Pickle) + bling (Heidi Swapp) + zig-zag stamp (Kelly Panacci for SandyLion) + "Family" stamp (Katie Pertiet for Autumn Leaves) + ink (VersaMark) + digital patterned papers and elephant stamp (Jodie McNally for Ella Publishing Co. -- coming soon!) + digital frame (Ella Publishing Co.) + 8½ x 11 hybrid page by Lain Ehmann

Next, the ever-talented Monica McNeill sent me this eye-catching hybrid page. She showcased photos from two different eras and made the connection between them. I love how the vintage Polaroid frames help tell the story on this layout. By the way -- digital is a great way to incorporate precious heritage photos into your pages. You don't have to worry about cutting up the only copy of an old picture... you can scan it in and crop away!

Supplies: paper and embellishments (Studio Calico, Cotillion kit) + digital frame (Ella Publishing Co.) + font (Traveling Typewriter) + 8 x 8 hybrid page by Monica McNeill 

Finally, I’ll leave you the hybrid page I created with the very cool masking tape frame that’s part of the awesome prize package we're giving away on Friday. I added a bit of dimension to my digital elements by printing the framed photo twice and hand-cutting the tape from the second print-out and sticking it on top of the tape on the framed photo, just so it looks like it’s popping off the page a bit. I printed the circular star tag the exact size of one of my circle punches so I could punch it out quickly, stick it on top of another punched cardstock circle and ink the edges to give it that finished look.

Supplies: patterned paper (BasicGrey, Scenic Route) + letter stickers, staples, brads (Making Memories) + spiral notebook punch (Stampin’ Up!) + digital frame (Ella Publishing Co.) + digital embellishment (Sande Krieger for 2Peas in a Bucket) + 8½ x 11 hybrid page by Barb Wong

So there you have it! One challenge taken up by five scrapbookers, resulting in five very different pages. I hope you’ll find a bit of inspiration here and take us up on the Digi Days challenge posted on Monday. I love learning from and being inspired by you.

NOTE: Ella thinks Barb did quite a satisfactory job... in fact, we think she's Digi-delightful! :) Thanks, Barb!