Saturday Tip: Telling Your Story in Your Scrapbook Pages

Hi everyone! It's Amy here and I want to talk about story! For me, the primary reason that I create scrapbook pages is to tell the story of our family. To document the day to day of our lives and illustrate what is important to us. I try to be very intentional in my scrapbooking and make sure that each page illustrates the stories that are important to us. It isn't always easy to do this and I think a lot of people struggle with how to tell their stories when creating pages! Here are a few tips that have worked for me as I've tried to be more intentional about telling stories with my scrapbook pages ...

Tip #1 - The most important tip that I have is to always remember the reasons for telling these stories - whether its to document/preserve the memories or if it's to remember the people, places and things that made you who you are. Knowing this and keeping it top of mind is critical to keeping you focused on the story. It will help guide you and every choice you make on your pages!

Tip #2 - I keep an ongoing list of the overarching types of stories that I want to tell and when I'm stuck on what to tell about a given situation or experience, I can go to that list to help me hone in on what story opportunity might be waiting for me to tell. Here are just a few of the story types that I have on my personal list -

• Accomplishments
• Work
• School
• Friends
• The Stuff of Daily Life
• Interests/Hobbies/Passions
• Daily/Weekly/Monthly Routines
• Culture

Tip #3 - Think about what you wish you'd known about those who came before you ... what are the stories that you wish someone had documented about your ancestors? Unearthing those stories may help to remind you of the things you might want to consider documenting in your own scrapbook pages!

Tip #4 - Let go of the idea that you need to be fancy when writing the stories of your life. This isn't a novel. It's not necessary for it to be a masterpiece. Just get the words on the page and don't worry so much about how 'well written' it might be!  It is important to keep it clean and simple to make sure that the story gets told. If you get fancy, you can make it difficult for people to really see and feel what you're trying to tell!

Tip #5 - Be descriptive and use those details to make your reader hear, feel, see, taste and smell what you are writing about. Those details are what will bring your stories alive for future readers!

I hope that these tips might help you as you tell more stories in your scrapbook pages!  I've pulled together a number of layouts from the WM [Squared] Designs gallery over at ScrapMatters that I think are excellent examples of telling your story in your scrapbook pages! I hope that these pages inspire you to begin telling YOUR stories!