Journal Camp Week 4

Week 4 – Journal With Feeling!
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Last week's winners at the end
Actually this week, we’re going to talk about to related topics: You and Your emotions!

I hear so many people say things like, “I’m not comfortable writing about me,” or “I don’t like doing layouts about myself.” When I hosted the I Wanna Talk About Me challenge at Scrap Bird, I heard lots of reasons why people don’t do layouts with themselves in them. It’s one of the hardest things for most people to do, scrap about themselves. But while you’re scrapping your family’s history for the future to read, if you’re not scrapping you, who is?

Let me ask, why do you scrapbook? There are many different answers, but it all comes down to having something to pass on, keeping the memories of the family unforgotten. I know I scrapbook to hold on to my own memories and to share those memories with the people who were part of them, but also to pass on those memories. Why is that important? Why even bother saving the details about the people who are dear to me?

Simple answer. Because they are part of and important to ME!

Your parents, your spouse, your children, your friends, all reasons and subjects for scrapping and the one thing they all have in common is YOU! If you are scrapping the important people and events in your life, you already scrap about yourself. When thinking about the next generations, isn’t it kinda selfish not to share the author on a page once in a while too?

Journaling in the first person and about yourself is not really any different than any other type of journaling. You’re using helper journaling, simple and embellished captions, lists and blocks of journaling combining those ideas, just the subject is one you know very well.
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Letter to a Friend

You can journal in the first person in a form of helper journaling. “Letter to a Friend,” is done by creating journaling that is styled like a letter, or like a diary entry. You can write a letter to an anonymous person, as in diaries, or to the person for whom you’re doing your scrapbooks. I said it’s a form of helper. You still have to write it, but those styles are tools that make journaling easier.

Here is a page about Journal Camp! It’s in “Letter to a Friend” style, laid out as an advice column response.

Credits: Wild Wild West by Scrappy Cocoa
Journaling Style: Letter to a Friend

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Camera Shy?

My biggest challenge was not including myself in my photo albums. Would you believe I was a blonde for two years? Really, I was, a frizzy, peroxide blonde when I was 18-19. Here, I’ll show you a pict… No I won’t.

It’s not that I don’t want to share. I can’t. I used to never want my picture taken. I had the camera and took all the photos and I wasn’t in many of them. Tori and I were talking about hair and I told her I had been blonde, she couldn’t believe it. But the only photo I have of me with blonde hair was taken just before I got it done again. My roots were showing like mad! It’s a photo booth picture on my 19th birthday, running into the mall with a friend, no makeup. That’s my entire recorded history as a blonde. I was in my 30s when we had that conversation and already I was disappointing the next generation with things I couldn’t show them.

So I end up with this for my layout about my hair:

Credits: – A Happy Day by Shelly Marie Scraps,
template by Kate Duvall
Journal Styles: Embellished captions on a story board
and a list made into a journal block.

First question – WHY? To try something new.

My storyboard sketch includes the pictures in my mind of me buying the spray-in hair bleach, looking at my frizzy, teased blonde hair in the mirror, me wearing the pretty purple tiger stripe blouse I made unbuttoned with a black camisole, ala Madonna(ish)

My list:
Looking back at being blonde…
My eyebrows made it look really bad
It was still the nerdy guys hitting on me
One guy thought I was a prostitute!
Even John and Scotty told me they were glad it was only for a couple years
Blonde was really not such a great choice for me.

And finally the answer to WHAT do I think now? It was part of really growing up and finding my own style.

I was actually a nerd in trendy clothing. I’m married to what I’d have called a nerdy-guy then!
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Lesson to self learned well. I started turning the camera over often in my 20s. Too late for blonde Nani, but in time for a couple shades of red! When I gather with friends and family I always ask for a couple pictures with me in them. Now I’m part of the memories I record! There will be people to whom it really does matter what I was like back when and I’ve quit being disappointing!

Journaling is important to “save” those points in your own history for which you were camera shy. But it’s still not quite the same as having a good photo to go with it. The best way to have a good photo is to have many taken and pick the best one! Don’t turn away when someone points the camera at you! In fact, make sure you have some of you on your camera to scrap. We have to get past the vanity. Remember, we have cropping if you really think you need to change your appearance, but future generations will never get a chance to see us in this moment again!
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Do it with feeling!

One very important question to ask when you journal is, “How does it make you feel?” Scrapbooking is all about capturing memories and celebrating the everyday. Think about it. We make scrapbook pages, works of personal art, for a child playing with a toy, a cat sleeping, friends at a football game or eating fried chicken at a picnic table at the park. We are celebrating the special events and the simple events that make life special. It always enhances your journaling if you put even just a couple of words telling how you feel about the subject!


Talking about emotions is a little bit easier than talking about yourself, because you can direct and project your emotions to someone else! We’ve all heard or said “He’s either happy, or it’s gas” about a smiling baby. When you are scrapping the photo, YOU make that decision and you declare it with your journaling. When you talk about a “happy kitten” or a “playful puppy,” those are your ideas, not theirs. When you journal about what the baby thinks or what the pets think, you use projected emotions. We don’t really ask our pets what they’re thinking. That’s the easiest place to journal using projected emotions, your own emotions without taking ownership of them. The layout from the Speed Scrap at Designs in Digital a few weeks ago, the one that got this whole Journal Camp idea started, is a great example of me bragging and telling what’s going on with ME emotionally without using the phrase, “I’m a good person!”

Credits: Coffee and Chocolate by Mrs. JayBob Designs

Journaling Style – Projected Feelings

The journaling reads:

We don’t have all the details about Carla’s life before she came to live with us. We know she was a pregnant kitten on the streets. She was brought to Paws and Whiskers after giving birth. Life as a kitten on the streets was hard on her and her kittens didn’t survive.

In 2009, she was homeless, pregnant, lived in a cage then adjusted to a new home and a brother and sister that didn’t want her there. By February 2010, her new brother and sister have accepted her and even play with her, she’s been spayed and given a clean bill of health and has free roam of a home with plenty of warm blankets and places to relax. She watches the snow fall, but seems to have no desire to be anyplace else but home.

Of course, I have no way of knowing that Carla is thinking she’s glad she has a home or that she doesn’t want to be anyplace but her nice warm home watching it snow from a distance, but it sure makes David and me seem like great people for making her so happy, doesn’t it? I was thinking to myself, as I watched her watching the snow, how happy it made me that she was with us and how much I liked the fact that we are good cat parents. There would be nothing wrong with journaling exactly that, but by giving that emotional quality to the cat, it made the whole layout cozier, and maybe a little sappier.
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Sometimes we use different artistic ideas to journal. We write letters, or direct our journaling to the subject of the photos, like many people do when scrapping kids, the future they are preserving the past for. When I’m writing in my regular scrapbooks, I usually write in first person, but I’m writing for my nieces, who will someday inherit my scrapbooks.

In Love at 40, I’m telling a little about my mindset just before and at 40 years old in relation to relationships. That was 28 years before Rina and Tori will turn 40. When they turn 40, they’ll be able to remember what the aunt they have always looked so much like looked like on her 40th birthday and compare the mindsets at 40 too.

Credits: One Step at a Time by Digitalegacies Designs

Journaling Style - Storyboard

I still followed the concept of creating a storyboard with embellished captions, but I made them warmly embellished captions. My Storyboard for this layout included the picture in my mind of me in January 2005 making that decision to find a date for my 40th birthday, embellished with “I have a year and a half.” The picture of the sign David drew with crayons on the paper tablecloth with the “Who’s have thought…” part. The pictures of me in my 40 tiara could be the captions “I want to have this date when I turn 50.” That last picture, “David was my best present.”
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Exercise 4
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This is going to be one of those pages so many people say they don’t like doing, but I hope you’re starting to feel the importance of including yourself in your journaling and your scrapping. This week will feature the record keeper, the one who is documenting the family history, your child’s life, the book you’re creating for your Mother’s 60th birthday or your friend’s anniversary. If they mean enough to you to create pages for them, you mean enough to them to have you in the book too!

Create a page about you. Your page needs to have at least one photo of you and a minimum of six sentences in your journaling. You can add as many other photos as you like, but you need to be in at least one of them. The journaling can be a note to the person for whom you’re scrapping, or a “letter to the future’ done in Letter To a Friend style or build your journaling as a storyboard or from a list. Talk about why you’re scrapping the family or why the people you scrap are important to you or just why you enjoy scrapping, why you think it’s important. Mention some of those emotional thoughts, what do you feel for the people in the book or the events you scrap. Make sure that your journaling is in first person, use words like I and me. You’re journaling about you and your feelings.


To get you started, a couple of freebies!

Click previews for downloads
Password is historian


Here is mine:

Credits: kit – All About Me by Jaya Prem’s Hangout
Template – Me Template by Digitalegacies Designs
Journaling Style – Letter To A Friend

When you’ve finished your layout, post it in a scrapbook gallery or on your blog and leave a link to it in comments. Make sure you leave email contact info either with your comment or if you’d prefer to keep your contact information private, send me an email at chroniclesofnani@gmail.com with the title of your layout.

Everyone who leaves a link to their layout by May 31 will receive Stardust by Digitalegacies Designs.


One layout will be chosen by random generator to win a prize from our week 4 sponsor, Scrappy Cocoa! That winner will get a $6 gift certificate for Scrappy Cocoa’s store at Ginger Scraps.


After this layout, treat yourself to some chocolate or your favorite vice and take a breather to get ready. Next week is the final week and the biggie – Journaling without a net – NO PHOTOS! Start thinking about a story you want to make sure is told and saved.

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Journal Camp Sponsor Prize winners from last week
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Shelly Marie Scraps gift certificate
#2 - Karen
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Amberpony Creates gift certificate
#8 - Taztang68

Congratualtions!!. ...........
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