Ideas for a Book of Me

We scrapbook about our kids, our trip to the park, our dog, and everything else except ourselves. Indeed, many of us (including myself) are hesitant to scrapbook about ourselves. There are several reasons for this that I can think of:

1)It is considered impolite or narcissistic to talk about ourselves.

2)We are usually the ones behind the camera, and thus are left with few pictures of ourselves.

3)We think it has to be deep and serious (for more about that visit this post).

4)We get stuck in the habit of recording events, and forget to put things in a broader, more meaningful context.

Yet telling our life story is important. It is also easier than you may think. Most of us already have an online profile, and we tell our story through words and pictures we post on Facebook and other social networking sites. In fact, it is a simple step to organize that into a scrapbook. Here are some ideas I've either done myself, seen others do, or plan to do in the future:

• Favorite things. This could be very general (think “Sound of Music”) or it could be specific, such as favorite foods, book, movies, or anything else.


• Places I've been or would like to go


• Names: Nicknames, maiden names, meaning of your name


• Goals you have, or goals you've accomplished and how you did it


• Why people think I'm weird (if you're brave)


• Celebrities that friends have compared to you, including pictures


• Then & Now – Comparing a childhood picture with a recent one, how I've changed, if I knew then what I know now


• A day in the life of me


• About me in a casual, stream-of-consciousness style


• Your job – a description of your job, why you like it (or don't like it), why your job is important

The possibilities are endless, and these are just a few of them. Remember, your life story is worth telling, so start scrapping about it!

Getting layout ideas

While writers often struggle with writers' block, scrapbookers struggle with (um...) scrapper's block. It's happened to me many times before. I sit down to scrap my photos, assuming that the layout is going to automatically manifest itself on the screen. Then my mind goes blank and I can't think of how to start. How many pictures should I include? Should I do a collage or just one big photo? What color scheme and fonts should I use?

Ideas can sometimes feel like a limited commodity, but they don't have to be. Ideas are everywhere. No man exists on an island, and this couldn't be more true for us scrapbookers. In fact, the best way to get ideas is look around and seek inspiration from others. I get many ideas from these sources:

Books
When you go to your local thrift store, look for books about scrapbooking. I've built a small library of scrapbooking books that I've picked up for a couple of bucks each. When I'm looking for some fresh ideas, I pick one off the shelf and flip through it.

Surf the Internet
Surfing the Internet is the most obvious solution, as you are already on the computer. Search Google images for scrapbook layouts that people have posted to blogs and websites.

Scrapbook.com
Users like me have uploaded hundreds of thousands of layouts on Scrapbook.com. I scan through them every few days to get ideas. You can return the favor by uploading your own, too! This is also a great way to connect with other scrappers.

Advertisements
The most talented people in graphic design go into advertising. The rest of us make scrapbooks and blog about it. Magazine ads, catalogs, and billboards can give you great ideas about how to arrange your own pictures on a page. They also have catchy word art that you can mimic with your software.

Artists
Yes, I believe scrapbooking itself is an art. Yet we can also look at other art for inspiration. I've gotten many ideas from other artists, such as this word mask here.



Play pretend
I have had fun making layouts look like something else. There are many ways you can do this. I have made a newspaper article:




And a comic strip:



I've also seen layouts done to look like a wanted poster, a magazine cover, or an ad for a TV show. Playing pretend is a clever, fun way to depict your story or event.

Nature
Nature inspires many artists, and scrapbookers are no exception. Nature has been the inspiration of many of my layouts:





The key to finding ideas is to develop a scrapbooker's eye (yes, I made that term up). If you are always thinking about your next layout, you will constantly be inspired by things around you. You will find that you have more ideas than time to use them.