Scrapbooking with Stampin' Up!

Over the years I have been a little frustrated from time to time with the almost-complete lack of emphasis that Stampin' Up! has placed on stamping in scrapbooking. I don't understand it. If you conduct a Google search for Stampin' Up! scrapbook pages you will be rewarded with a bunch of pages that don't tell stories and generally are pretty but don't actually have actual photos.

A year or two ago, Stampin' Up! teamed up with Becky Higgins to create a few Project Life items for Stampin' Up!--an encouraging move that did bring a little bit of scrapbooking to the Stampin' Up! Army.

To me, a scrapbook page needs to tell a story. 

When I was a SU demonstrator, I wrote a blog called "Stamp Your Story"...that's how much I believe in this concept. In the years since, Hero Arts has taken up the Stamp Your Story mantle as well.

Renown scrapbooking enthusiast, Stacy Julian was recently quoted on a ScrapGals podcast as saying "I'd rather have stories without photos than photos without stories." I agree with her 100 percent!

It's the story that must be preserved.
The photos are just supporting evidence.

Finally, a few weeks ago I came to realize *why* I think Stampin' Up! does not fully embrace stamping in your scrapbook as extensively as I wish they would--the reason is very simple.

Completion. 

With card-making (Stampin' Up!'s biggest section), the process of creating a beautiful card--from the moment you cut the base to the moment it's ready to go into an envelope, is not (or doesn't have to be) a long process. We all know that there's a certain amount of gratification that comes with completing a project in a few minutes and knowing that very soon someone you love (like?) will be enjoying your creation.

I think, by and large, card-makers have gotten hooked on that gratification so much that they see completing a scrapbook page as a process that takes too long and may not be enjoyed by anyone else for a while. A scrapbook page usually does take longer to complete. There are more steps to the process and more elements to include. And the "canvas" is usually larger.

Just a note: you will never see scrapbook pages on my blog without photos. I don't believe in those. A scrapbook page is a personal creation and while I've done my fair share of those go-to-a-class-make-a-page-for-later deals, I now know that most often, they never get completed.  They become drawer dwellers.

In Sarah's world, a scrapbook page consists of four elements:

a story (the details you can't derive from just looking at the photo)

a title

a photo or two or three

a bit of creative embellishment

Please note that "the story" doesn't have to be some emotionally-charge, uber-observational, over-analyzed, life-altering, 8000 word essay on the meaning of life. While there may be a time and place for those pages,  "the story" can be simply dates and places, and other basic details.

With this in mind, I'm going to transfer some of the scrapbook pages I have completed for the old blog (from a few years back) to this one in order to attempt to get all my stuff together in one place. (It's been a few years, so some of the products will be retired.)

Happy stamping and scrapbooking!

--Sarah