never say never

I don't scrapbook and most of you that visit regularly know that. When the kids where babies, I tried to resurrect my forgotten journaling skills. I didn't want to forget all the special moments in their lives—it didn't stick. [But boy oh boy did I take photos!]

I used to journal and keep what could be called scrapbooks when I was in high school. I had several really thick books of all sorts of collected memories. I saved concert or movie ticket stubs, notes from friends (passed around class with what we called "mano-mail"—for those of you that don't know mano means hand in Spanish), sketches and whatever else I could get my hands on to remember special dates. I was really into it.



Sadly, I don't have any of those scrapbooks because I willingly got rid of them in a single afternoon. I was 19 and I decided that I didn't want my boyfriend (who I foolishly assumed would be more than that one day) to ever find and read them. Silly. Silly. Silly me.

So, here I am several (ahem) years later inspired to give it another go.

Scrapbooking layouts are something that really don't appeal to me because I'd be thinking and rethinking them. I know myself to well to know that it would become more of a design exercise than a memory keeping exercise. Aside from that I live in a small house. Where in the world am I going to put a bunch of scrapbooking books (assuming this new phase does stick!)?

I like capturing moments in small snippets—like I do with the photos I take. I didn't think there would be a way to do that with scrapbooking and journaling until I started reading Ali's blog and saw the way she's working through her Project Life.

Yep, it's all your fault Ali!

I've ordered some grid journaling cards and photo pocket pages, even though I still have my doubts about liking the whole plastic thing. As far as the cards, I think that adding color to them will be a great way for me to use up some of my scraps stash.

I was also contemplating doing something similar (small cards) but scanning them in and turning a year of journaling into a Blurb book—but again, I'd be running into the designer side of me and I'd never get to actually journaling vs planning a layout. I want this to be something really simple but fun to do and that's why I think the pocket system would work better for me—for now.



What inspired me? - A mental snapshot I took (didn't have my camera with me—grrr!) of my bike against little C's at the entrance of a coffee shop. We stopped there midway through our ride. It's the furthest we've gone (she just learned how to ride last month) and it just felt like a special moment. The first time out of the neighborhood. The first time out of our comfort zone—and it dawned on me that I wanted to write about it. I don't want to forget it.

So, while I worked on all the paper goods and photos you see here, I used one of my own Mod Borders to create my first journaling card and I wrote about our ride.

It's a beginning. Let's see where this leads me.

My Mod Borders are now available in the shop—and fear not, I haven't forgotten those of you that don't have cutting machines! I will have PDF printables of these stationery sets available on Monday. All I have to add is that as I worked with these borders all I could think of was that it would be awesome to see these designs on ribbon—I'd love that!

Happy weekend everyone!