Smashbooking

Ah, an easier way to “scrapbook.” I love and admire the scrapbooks my nieces and others are putting together, both digital and in paper form. However, I have 9 children and 25 grandchildren and I’m just not motivated enough to create family history in this way. I’ve started plenty of projects, but as I tell my daughters, tongue-in-cheek, “I’m nothing if not inconsistent.”

Thus, when I recently attended a class entitled “Smashbooking,” I was intrigued. The instructor was apologetic over how easy her method was. “I just carry stapler, some glue and a pair of scissors with me and stick stuff in this cheap notebook I bought at the first of the school year sale,” she said. “I like to doodle, so I put little drawings in here too. That’s it.”

An example that I did on our trip.

That’s it? This technique reminds me of my daughter’s version of journaling. She is an artist, so she occasionally puts gum wrappers and other found objects in her sketch book and draws little cartoon type people around them. My daughter is a smashbooker. And I saw the possibility of me being one too. I had long kept ticket stubs and programs along with various other miscellanea in my journal file. I have boxes of what I call keepsake items. Not valuable, but things that bring back memories. After you get to be my age, though, those boxes and files multiply and never organize themselves. They haven’t yet turned into the nice orderly row of journals on my shelf. Instead I have rows of miscellaneous notebooks and journals, most of them not quite filled. (See disclaimer above regarding inconsistency.)

So I started a smashbook. My husband and I took a trip to Texas. I kept the smashbook for several days. Then I reverted to my old methods of sticking stuff between the pages of the notebook and waiting for another day to glue, staple and label. I’m waiting for me to print out some photos, I tell myself. Well, I’m still not consistent, but my plan is improving!