Tips for Journaling

[KristinCB]

If there is anything I struggle with most when it comes to scrapbooking it's the journaling and telling the stories.. Share your best tips!

Also if possible share your tips for journaling older photos where you may not remember exactly what was happening.

[Nikki Epperson]

gahhhh, I have no tips. I'm so bad at journaling unless I'm REALLY upset, lol!

[fifilur]

Sorry, I really suck at journaling!

[ClaudiKnits]

oh.... Journaling is something I often struggle too .... When I journal about older photos when I don't really know what the story was I journal (if at all) about what the photo means for me today!

[clearskies]

I am a huge journaler... I ask myself what I want to remember about that photo/activity 5 or 10 years from now? What details am I most likely to forget? And then I write from there.

Generally I try to choose my pictures for a page and type up the journaling within a week...I save that as a .txt file. Then when I'm ready to scrap (sometimes years later) I know what pictures I want and the journaling is done and ready to go.

Unfortunately started this system in 2010, so for 2009 all I have picked out are the pics. (I call it 'the lost year'...) Not having the stories written totally kills my mojo in wanting to scrap those pages, but when I do go back and work on them I try to keep my journaling present tense...that way all of my books read the same...

HTH!

[nesser1981]

I'm a terrible journaler. It sounds so lame and forced. LOL! I try to include something if it's not obvious what's going on in the photos.

Now, my about me layouts, I don't mind journaling on those.

[JenM]

I am a very "just the facts jack" kind of journaler although I would love to be one of those people who could lay it all out there and put my heart out on my page. I have tried but it always feels wrong to me, so I stick to my who, what, where!

I will go back in and look at what I wrote on Facebook or on my blog for inspiration.

[Keely~B]

Really, I think the best thing is to not overthink it. I'm convinced that journaling never detracts, and even if it's not stellar, I think having your voice on the layout is a positive thing. Sometimes emotion vomit is good, sometimes just the who/what/when suffices. What I know for a fact, memory is a fickle thing and any details, point of view, is a good thing.

[ttt83]

I am not good at journaling at all. I try to for my pocket scrapbooking album but I have the feeling I am telling the same every week.

[mariewilcox]

I'm a journaler (which is funny because I never kept a journal growing up or even as an adult), but I feel like the photos don't mean a thing without a story or explanation; sometimes they don't but I really hate looking through the albums of photos I've inherited and wondering who the heck the people are, where they were, what they were doing etc. I really want to know who they were and why they should mean something to me, KWIM

The only tip I have is to write it as if you are talking to someone about the photos - what would you say about the photos, then get it down.

[mariewilcox]

Originally Posted by ttt83

I am not good at journaling at all. I try to for my pocket scrapbooking album but I have the feeling I am telling the same every week.

This is why I really dislike doing pocket pages,so I don't

[Sherri Tierney]

Photos bring back floods of memories for me so I can usually look at an older photo and remember the whole story. That is what I journal. If there are details I don't remember then I journal what I do and talk about how I feel about the photos, etc.

[jacinda]

I love journalling. I don't write loads on every layout, but when I do write something I usually write as if my daughter is standing next to me looking at the layout, and I'm explaining what's going on, or why I'm scrapping this moment. I tell them how much they are loved. I share advice I might have found on the internet, or a lesson learnt. If I just have a nice photo with no real story to go with it, I'll often find a nice quote to put on it instead. I worry that one day I won't be around to explain the photos to my girls, or I won't be around to give them good advice in their teen years, so I try to include as much info as I can, so there's more meaning to their albums than just photos of themselves.

Here's an example where I used a poem that I really love. It has a message I want my daughter to hear, so I include it in her scrapbook, and hope between now and her teenage years, she'll take the message to heart:



This one I journalled directly to my daughter, explaining why I was so happy so see her love of books grow:



Here's one I wrote for my girls to read in the future. Advice about travel. I wrote it like I was writing them a letter. They may not be travellers now, but one day they will be, and I want them to be excited about it, but also realise that there's no place like home.



The journal card in this kit inspired the following journalling. I thought about how the world demands perfection, and what pressure is put on youth these days. I wanted my girls to know they don't have to be perfect, and that we're all a work in progress:



Sometimes a good quote says it much more eloquently than I can:



I look back at my great grandparent's photos, and I know nothing about them. Besides an occasional name on the back, that's all there is. I pick up photos of my own childhood and barely recollect the details. As the years go by, I forget more and more of the little moments in my youth. I want my girls to have all that information about themselves, and should I die before they do, they will know of my love for them from my own mouth, or in my own words, rather than having to ask Dad or Nana or someone else how much their mum loved them.

[britaneejean]

Originally Posted by clearskies

I am a huge journaler... I ask myself what I want to remember about that photo/activity 5 or 10 years from now? What details am I most likely to forget? And then I write from there.

This is what I do too! I also ask what I'd like my kids to know about this page and why I felt it was important enough to scrap.

[kristijoy]

When I first started scrapping I hated journaling. It just sounded so CORNY! Took me a couple years to be comfortable listening to my own written voice. What I mainly concentrate on (more than the number of words) is capturing the simple things behind the event. My son's feelings, the simple 'why?' did we buy that thing, what made me happy about it, etc..

[marlathrall]

I do a whole lot of who, what, when... Journaling is so awkward for me and I'm always worried I will make a silly mistake. lol.

[nietis]

I'd say, just aim to write at least one or two sentences on each of your pages. It's the way of making it a habit for me.
I usually journal about what happened in the photos, when, where, how, why...
There are times when I just want to dump emotion on a page, that doesn't come easy, but it does make me feel so much better afterwards. Scrap therapy!

[jak]

I'm not a big talker IRL and I don't tend to write a lot on my pages either... a few sentences usually. I mainly stick to the who, what, when ,where, why, etc. I rarely do emotional stuff or all about me pages.

[LeeAndra]

I try to tell the story behind the story.

e.g.

If I'm scrapping a birthday photo, anyone seeing it is going to figure out that it is a birthday photo, right? Whomever it is is also going to see whether the birthday person is a boy or gurl, approximately what age they are, etc. etc.

I try to tell the story that the photo cannot... like why is this particular birthday/party special, what made the birthday person especially happy/sad/mad/frustrated this year, or what I want the birthday person to know/remember that may not be obvious from the photo(s) I scrapped.

I include a lot of 'ooshy-gooshy' in my journaling, too. What kid doesn't like hearing how much his/her mom loves him/her, right?! Besides that, my voice/perspective is impossible to gather from simply looking at a photo. Why did I take a photo at this second at this angle? What did I see as important/meaningful and why?

The only person who can tell my story is me. If I don't do it, who will? If I believe in my story and my kids' story enough to scrap it, why wouldn't I journal it, too?

[staciahall]

Because I inherited a huge box of my grandma's photos I often scrap some of them that I've scanned. I write things that I've heard from my dad or even my grandma about that time in their lives, I talk about the things they accomplished, how different her life was from mine, how different the places are now from how they were in the photos. I do it to try and give a sense of how she was when she was younger to my kids when they look at the albums.

I do try to journal on most of my pages, realizing that the stories are important, more important to me sometimes than the photos. I scrap a lot now with CT stuff and heavy journaling isn't always happening for all of my layouts. I'm trying to get a better balance on it. My pocket pages do have little stories from our right now.

[anelia]

If I don't remember details, I just include title, date, place and event. Usually, I keep my photos in folders that I name with date, name, event (e.g. date/month/year_place_event, like 20May2015_NAME_birthday).
I don't know, it's probably just me but when I look at photos, I kinda remember what happened and it comes natural to write a thing or two. I'm not a fan of long journaling because I like big photos on my pages and there usually isn't enough space for text

[hosanhelwa]

I also struggle with journaling. On top of debating the what to write, I also struggle with the language in which to write it! With French being my first language, but English being the one I use in every day life outside of home, and the one I communicate with especially on sites like this, I'm always going back and forth in my head between the two, and most of the time end up writing nothing, or only the date and place. Just something I've always struggled with.

[KristinCB]

These are such great tips! Often when I journal (ie a pretty page for my daughter etc) I do often journal as if I was talking to her but then it often sounds contrived or that i'm saying the same things over and over.. I am going to try and work with some of these tips though!

I wonder if we could start a weekly journal prompt challenge of some kind?

[ChristineF]

I used to hate journaling on my pages, mostly because I journal in English (my mind works in that language even though we live in Norway and I speak Norwegian every day) and my written English isn't perfect. Then thanks to a few challenges I started journaling and now I just journal whatever comes to ming when I'm working on my layout. I often write as if I'm speaking to or writing a letter to my children. And I journal straight from my guts, the emotions count.

I have a few pages that are pure journaling to tell them a story or explain something.





A few about me pages







Then some of those for my children are either very short and sweet to explain a picture or very long to explain much more.

[ClaudiKnits]

Originally Posted by KristinCB

I wonder if we could start a weekly journal prompt challenge of some kind?

oh.... I would love this!!!!

[breakingbrie]

I used to feel horribly dorky journaling on my los. But once I printed some and realized there were no stories, I try to do it on almost all - but not all.

I take a lot of photos. And when the twins were born, everything was a fog, and I couldn't remember who was fed when unless I wrote it down. I started writing everything down! I still even now have little bits of paper, even receipts with little stories written on them and dated. This way I can scrap that when I get to that particular story, or a photo from around that date. But even so, there are lots of ways to add journaling.

Since I take so many photos that I love, if I scrap an event or day, and I don't use all the photos, I can still scrap a single photo I love and I don't have to add anything to it - the story has already been scrapped.


Sometimes I just scrap a story without a photo. I like to have the random stories down even if there isn't a pic.


Sometimes I scrap the exact story, quotes and all, repeating a conversation I loved.


Also, what I've found that helps me add journaling, is that one day these scrapbooks are going to be theirs. I like that they're going to be basically big books of letters from me to them. I scrap all kinds of different things, but I almost always journal as if I'm talking to them, writing them a letter.

Some different ways you can add text, tell what was happening that day, tell what you were feeling that day, tell something about that phase in their life around when the photo was taken as opposed to exactly what was happening that day. Sometimes I just pick a photo to scrap and journal about how much I love them

[breakingbrie]

Originally Posted by KristinCB

These are such great tips! Often when I journal (ie a pretty page for my daughter etc) I do often journal as if I was talking to her but then it often sounds contrived or that i'm saying the same things over and over.. I am going to try and work with some of these tips though!

I wonder if we could start a weekly journal prompt challenge of some kind?

See, that first part is why I try to write stuff down! I want the journaling to be more than just how much I love them, or what I feel all.the.time. But, hey, if one day Caitlyn has to read how much I love her over and over and over on my los, then at least she'll know I love her

And I think a weekly prompt would be cool. It might be nice to have different prompts for ideas or types of journaling we don't always think of!

[rach3975]

My best (only?) tip is to write things down when they happen instead of waiting until you're scrapping them. I have a diary/journaling app on my phone (Diaro). Most days I write down a few things we did, a funny story, or a cute kid quote. Before that I was constantly writing stuff on paper scraps, then I put them in my desk drawer to journal from. As much as I love photos, it's the journaling that most brings me back to a moment or reminds me what my kids were like at a particular age. The stories are also the part of my albums that my kids love most, reading about the silly things they did and said.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

[Tronesia]

Originally Posted by clearskies

I am a huge journaler... I ask myself what I want to remember about that photo/activity 5 or 10 years from now? What details am I most likely to forget?

This what I do too.
Sometimes if it is a thought I may forget and don't want to, I will type it and save it as a .txt file in the same folder as the photo. I keep my photos organized by months for each year.

Another thing I like to do is tell the stories of my childhood. A photo may remind me of a particular moment or I may have multiple photos from the same day and will use some of the extras to scrap a memory of my own and relate it back.