Do you scrap layouts about yourself?

Traci Reed

Traci Reed

Well-known member
No neccessarily emotional art journaling layouts but more like layouts about your history, your teen years, likes and dislikes.

I make a lot of product for these type of layouts because over the last few years and with the death of grandparents I barely knew, I've become convinced that no one is going to tell MY story but me and I don't want my kids and grandkids to be left after I die not knowing anything about me. I have so many questions about my grandmothers and only really get any secondhand information from my parents (who are obviously very biased as they only saw their lives from the outside.)

So my RQOTD is, do you scrap about yourself? Why or why not?
 
I try to but nothing in depth. And that's something I need to fix. I like you don't want to "forgotten" or "not known" so I really need to focus on more layout AAM. That way Kennedy will know more about me, and her children as well.
 
While I think they would be great topics to scrap, I don't find myself inspired to do them. I have a hard time scrapping pages about myself in general.
 
I started an about me album, about 4 years ago with those type topics, but i never finished, Keira got sick. But i have a notebook w/ all those topics & i journaled about them. I did it on mid shift the last month imwas in the air force. I'd like to revisit it some day.
 
I do. I want my kids to know about me. No one else knows what I got up to when I was in the Army, or how I felt about my military career. No one else knows what made me choose my husband and how we dated (and hubby is hardly the type to talk to the kids about his side of it). I'm the only one who can talk about my childhood from MY perspective, and the way I've dealt with challenges in my adulthood. I think histories of ourselves will be invaluable to our children as they grow.
 
Yes I do. I really hate being in front of the camera, REALLY, but I don't mind doing pages about/for me. I find that a. they're pretty cathartic b. I want to have documentation of the "real" me in whatever particular frame of mind I'm in. For me, sometimes it's way easier to express myself on a layout than it is IRL . I have this weird thing where I don't put my private self out there beyond my immediate family but I have no problem letting the random scrapping community into my head via my layouts.
 
Not as much any more but when I paper scrapped I did a BoM (Book of Me) that is over 100 pages. It tells my story from birth up to a couple years after my DH died. I wanted to make sure my kids knew who I was but also who their dad was, especially Cheyanne since she was only 2-1/2 when he died and never knew him. Doing the BoM was great scrap therapy for me at that time.

I do still scrap an occasional page about me to keep updated - I did a layout about turning 50 last summer, and I just put those into my regular yearly photo books.
 
I've done quite a few scrap therapy pages in the last couple weeks, but no, I haven't done the more informational pages about myself...but, now that you mention it, it's pretty important. When I was a paper scrapper, before I had babies, I did a whole album of all the pics I had of DH and myself from when we met til we got married, and then a wedding album, but none of that really tells the story of ME.

Hmm, I think it would be super amazing to have a running AAM challenge this year. One with specific topics each week so that we're sure to tell about everything, even the stuff we don't really want to tell about. I'd even help, or head it up if need be.

Now I'm kinda excited.
 
I started an AAM album when we had challenge here for it a couple years back, but I haven't finished it... I wanted to do all the prompts. So, I don't scrap about myself until it's for a challenge or a kit talks to me and it works better to do a page about me than about kiddo... ;)
 
My innermost thoughts are kept to myself, or shared to my friends, my Mum...

My AAM pages are purely visual, because what works for me as scrap therapy is playing with colour. The pages feature me and my outfits because it so happens that I have lots of pictures of my outfits - because I also tend to dress in colour and like to remember it.

But if there is a message in the layouts, it's symbolic and only for me or those it's meant to be for. They know, and it's enough for me. :-)

Does it make any sense I wonder?
 
I need to be better about this... I don't really get very deep in most of my layouts because I'm not sure where I want them to go. I mean, I don't want to put them in our yearly album do I? Well, maybe?

Something to think about for sure.
 
marlathrall said:
I need to be better about this... I don't really get very deep in most of my layouts because I'm not sure where I want them to go. I mean, I don't want to put them in our yearly album do I? Well, maybe?

Something to think about for sure.
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I put all my AAM layouts in my own album. Just like my kids have albums about them, I have ones about me.
 
SeattleSheri said:
While I think they would be great topics to scrap, I don't find myself inspired to do them. I have a hard time scrapping pages about myself in general.
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This is mostly me. I do them every now and then when there is something specific that I want to remember. But, not very often. I have done some pages from my childhood and from the days before I was married, etc. But, my biggest problem with those pages is that I don't have many photos from my childhood or all the photos are in a box and need to be scanned (or they were destroyed by decorative scissors during my paper scrapping days - UGH!).
 
Not until recently. I really just liked scrapping all the pics of my adorable kids. Then they grew up and stopped letting me take photos. And I had a breakdown and needed to get things out of my head and find ME again.

I understood the importance of AAM pages before, but like Sheri and Lydia, I just wasn't compelled or inspired to do it. Even after losing my mom. I firmly believe in times and seasons, and I recognize that it's not always going to be a priority for every mommy and they shouldn't have to add it to the things that makes them feel guilty or like a failure (we all have a list like that, don't we?). For others, like me, it's a critical part of our journey, and I hope the non-AAMers appreciate the different perspectives we might have on the subject and not be quick to label us with narcissism and selfishness.
 
I'd say about a quarter of my layouts are about me these days. Or about things that I alone do, like making yogurt, doing laundry or grocery shopping. I didn't for a long time but once the boys were both in school full time my priorities shifted a bit. I don't do a lot of in depth emotional stuff very often but I do pages of stuff from my childhood & college years and things from since 2002. I'm sort of lacking photos from 1992 to 2002 & there really wasn't much going on then except our wedding & buying the house.

Many of them were because I was on Eva's CT & she did so many girlish kits and I'm the only girl here. :) They boys don't like it if I put pink or too many flowers on layouts about them so I did a lot of me related layouts in the 2.5 years I was with her.

Plus these days I am as likely to have photos about me or my activities as I am about the boys so it's fairly easy for me to get something together. I've never consciously assembled an AAM album but I have a huge list of topics & pick & choose from it from time to time as well as just being inspired by whatever my latest 365 photo is of.
 
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I do scrap about myself. I've made a concious effort to capture things about my childhood, that I knew would interest my son. As he gets older, I"m sure there will be other things, I'll think of writing down! I've also made an effort to write things down about his grandparents. I've done an ABC album for my mother and when I get pictures of my Dad (or inlaws) I try to write something down. Last year I did LO's of my Dad in his Kayak and playing Ping Pong at the rec center! I've also done some of my parents high school photos (like my Dad in the Marching band the year he graduated in '61 !)
 
jacinda said:
I put all my AAM layouts in my own album. Just like my kids have albums about them, I have ones about me.
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I do the same thing. I have one album for myself and one for DH. They start with our baby pictures and work up to our marriage. After our marriage, they mostly contain personality specifics about each one of us. (Like my DH's rockets, jobs, or my martial arts). I also have an "US" album that is chornological for life events that happened to both of us after our marriage: Various trips we've taken, cars we've purchased, moves we've made, etc.
 
I don't do deep therapy pages.

I'm actually working on an album of childhood memories (good, not bad). Toys I played with, toy I wished for but never got, what McDonald's was like when I was a kid (before play spaces and Happy Meals), restaurants we used to eat at that have gone out of business, that my mom used to pop popcorn at home and put it in a bag and we took it into the movies and that is just the way it worked, memories of teachers, etc. It's been kind of fun to work on.

I also do pages similar to Stacey42 when I try new things like learning how to eat with chopsticks, when I took classes to learn how to decorate cakes, etc. It's been a while since I've done a page like that. I guess I need to get some new things to learn or do down on my list for 2013.
 
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ltarbox said:
... my biggest problem with those pages is that I don't have many photos from my childhood or all the photos are in a box and need to be scanned (or they were destroyed by decorative scissors during my paper scrapping days - UGH!).
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Most of my AAM pages are without photos. I just record the story - that's the part that's most important to me anyway. Photos are a bonus if I can get them.
 
I will be doing a book bout myself - likely a small one - from childhood right to our marriage - and it will be a keepsake for our son. Someday... still on toddler album right now... LOL

Holly :)
 
I really got into doing pages about myself last year. I love doing them. Mine are not always deep but they share parts of me I think my kids would like when they get older. :)
 
I do a lot of AAM that are scrap therapy, not so much about my own personal history. It is something I should do though. I also need to do a better job about scrapping my Mom and her stories while she is still able to share them with me. That should probably be the next project I tackle. Honestly though, projects scare me. I think I am a "more in the moment" kind of scrapper.
 
That is an excellent idea, if I can get her to co-operate. She is starting the onset of dementia and can't recall much of the "current" past, but she can remember the "past" past really well still. She gets pretty blue talking about it though, as most of the people in her past are now gone, so I need to be careful. Once she starts crying, so do I, and then not much else gets done.
 
jacinda said:
Most of my AAM pages are without photos. I just record the story - that's the part that's most important to me anyway. Photos are a bonus if I can get them.
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Yeah - I need to record more of my childhood memories. I have some good ones . . . :D
 
I think its very important to scrap about yourself as well as your family, having said that I havent ever done that! I think I am a bit shy to open my heart and bare all. I want to but to be honest I am a bit afraid, I really do need to inspire myself to do this :)
 
In response to the original RQOTD, yes. But I'm pretty sure that comes as a surprise to no one who's seen my layouts. :D
 
Yes. It started about a year ago and it was ALL Mrs. Reed's fault. True story. She makes a lot of gorgeous AAM kits. SO, being on her team and wanting to do my requirements, I started making AAM pages. Then I started LIKING it! And now, I tend to scrap about me as much as I do about my kids!!!!

I have decided that my AAM pages (no matter what emotion I am sharing) will help my sons be a better husband/father some day. Hopefully they will see that even their mom was over whelmed, easily tired but enjoyed the small little joys in her life. SO when they or their significant other face those emotions, maybe they will not feel so alone and maybe respond in a better way than what I do most days. At least, that is what I am hoping. :)
 
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