My Evolution as a Life Artist

I got introduced to scrapbooking in 2004 by a good friend, Christine.  Back then, it was therapeutic for me, being in a long distance marriage at that time.  I also wanted to scrapbook the dozens of photos we have of our wedding.  Here is my very first attempt, and one of my all-time favorites at that (photos by Chito Vecina)!

Up until 2008, I was a paper scrapbooker.  I have tons of scrapbooking supplies that fills up an entire room in our house.  Sadly, I'm more of a hoarder than a scrapbooker because I tend to buy more than I am able to churn out pages.  I love the high of getting my hands on the latest and greatest product.  I love the feel of paper in my hands.  From 2004 until 2007, I have created 64 paper layouts.  In fact, here is the last paper layout I created way back in 2007:

But let's face it, I'm a wife and a mom first and foremost.  I also have a very demanding full time job and I have a household to run.  I do not have the luxury of sitting down for hours on end just to plan and create a single layout, and then spend another hour or so cleaning up the mess.  I also cannot lay all my supplies on the floor without my kids playing along and contributing to the mess, which was why I basically stopped creating layouts, but continued to accumulate supplies. 

In 2008, I ventured into digital scrapbooking when I created layouts for Calix's first birthday guestbook which you can find here. As you can see, the photos looked awkward because I didn't know how to size them properly at that time, but I was immediately hooked!  I love that everything I needed was right at my computer.  I can re-use my favorite papers and supplies over and over again.  I do not have to make a mess of the room, and spend considerable amount of time cleaning up afterwards.  I love that my layouts are not bulky anymore.  My husband has been constantly teasing me that I'd probably need to rent storage space for all my albums.  Now, I can fit 60 pages (the most I've done in a year) into a single 12x12 photobook, and print individual pages for my kids' respective albums.  I can easily print layouts in duplicates.  I can print photobooks of all the layouts I've created for the year for the grandparents to enjoy.  With the help of digital templates, I can easily whip up a layout in 30 minutes (give or take a few).  In fact, I have created a total of 103 individual pages and 5 photobooks to date since 2008 - December Daily 2009, 2009 Year in Review, A Week in the Life, Beautiful Evidence albums, plus Calix's first year layouts which I used in his guestbook.

I have definetely gone a long way since I first ventured into scrapbooking in 2004.  But, paper or digital, I continue to fulfill my main objective of documenting life, preserving memories and telling stories.  This is the one thing that will never change, even as I continue to evolve as a life artist.