Add more journaling to your scrapbook pages!

Hi everyone. I thought I'd throw some light on different ways that you can improve your journaling or add more journaling to your scrapbooks. When you think about it, for the most part, that's why most of us create layouts in the first place. To capture memories and document them. But how many times have you gone back to a layout you've done 6 months ago, and remember some of the smaller details, like a special conversation you might have had, or the emotions you felt when you took that picture? All too often we write our journaling last after we've designed the page, rather than make the page fit the journaling. Why not try some of these ideas to improve the quality of the pages that tell your story:

• Keep a small note book with you to record the emotions you were feeling when you took particular pictures at certain events. Capture some of the small details or record that cute conversation you had so that it is fresh in mind when you scrap the picture.
• Try journaling the five senses. What did you see, touch, taste, hear and smell?
• Try writing a list for your journaling. For example, if you are scrapbooking something about a birthday, try writing a list as long as the person's age, about what you like about them
• Maybe the photo has a hidden story - try journaling about what you DON'T see in the photo.
• Type of the journaling of the story BEFORE you start your scrapbook page
• Try explaining the story behind the picture using only adjectives or adverbs, but not sentences.
  
• Write the journaling as if the actions or event in the photo is happening RIGHT NOW. Write in the active voice, in the present, rather than describing the past and you'll find your text is more alive.

I hope that you'll incorporate some of these ideas into your scrapbook pages. You'll find that when you make journaling your first thought, and not the last, your pages will have more meaning for you, and that's really what it's all about.