Book of Scraps

I have been introduced, these past few blog-filled months, to digital scrapbooking. I find it very intriguing. Less so because of the esthetics. More so because of the technical prowess necessary, I would assume, to create some of the pages I have seen. As for me, I think I will stick to the messy, beautiful, textile-tangibility of ripping paper and gluing it down.

My idea of the perfect scrapbook is a huge, heavy, bulging-at-the-seams, book with bits sticking out everywhere, even when it's closed. My old diaries are good examples of this. They began at flat, crisp empty notebooks--white pages with faint blue lines, and ended as a tattered jumble of colourful bits barely held together. If you've read "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," you've read about one such book. They jammed the pages so full of their precious memories that is was nearly bursting.

This technique is not crisp. It is NOT tidy. It does not involve pre-packaged "scrap packs," or flower stickers. It's about taking actual life-scraps and smacking them down into your book so that you remember that moment from that day forever.

This is a cover-shot of my very first scrapbook: A collection of "us" scraps-- Aidan and I and our life together. Over the next while, I'll share a few pages of it.