I love the idea of journaling but I can never seem to find the words to put on a page. Most of my layouts are lucky to even have a title, let alone journaling and I feel like a lot of my "there's something missing..." worries would be solved by some journaling. What do you write about? Do you always do the journaling on journaling blocks? Any tips? Any input is appreciated! 
Thanks in advance!
Journaling?
Wed, 10/23/2013 - 21:12
#1
Journaling?
I guess the basics of journalling is using the W´s: What, when, who, where, why - you can include How too - for example "On Saturday xx/xx [when] I went with the kids [who] to a park[where] to see an open air kids theatre that was happening there [what]. It was the first time in weeks we could do something outdoors, because of my oldest tests at school [why]. They were so happy, and the youngest ran arround all the time. [how] The show wasn´t that good, but we enjoyed the afternoon at the park [more on how]."
I prefer to write in a specific place to write - it can be a tag, a journal card, or a light solid paper that I "cut" to do it. But, sometimes, I do journal in different places/spaces - like around a shape, or directly on the background or a paper, but always taking care to make the journal easy to read...
Writing may look booring, but I think it´s very imprortant. My degree is in History, and I never forget something a professor told about photographies as documents: They are almost useless without external references to tell their stories. If you want your scrapbook to be meaningful to people in the future (maybe even to you - do you remember the situation, places and names from all people that are with you on childhood pictures? Can identify the years of all of them?) the photos need to be at least minimum references: Dates, places, and who are the people in it. Otherwise, if you´re not there to say why that photo was taken, no one will know...
I almost always write about my feelings / thoughts / memories I have with the picture(s). Since most of my layouts are about my kids, I write to them, in case they read in in twenty years time. My journaling therefore reads something like "Today you made me feel..." or "You are so crazy / sweet / annoying when..." I always keep it personal and close to my heart. Sometimes I write of my hopes and wishes for them and very very rarely I write just about me. My first few layouts were the hardest; I kept thinking of what other people might think of my style of writing -my husband, mom, random gallery visitors... After a while I realized I don't really care what others think of my style. I write for me and my family. I write to remember - and be remembered.
Perfect! Lorien - I love that, what your professor told you! I spend so much time going through my iphoto library dating and labeling and tagging ages and holidays but have never even thought about how if that information isn't included with the photo on a layout then the layout's kinda pointless... thanks for the example journaling, too! That helps a lot.
Melouise - I think yours is most likely the route I'll take. I scrap my family always, I never thought of making it a personal type of story for them to read later. I am a very emotional and expressive person, so keeping it personal this way seems the most natural to me, definitely. Thank you both so much!
I have a hard time with journaling because I'm so boring.
My scrapbook pages are usually pictures of my animals or my husband (usually sleeping on the couch) so I don't have a whole lot ot say about it.
yeah, scrapping about pets need very few journalling. Usually you can say what is needed though the title only. And, if you are just doing a photobook of your pets in chronological order, you don´t need either to date all layouts... If you put that a picture was taken on 6/28th, then have a page with no day assigned, and the next is from 7/9th, it´s the not dated is for sure something in between and, if the pic is of your cat sleepping on your desk you wouldn´t need to know in the future what was the exact day he did it... The exception, in this case, goes for when the pet learn a new thing, is new at the house, or something like that. With my last cat adopted, Ronny, I made a series of layouts which I called Ronny´s Diaries, that was one of the best things I could have made! I go back to these layouts lots of times to remember when he was a kitty, what was the day we found him, how long did it take for he being accepted for the other cats, and so on.
Shantalina, glad I could help!