How has your scrapping changed?

I started in 1999, my early attempts were cardstock and sticker sneeze pages. Didn’t cut pictures in to shapes though. My style changes as I find things I like or want to add some interest to my scrap sessions so my albums are sort of eclectic.🤷‍♀️

I started scrapping digitally in December 2005, when my first grandchild was born. I made a baby book for her titled "Through Grandma's Eyes" and gave it to her as a high school graduation present this year. She loved it and we both cried looking through it. My husband even cried. My granddaughter told me the next day that she downloaded all the songs whose lyrics I included in the book.

Fast forward to present time...I am 100% a paper scrapper. I do have photo books printed of the hundreds of photos I take on my travels, and then I select the most meaningful photos to paper scrap.

The big difference between paper and digital scrapping: I need a whole room to contain my supplies now, instead of just a computer.

I can't say when I started doing some version of scrapbooking. I suppose it got a name in my mind in about 1999. But I started "scrapbooking" a few years later and of course ran into CM and Stampin Up etc around that time. My evolution is super basic and vanilla lol.

I love the couple CM albums I was able to splurge for. I have a couple that are for Christmas's and a couple for beach vacations that have YEARS worth in them. They make my heart soooo full. They are mostly done in the super flat 2D CM type style.

Then, I have many many 12x12's that over the years with tons of Joleens and SC type scrapbooking. I have taken most of the layouts out, and removed alot of the bulky stuff and consolidated the albums. So instead of a 12x12 with 20 layouts of a single trip, I consolidated 5 or 6 of those and even ripped photos and journalling blocks off and rebuilt them with wayyy less embellishment. They still look 2005 though lol I didn't do alot of photo shape cutting, but I did some. Luckily, I found the Sony Mavica digital cameras around 2000, so I still have those super low resolution photos that I have retro scrapped since.

Speaking of shapes, I bought the Creative Memories shape cutters. I can't recall what they were actually called- but they are used with the three little blades and each plastic shape can be 3 different sizes. I reach for them often (and they are probably older than my son) especially now with the outside the page protector trend. I was doing it before it was cool

Anyway... Most of my scrapping for the last 9 or maybe even 10 (OMG IT'S BEEN THAT LONG!) has been in 9x12's and I like that they hold SOOO much. I have done a similar form of chronological, event based but every day life too PL in them. I don't have weekly cards, or even monthly.. but I do tend to work through a month and there may be a two page spread that starts at the end of the month and has photos from early in the month, or even late the month before. When I look back at them, unless they are a vaca or the date is significant, it truly doesn't matter if our dog was adorbs on the 18th or the 2nd. I do often date the photo or it's in the journaling.

Additionally, I always do DD (I've been doing it since before it was official lol) and I often do (2) 6x8 album, or (1) 6x8 album sized trip albums. If a trip wasn't that "big" or that many photos, it's in the 9x12 in inserts etc. I have an entire 6x8 album to cover a day and a half trip to a family function because I took that many photos (and sourced from other people along the way.)

The biggest change is likely that I embrace bigger photos and a WHOLE lot more journalling and writing than I used to. But, I always did a good amount of journaling... I tend to be a wordy person I also tend to want my photos to tell some sort of a story or progression. I also tend to focus more on overall representative photos. There are so many things from my childhood at my grandmothers house etc that I would love to have a photo of, to tell a full story, with tons of texture. But no one ever thought to take a photo of the area of her house that had the washing machine, the upright freezer and the stairs leading to upstairs. I opened Christmas presents on those stairs soooooo many years. And so many things and stories of my brother and sister, and my cousins are set right there. Where we "kids" were basically assigned. And how funny once we became adults, with kids of our own, how we gravitated toward our self assigned spots lol. Then, when we were "invited" to come sit on the couch or a chair in the living room, it felt sooooo strange. And even when it was pushed on us, not a single one of us sat in our grandfather's chair, even though he'd been gone wayyy too long and we would sit there when we visited. I actually am pushing myself to do projects like WITL (first one done this year- OMG what a project!!) to try to capture things like that. Both for older me, but also for my kids. Who knows what will be important to them. Maybe absolutely nothing- but I know it will be important to me.

ETA... as annoyed as I get with Ali Edwards Designs INC... I'll always love Ali Edwards for being either in the background, or doing what felt like literally cheering me on to do my own thing. Making it normal to have taken the same ish photo for many times over the years and to literally celebrate it for what magic happens in that space. She and I are a similar age, our son's are the same age, and we went through alot of life events on the same timeline. I'll be forever grateful for her openness. Sounds weird. But whatever lol

Also, I was just thinking about as time has gone on, I've gone from 3 and even 4 9x12's per year (Jan-end of school year, summer, and school start- Dec.) I now tend to have 2 a year. But I love flipping through them just as much. I tend to have alot more pages per album because my style gets flatter and flatter as I've embraced digital more and more hahaha.

I just quoted the bits I wanted to respond to save on post space, so to speak. 

I was looking at an album I made back in 2002 and was amazed at how my pages were SO cardstock heavy back then. I guess I forgot that it wasn't as easy for me to find patterned paper back then, and my budget was very small, so I had lots of solid cardstock and not much else.

But, as you said, for the most part, I really like my old layouts.

It's funny, but there are a few times when I tried to purposely scrap outside my style, either to copy something I saw, or on the flip side, to try to be purposely edgy or outside the box, LOL.  And those layouts are the only ones I see now and think "Ugh, I really don't like that."  

I've always sworn I won't ever re-do layouts since I have such a backlog of photos waiting to be scrapped, but man those few layouts really make me question my resolve. 

The Very Beginning:
I started scrapbooking in the 1996 or 1997. At first my pages were made only of cardstock I could buy in a package, so all white, all ivory, or all black, and then any individual papers I could buy one sheet at a time in the printing area of an office supply store we had in the area. I thought I was so fancy thinking to use those papers, LOL!

My pages were all 8.5x11 back then, and I kept them in regular page protectors in a 3 ring binder.

Enter Creating Keepsakes:

My eyes were opened to how other people were scrapbooking when I picked up my first issue. First I was excited that enough other people were scrapbooking for a magazine to even exist. I had never heard of Creative Memories, I had no LSS and the local craft store in my town sold rubber stamping supplies, but not a single thing for scrapbooking.

So when I opened that magazine and saw what other people were creating I was amazed! Around that same time, AC Moore opened and I started going there and seeing all of this stuff actually made for scrapbooking! No more trying to get my office papers & stamping supplies to work for scrapbooking! (My local craft store never did offer a single thing for scrapbooking, and I never did ever have an LSS.)

So that's when I started buying fancy punches and scissors. But my LOs were always still based on solid cardstock, and some albums are primarily solid cardstock layouts, even when I did have access to more patterned papers.

Eventually I decided to try 12x12 since that's what I was seeing in the magazines, but that size was just too big for me.

Today:
The biggest changes are:

1. I use pocket pages for all current photos now.

2. I use primarily patterned cardstock, or solids that are part of a paper line as opposed to random Bazzill, which is what I used a ton of when I first started shopping at AC Moore or buying from 2Peas.

My approach has always been story-focused with a simple/clean/linear/minimalist/"magazine-ish" style. I may incorporate trends that I like but certainly don't conform to them.  

I've changed in that I have given up trying to put my photos at an angle. I can't do it! My mind is too linear. I like things in straight lines.

I also layer more under a photo than over the edges of the photos. The exception is when I want to hide something in the photo - like a weird guy in the background. Or, POSSIBLY an in-law I don't like, LOL.

P.S. I love your l/0-s wordfish. Especially the church story.

I started digital scrapping in 2003 when Ali was posting her pages over at 2Peas. They were just large photos with big titles/journaling and maybe icons from Word or Photoshop. I did not have children at the time so some of my childhood pages look like that and are 8 1/2 x 11. The first digital site came online in 2004 & I quickly became an admin and DTM there. We began sharing our own creations there for anyone to download which were very simple patterned papers and flat elements. The only way to get them to look dimensional was to scan in a ribbon, a button, etc. Drop shadows were not as big of a deal then. Templates did not exist. When designers started creating their own supplies, they were too big in file size to be downloaded online so then people bought them on CDs, a la OG Netflix, and had them shipped to their houses. I switched to 12 x 12 at this time and started printing my pages in Shutterfly books about 10 years ago.

In the last five years, my scrapping has changed rather significantly. I scrap much less (from 1-2 pages a night to 1-2 pages per week) & when I do scrap, it's rather quickly (less than an hour) and almost always with a template. After 21 years and thousands of layouts, I no longer feel the "need" to be super original or interesting or creative with my pages. I still enjoy scrapping, although I no longer need it as a coping mechanism like I did for many years when I was married to my kids' dad, but it is no longer my singular hobby. Getting it done is good enough in most cases. I journal even more than I did before; that feels like the most important part of scrapping & what my kids will treasure most. 

I do a lot more layered clusters, and mixed media. I started with just cardstock, and very simple designs.