Lessons

Lesson Info

Starting with Story

So what if we started with story now? I'm such a believer and story and there's a lot of buzz out there in business marketing and organizational uh materials and books right now about stories and how important stories are people are starting to realize businesses should have stories people should have stories when they're being like if your consultant have a story about your your what you do for people story is a word that we're hearing more and more lately and I'm recently got a bunch of books to read about the importance of story in business and if they're important in business you can only imagine how important they are to us as individuals because that's really where it all starts and stories I believe are hard wired into us if you think about sitting around the campfire or the stories that we were talking about earlier about the neanderthals carving things into walls and that was a way of documenting their memories documenting stories native american painting on whatever it might ...

be through history cultures have documented their stories to share them with each other and to share them with posterity and now we have so many different ways to do that that we really don't have an excuse even if it's just recording a voice memo those are all ways to document our stories and again we'll be talking more about some of those alternative means of scrapbooking tomorrow stories connect us with each other. If you see a picture of my daughter, you might say, well, she's cute, but if you see a scrapbook page where I tell you some crazy things, she said, or did she just up like a cow for the talent show because every year she does stand up comedy, and I don't know who she inherits this from, because because, you know, nobody, our family likes to be in front of the camera anyway. Every year, she does a different theme. Last year, she was pirate. This year, she was a cow if he saw the picture of her and the kirk cow outfit. And, you know, I wrote down some of the jokes or something like that you would feel like you knew her, it connects with you, or if you read a story like angeles story about her grandfather that she shared with us earlier, I connect that resonates with me. I feel like I know her for so much better, and in this day of digital communication, and it seems like we're we're losing those connections with each other. We're seeing in the chat room already. How anxious and how hungry people are for connection and people can connect to you through your stories and through your scrapbook pages finally. Stories share important lessons and memories trace I think it was you you were talking about how you scrapbook and share stories that that might be teaching devices for your son's in the future. What a great what a great gift to give your kids your wisdom, because they're not going to believe it now, but twenty years from now, they might actually want some advice for mom and to be able to give that to them now, in the moment, such a gift, and you chaired about your son, too, and I'm really anxious to hear more about his story, and he could be an inspiration for others as well, and it it allows you to go beyond yourself and share your wisdom in your lessons with others. And I think that's just so important now, with kids, um, at bedtime, it's often it's a it's, a common routine took the child into bed, and they say, tell me a story, mommy, tell me a story, grandma, they don't say, show me a picture they say, tell me a story because it just transports us to a different place. And if you've ever heard aa book on cd or audible or something like that, or heard somebody a great storyteller tell you, think itjust it reaches part of our brain and I don't know I'm not a neuroscience is so I can't tell you all the details, but I know it can transport you and t be able to provide that through our scrapbooking is such a powerful thing, so these are just some of the ways that again with the photo centric approach to scrap booking, we miss out so we don't always have our cameras with us, like right now I would love to be, you know, shooting pictures of you guys right now because this is an important story for me as an individual and, well, I can't scrap book it because I had no photo I mean, that doesn't make sense at all, so we talked about borrowing photos or getting photos from other people, but there are times and places where we just don't have the camera with this or we're so involved in the action that it's impossible to get a photo of it and we don't always get or want to get the shot again if you're up there at the altar saying your ideas you want with the time I mean actually I that people do that now, actually, but there are times and places where we just choose not to have our cameras out also, we just don't photograph everything and we don't know that this moment is important versus another moment so if we're just looking to those photos, then we're going to miss out because we may not have documented the important time as we're sharing, uh, sharing earlier and then the internal stuff as well the feelings or emotions that might not go with a particular photo, but I see a photo on top there I'm assuming that's your son, you look at him and you have you have feelings that come up and they're not linked to a particular photo, but the photo evokes those memories, and when we look at those photos as a prompt for our storytelling rather than is the basis for our page, then we're able to add new layers of meaning to our pages and it becomes a really fun because we're building a story from the ground up and everything we choose to use on that page, whether it be a sticker or the title or a photo is all in service of that story, and it makes a cohesive whole and when you hold that that layout in your hand it's just it's a different feeling. It really is so with story they scrap booking this is how it works. Photos are prompts for your stories so you don't just sit down and say ok I want to scrap book this photo you might look at a photo we'll be talking more about this later and ask yourself what is it about that photo that that pulls you or what is it that you want to tell with that photo pages and albums reflect what's important to you because you're consciously and intentionally selecting stories to tell where they've been just saying ok, I got my group looking to start with photo number one go onto photo to through the photo one hundred ok that one's done now there are probably many photos in this book here that I will never scrapbook and that's okay I'm still going to be happy with my scrapbooks because I've chosen the ones that are important to me and I can let the rest go and maybe I'll have time to reach them some day and maybe they'll just you know maybe they'll just serve as photos and that's ok too not every photo has to be used um that also we can embrace imperfection because we're talking about earlier about how life isn't perfect and if our pages are supposed to represent our life that should mean that it's ok for a page is not to be perfect just a czar handwriting we think how my handwriting's lousy I want it to look like this person or that person's um it's still part of you it's part of your story, and if we can embrace that rather than reject it, it makes us feel better because when you're rejecting part of yourself, it's just it leads to disconnect within us. We're getting a little deepens scrapbooking stuff here, but but it does. It relates to other parts of our life is, well, it really does. I also think that story they scrap booking is more fun because we're telling those funds stories we don't feel like we have to leave things out because they might make us look bad or look like a bad mom or our kids there, you know, they have a smudge of chocolate on their face, and I want everybody to think my life this perfect, we can embrace all that and makes a lot more fun. People can relate to us, our pages are more authentic. They bring up a good laugh, too, when you're reading later about how, like callie, who just does a character by nine year old, we went to a hotel and she said, want sleeping in the bathtub? Wear one bed short, she didn't want here with their sensor. I'm gonna sleep in, and I have a picture of her sleeping in the bathtub and it's, quirky, it's kind of crazy somebody could look at and say she made her kids sleep in the bathtub, you know? But I'm not worried about that anymore, because what my goal is to share that story about her and that when it served, then I feel completely I feel good about the page. Yeah, it's a lot more fun, and then when we're clear on our mission, it's a lot faster, it's, just like having a road map, we know the destination that we're getting, tio so we know we don't have to take this road, we don't have to take that road we're going here and what we might choose to take a detour and learn a new technique or play with this, but that is a choice, it's not a must have to do so. I would love to know from you all, did you do you know, a page that you created, where you felt like it was just you just looked at it, and you're like this is it like it just you knew it resonated. The story was being told, maybe you felt good about the design of the photo, but it just it just it's like this is it? This is why I do what I do. So I see a couple of people mounting. Tracy, you have one like that recently? Yeah, I just did one of my now ten year old rating on his bed and it was such a like not a profound moment, but it was such a definition of who he is. The book was huge and he was just laying there reading he didn't even look at me when I walked in the room with a camera because he knew not looking. I wanted a picture of him in the moment, and it just came together with who he was right now and what he likes to dio that's, great that's. Great. And with it, a fairly easy yeah, I put together came together really fast because I knew what I wanted to say what I want, tio? Yeah, yeah, you went into it sound like you knew. I'm telling this story down. Yeah, but actually on friday I sat down and went through all my scanned layouts toe look and look a look and blogged today about story in my opinion, elect how live approach story and how, with a little plug teo teo I pulled out about ten layouts that are old and not necessarily attractive by today's standards, but that they tell story and it was amazing to me how quickly I could connect even the ones that didn't have a great photo the floaters dark photos, bad, the photos, whatever um but the story was there and there's one in particular that's a picture of my son and I and the title was one, seven, nine, five and when I had taken that picture, I liked it. I wanted to scrap it, and so I used date and time dot com to find out how many days have been a mom one thousand seven hundred five days on, so I blogged about like, you know, the first you know, the first couple days of being a mom is like this, but now seventeen hundred days into the oh, it was just it wasn't a special day wasn't a special occasion, it was just one thousand seventeen ninety five oh that's amazing! And it was dayton time that I think so or time and date diamond eight though that one ray that's fantastic! I'm gonna have to look into that that's so fun. I love that insularity of one that you've created that that just moved you or you felt particularly strongly about one in particular, but I think the ones that are most like special to me, the ones that I keep going back to are the ones where I have actually journal first and then went back to look for a picture that was you know, sometimes I already have a picture in mind or pictures behind, you know, trying to maybe tell a story over a long period of time something right? But when just like you were saying like when there's actually a story or you want to, you know, show someone's personality or you know just who they are, who they've become or something like that and that's um there's more emphasis on that and then go back later and figure out you know what? You're gonna put with it, right? Those are the ones that I right and toe right gravitate to now that the I think eighteen how about you? I think the one of my daughter in her wedding dress on her wedding day because the story was so much more she looked for a wedding dress couldn't find one came home. We tried on several different dresses of the store she found when that she liked we went from a pattern and I made her dress but it's it was me in the hotel room in london sewing literally two days before the wedding and her you know, her friends going you sure you're gonna be oh, so it was it was a process, but the whole story is so much more than just how she looked on right right and that's such an important point to that I'm sure she had some professional photos done yes and they captured one element of that event right? But the behind the scenes stuff is the that's where the memories are made for the memories are made it's interesting tio nobody said no it was that one page I did with such and such paper and I love the way I did the letter stickers and yeah, you know that's spent forty seven minutes the hands changes that could be really fun and the pages can be gorgeous as a result but again the pages that are moving our hearts are the ones with the stories behind them and that's just a reminder to you all okay, so next what I wanted to do is share some of my kind of the before and after some of the layouts that I created with more of a traditional method I used to write for scrap booking magazines and when you write for scrap booking magazine it's really all about the visual it's nice to have stories but they'll pick a page that looks beautiful over one that has a strong story just because it's a visual medium and so some of these date back from then and we'll talk a little bit about them and I just don't want you to think about them as scrapbook pages and what might be missing what might be there what like what? You not really in terms of design sense or anything like that. But what it says in terms of my mission statement as a scrapbook, er and you can kind of reflect on your own along with that. Okay, so this is my first example here. It says puppy love and the journaling a picture of my daughter, callie, and with our minds, my sister's dog. Serious, serious. Black is his name. And if she loves the dog, so I just said cow with with serious, um, hanging out, she loves this dog. So I put a lot of effort into this page. You can see all the scraps and cut them to the right size and not the bottom and put some different textures on there. And, you know, I look at him. Go that's. Nice page. Yeah. I'm okay with that. But any any comments about that? I mean, how does that fit in with what we're talking about? A story, there's. No story in the little journaling that is there is. It looks like an afterthought. Yeah, not notice. You have a great time. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Yeah. It was like yeah we went to the zoo and had a great time is like a draft lay out right and you know if you saw that in a magazine say that's pretty like how she did the scraps I'm gonna have to try that and you might pin it to pinterest or whatever but you wouldn't necessarily feel like oh my gosh I really know lane or I know her daughter or anything like that okay, this is number two here this is my older daughter kinsey and it says look at this sweet girl look at this sweet little face those cheeks air so pin chewable but what happened? You're growing into a young lady but you'll always be my baby so it's a little bit better maybe in terms of story and there's a lot of to it that I like I like that the pop of orange there and it's hard to see but down at the bottom on the tag a little bit of warning her swimsuit has ordered so I've got a visual triangle going on and I've got the three buttons and you know it's it's a pleasant page toe look at and if it were my album I wouldn't go footbath lightning rookie question and I really buttons or are they stick about those are really button yes yes they realize but one of my addictions I happen to love button and uh oh yeah it's got some fun things got the border punch up there and some ribbon and a brad and what do you guys think sixty five years it's better it's better a little bit better than the other one a little bit more big like the tech react the way you've laid the bits that make a little more right right well wrapped this harry that cute yeah and then but again you know I wouldn't say that it really moves me or it's one of those layouts that I kind of feel like you know like if I had to choose I could only take one scrapbook with me I probably wouldn't be in it I mean it's fine but it's not not I'm doing it again okay traditional number three new shoes qd pie with the dates now I mean you know what kind of what the story is it's not a great photo but it's bright and cheery so it gives an emotion there you feel happy you can tell she's happy there but exactly exactly almost like then what is it like the book that in and you're like, I don't want that either clip here like where the rest of the story because you can tell she's ecstatic but I haven't told that story we do have a photo of it and I'm glad we have a picture of it but yeah can for kind of a letdown sort of here's one I design wise I got to say I love this one but the little frames frames are really trendy right now and it's my two little cuties when they were about three and five and look at those faces and we got here their initials up there but my journaling amounts to dump the two thousand three which is pretty weak pretty weak I mean it's a cute picture it's acute page but it's like ok, yeah why do I care? Yeah, exactly why do I care? Yeah, why do I care? I mean, I care because they're my kids and they're one hundred percent sweet adorable but are they really you know, there's something missing there and I want to make it clear there's nothing wrong with these layouts? I mean, if you're scrapbooking in this manner great. But for me personally I look at these and I you feel like they're a little flat this one here too it's another one that's kind of like draft picture right back to school. So we at least we know what what it is. They look cute. The little one always looks like punky brewster when she's getting ready to go to school that's the kind of step that probably needs to be told, I'm gonna know they went to school threat first and, uh I might even know, like what grade thatwas without the year on there, but I'm not going to know how she chose her outfit or why she picked her hair that way, or whatever it might be so it's, just just something that there's more that could be told and then here's the last one, and I actually extremely proud of this page because I hand colored these flowers, and if you know me, I don't do that stuff, but they match the page and we've got different colors and we've got layers and dimension and a scattering of beads are pearls and the photo, actually, for me, that's, one of the better photos I've taken it probably scrapbook that photo multiple times, but it's like, ok, kinsey, it reminds me of the photos that you go to the frame store and the photos are in the frames already. It is just kind of like, who are these people that they must have a story there but there's nothing there's, not there's, not a it's, the deep there's, nothing else there and again, I love the photo, I love the page. But it's not particularly meaningful. In fact, the first thing I say about it if I hand colored those flowers, not look at my beautiful girl, you normally look at the flowers that I did that's the story on that page for me, and in fact, that would be actually a funny story to tell. Write cool if you wrote a massive head of a sign and said that's, the longest thing on this bag was hanging from that exactly, exactly that train and exactly I felt I wanted to just ask you to think about your mission for scrap booking and the pages you've been doing and up till now, just think about where you would write yourself. I would probably give myself about a five to six on those pages that we saw there, not bad. I had a little bit of journaling on some, some of them told a pretty strong story in terms just from like, uh, that one about kinsey on the beach, but there's so much more I could tell. So just for you and for everybody at home as well to think about if you looked at your scrapbooking mission statement and stacked it up against what you're doing is a scrapbook, or how well do you think you're doing? And don't be too hard on yourself? We'll grade on a curve and just how do you feel like you're fulfilling your mission statement or other places where you could be put up a little bit and that's really what this is about not trying to tell you you're doing a bad job or anything like that? Because again, every page you make is a gift those pages I'm still proud of their still going to go on my albums and my kids are probably going to someday appreciate that I took the time to document those and make pages about them and it's a symbol of my love for them, so yeah, I mean, what do you think you think? And this is what I found recently is whenever I have to explain a page to somebody I haven't done my job ah, whenever I have to explain a page to someone I haven't done my dot that's a good one, so like, if we go back, teo, the new shoes when yeah, yeah, you guys, it was a cute what was the occasion or why don't you pick those or whatever, right? You're going to want to tell the story, right? You might as well tell it on the right oh, I like that like that, so how do you think you do overall with you're getting better? I get that good, good you've been scrambling how long again well, I've been scrapping kings of nineteen, ninety nine. Yeah, and have do you feel like your storytelling is changing over that time? Did you start as an event? It's? Absolutely. I just know the original the original scrapbook and it's new year's eve and its birthday and it's the same thing. Like you said the same thinkers. But the good thing is that some of those pictures that air in there I have now taken out and used for stories my father in law passed away and I have a picture of him on his birthday is sure birthday month with five grandkids. So there's, a great picture that I used in the original layout is happy birthday to me and it's got candles along the bottom and all the fancy stuff right t use now I've used the picture to scrapbook in on his relationship to those oh my god and I have a picture of the kids where they are now. So you know, mike, I see that's a perfect example of not knowing the story that you might want to tell the future, right? And what if you had said, well, I already scrapbook that photo, I guess I'm not going to be using that one again just think what you'd be missing in your scrapbook. Yeah, do you get back to your old scrapbooks and write a whole nother layer of stuff on them? Do you do that? No, no, I've been focused on moving forward. Um, I could do that, and maybe someday when I have more time, I might think about dana, you know, I think that would be interesting to do on a few select play out like, like james talking about where there might be a really important story that I want to capture now, but I don't I'm really I'm just I figured let's start now and go forward and not worry about what happened before because they still stand as a testament to my love of my family and our memories. But it's not critical that I tell about why she chose those sparkly shoes. No, no, if she does it again next year in the next year, I might go back and do a spread. How? Where a page where I include three photos every year she picks the same pair of shoes, you know that kind of thing, but I won't go back and add on to that way have questions come up in the chatter about but what you do to help remember these stories? Because, you know, let's face that you may have the pictures, but you don't know the whole story behind the pay actors so creative butterfly wanted to know, do you use any aps? We're remembering these stories as they happen and then traveling stamp says, what do you carry with you to write the stories down as they're happening? Because I don't remember a lot of the store, right? Right? We're actually going to be talking about documenting our stories and ways to keep that as a process. We're engaged in all the time, so it's not like, ok, now I'm going to scrap book, let me try to remember, so we are going to be talking about that, but it can be simple is jotting a few words or sentence down on a post it note or in my daily calendar, there are many gaps that will do it. I also use social media to do that because I'll do one liners I know tracy does this with her boys to about one liners that the boys might say, and then those later on can end up on a scrapbook page, or they can just stay as they are because they're commemorated on facebook are the block so, yeah, we will go into them or stick around for that more will be talking about that. So and so I guess when I started scrapbooking as a really young kid I had tons and tons of journaling on my page is kind of the old fashioned scrapbooks of just slap it in and right and it was when I discovered you know, the scrap booking industry and all the magazines that I have pretty much stop journaling because what I was seeing in the magazines were large photo single photo beautiful product may be aligned with the date of the name and it took me probably two three years to evolve back to maximum owns my own style of writing the stories down here have a gap yeah where is like product right right and we all can fall into that black hole all of us it is so common and especially I think when what we see online are often from design teams and for those of you who might not be familiar I think people here are. But if we have some newer scrap bookers at home often time manufacturers will have a design team where they have people who are charged with creating layouts with their products and because they want to sell more products often times that means more product on the page and it's much more product focused than it is story focused and so so those design teams that's their goal and same with the publications that it's really driven by advertising and that means selling product and so you'll see a lot of product it's got to be the latest and greatest if it's you know six months old he better get rid of it and move on to something else all your stuff on pages not that one in particular but I'll point out some later where I might use stuff that's that I purchased when I first started scrapbooking and again rules to be broken right that you have to use the latest and greatest or that you have to follow the trends that we're seeing online what happens it's just like fashion magazines where you look at the stick through it and you know the popsicle stick women and think oh my gosh that's what everybody's wearing these days and you look down the like you know and so you feel like you're not enough for you feel like you're out of step but everybody else is doing that but in reality it doesn't really matter what everybody else is doing it's your scrapbook and uh and it's fun again to use the product but when we get sucked into that there's no into it there's just no end tio because this month's it's would be near shapes and next month it's going to be something else and then it just always and then we've got tons of stuff and you feel like well it's old and your kids are never going to go back to your pages and say you know mom, you use that stuff from nineteen, ninety nine on my two thousand eleven page and it just ruins it for me but they might say why didn't you tell me a darn story? Why am I so happy? It was like that eighty nine on the jerseys anybody out there knows with the eighty nine means united way s so anyway yeah it's like what about you? How do you think you're doing so far? And I think it's definitely evolved and I've come to appreciate more this story so that's something that I'm definitely because when I look at stuff when I first started was very just basic who what when where yeah um you know, happy that it's in a book where someone could you know, see it at some point right in the future and that was it so now I think I'm definitely, uh, like put more emphasis on that in the importance of that it's getting better? Yeah, yeah again that's a gift too, because you have the boxes of photos that you had to then sort out and try to figure out dates and things like that the fact that you've at least got those photos with the who what when where I mean that in and of itself it's more than a lot of people are doing so so I mean that's again a gift, a gift tracy um I think especially in the last year and a half my, um my style and has evolved back into journal e I did twelve by twelve traditionally outs for ten years well before that too but really hard core for ten years and I would just put the picture on and make it really pretty maybe put the date on maybe a little bit of journaling but it was all about making the page like really pretty because it's a very artistic expression for me yeah but then I went to pocket scrapbooking which is very day to day what are we doing this week what are you doing next weekend so I'm getting a lot more stories and now then I used to be that's now do you think you would because digital so easy tio manipulate and change where his paper to rip something up I mean it's easier to make changes would you ever go back and and story to them or do you know that I don't remember the story okay it's a good reason that and um you know there's thousands of layout right? Go back and write out and thousands more to tell you and it's almost like you sacrifice now to do then and then are you gonna forget the stories now because you're documenting men and better to stand here now then scott bookie how are you doing? What do you think about your scrapbooking I think that now I'm doing I'm trying the pocket pages and I've gotten everything in there but I have a lot of blank journal card yeah that I said okay, I'm going to go back and fill that in france the album that I just did with two years ago we drove up to alaska it still has the blake cards and it's going so I think I'm going back I don't mean time I'm doing the stories because I said I'm going to put it down and I think it's two years right? So maybe that's the right word but you know what it's all ok that's what I want everybody want anybody to feel like I'm behind I mean we talked we joke about how catching up there's no getting caught up in scrapbooking that means you're dead and you don't take any more photos nobody wants that so you know it's all okay and if if we try to get into a place where I've got a scrapbook everything I've got to tell every story it's not going to be possible and we're always going to feel bad about it because we're not caught up so if we just kind of accept that idea that it's it's not going toe the hell it's just like vacuuming the rug you know it's never going to clean the benefit is it means the kids are out of the house and whatever it might be and so we're living life so as long as we're living life we're not going to catch up and it's sometimes it's more important to set the scrap again step aside and go do something really cool than it is to sit down and document other stuff so it's all ok all good I've fallen into the product black hole to yes yeah I go back to when I was a little girl and I could see back then that had pictures and I wrote these elaborate stories next to them and then when I actually discovered scrapbooking I switched over is just mostly pictures and then I kept adding products trying to make a look pretty something that would look nice online and you would look at my photos and or my lay out pages and think well what's the rest of the story and so it's nice being able teo you know thiss last year tried to step back and do more journaling worrying less about the product right? How is that? How has that felt for you? It feels good you know because I've never people always talk about what style are you and I'm like I have no idea because I will love trying every different thing that comes along I love trying all the diff the things but I do gravitate back to the journal idea it's nice to either that's great if if people at home are are following along with us. Just go back and look at some of your old scrapbooks. If they're there with you and and see how the pages make you feel, do you feel like you're making a strong connection with the stories there? Would somebody, like a child or grandchild be able to tell what the story of is without you having to be there, explaining it to them? Because, you know, that's, kind of a fun thing with photo albums. I remember sitting down with my mom with the old style photo albums and it's to tell me about this one. What was happening here and it's? Like having if, if she had scrapped booked, which she hadn't, unfortunately, but if she had it's, that same kind of feeling, of having those stories being told to me and that's what I'm hoping to leave to my kids, so