Thursday, September 11, 2014

Preserving Memories

Hello!  How do you preserve your memories?  The old fashion way was to create a scrapbook using paper, scissors, and glue.  Now, a lot of people still scrapbook that way, but it is not as popular of a hobby as it once was.  With advancements in digital photography, many people have turned to creating digital scrapbooks, videos, or just simply storing them on their computer or social media sites like Facebook.  The Project Life series has altered the scrap booking phase by focusing less on major life events and creating little works of art on a page, and more on journaling everyday events and just using a photograph and some handwritten words.  

When I first started paper crafting, I only scrap booked.  I have since accumulated an entire wardrobe of scrapbooks, which, rarely, if ever, get looked at.  And worse, most of these books have become warped and ruined due to constant extreme temperature changes in my house.  Because of all the time scrap booking takes, and how once a book is done it is packed away in a closet rarely to be seen again, I decided to stop scrap booking.  Every now and then I might create a page and just display it on an easel in my craft room, but that is about it.  

So if you don't scrapbook how do you preserve your memories?  Well, I keep a blog for one.  I don't just post my travel and life event stories for all of you!  My blog for the most part is an on line diary of my public life (and I say public life because obviously I can't share everything!).  My husband, children and whatever family and friends who actually care about us, can always click on my blog to see what were up to or relive our special moments.  The second way I preserve memories is that I actually PRINT my favorite photographs and put them in frames.  Yes, with the popularity of Instagram and Facebook, most people take pictures, but they never print them.  I love to use photographs of my family in the interior design of my home.  If you were to walk in my house you would see pictures of my family and our travels on just about every surface.  I'm sure all the interior designers of HGTV would just shudder if they saw all my pictures.  But I don't care.  I love to surround myself with things that I love and I love my family.  Both my kids are grown and have moved out of the house and I only see them a few weeks out of the year.  Having their pictures in sight  all over my house is my way of keeping them close.  My husband actually gave me the sweetest, most thoughtful Christmas gift this past year;  a digital frame.  He said, 'you have so many pictures all over the place, I thought you could use this'.   It was an awesome gift!  You can download hundreds of photos onto the frame, and it cycles through them all changing the photograph every few seconds.  I love it!

So all of this brings me to the subject of my post:  photo collages.  When you have tons of pictures, and your having a hard time deciding which ones to put in frames or on a scrapbook page, what do you do?  Well my daughter, who loves to make collages, made two large photo collages for me.  She took all my favorite photos and using scissors, Mod Podge and some large canvases created these beautiful works of art:
 Our Christmas Holiday in Pensacola Beach was a wonderful memory for me.  I had never spent Christmas away from home before, and I was surprised how much I loved taking a vacation during the holiday instead of the usual cooking, shopping, decorating routine that is exhausting!   It was so relaxing and peaceful to go to the ocean during the off season.  Yes, it was freezing, but I still had a great time and we created so many wonderful memories of our time there.  I really wanted to preserve these memories, and most importantly, have these memories 'visible' to me to look at, especially when I'm going through a stressful time.
 At first Ashley was just going to make one photo collage, but as she was attempting to put the pictures together she realized it wasn't 'working' because the photos had two different hues:  half of them had a sandy blue tone, and the other half had a dark red tone.  So Ashley decided to separate the pictures by color tone and create two separate photo boards.
 Ashley used some designer papers and a few hand written notes on each board.  She also put a little dimension on some of the pictures by adding mounting tape to a few photos.
I did not frame the photo boards.  I put the sandy blue tone collage in my craft room and the red tone collage in my office because those are the colors already in those rooms.  Now I have memories out on display for me to look at all the time, instead of shut away in a closet.  I love it.

So how about you?  How do you preserve your memories?  I'd love to hear from you!

Have a great day!  Amy

2 comments:

  1. Really like your post today Amy! I do exactly the same as you do! I love to create interesting photo frames, collages to adorn my walls with family photos...some of my faves of course. I don't like to share such personal things on social media...so don't do too much of that, but yes I used to scrapbook heavily. My boys actually seem to like looking back on them oddly enough and my husband enjoys them as well. I am careful about how I scrapbook as compared to what I use to though.

    Love your layouts! Thanks for sharing! Hugs & Smiles - *Vicki*
    My Blog: Stamp Smiles

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  2. These are beautiful Amy, your daughter had a fabulous idea to create two for the different color hues.
    I used to scrapbook a long time ago, but sadly I don't think I have ever completed a scrapbook :-( I still take tons of photos, which I mostly put on a photo CD and also keep on my computer. I really want to start printing them off and just putting the in an album, but there are so many- I don't even know where to begin...There is something I really love about looking at photos in an actual album, so hopefully one day I will start. But I will never go back to scrapbooking, I just want to keep the focus on the photos and nothing else. Sorry, this got way longer than I thought :-)

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