Telling a story with words or photos | CATHY CAINES

Hello Friends and welcome to September!
It’s definitely one of my favourite months as we watch the seasons change. I was busy making memories all summer rather than crafting so it felt so good to find myself back in my craft room this week. I even managed to squeak out two layouts that I’d love to share with you today.
These layouts are both completely different. There is nothing similar about them except that these stories both happened in the same month and year. As a chronological scrapbooker, I tend to have many “holes” in my albums. Holes represent stories that need to be told or layouts that need to be completed. I’ve been on a mission to fill these holes and call these albums complete.
I realize that now I’ve opened a whole can of worms so let me roll back for a minute. Is it better to scrapbook chronologically or to fill albums as you go without organizing by date? I am not sure of the answer. I love the ability to find layouts by chronological order. However, I currently have unfinished albums with Post-It notes sticking out of them sitting on my shelf dating back to 2017. If that doesn’t sound too long ago, let me just remind you that time is flying because this is now five years ago.
I am not sure how I will handle my “unfinished projects” but for now, I began chipping away at some of the albums. And so here we are.
Two very different but not completed layouts.
One layout tells the story by words. Other by photos.
Each way is just as effective.
My first layout shows a very oversized photo of my youngest daughter. You can clearly tell that her eyes are not doing what they should be doing. This photo represents a time in which my daughter had been waiting months and months for appointments but due to COVID was not being seen and we were not getting answers. It’s a hard story and tough to look at sometimes but it was an important story to have in my album. As such, the layout is clean and simple focusing on a photo and the story behind it.
The second layout represents a silly pup that often hid behind the curtain. We have no idea why. She eventually didn’t do this anymore but for the time being, it’s a silly and fun story that I wanted to tell. This story can be told only in pictures. “Peek-a-boo”. You may not have noticed that little paw at first but the title helps bring the story full circle.
I hope that you are finding time to tell your stories and of course, make new memories. It doesn’t matter your style, get those stories documented whether through words or pictures.