Simple Scrapbooking: what "simple" really means

Simple Scrapbooking is, in fact, in the eye of the beholder. My ten plus years creating layouts, teach skills scrapbook to thousands of women and write on this hobby for some of the major magazines, I've seen people who consider "simple" to be a single photo and a caption to be sufficient to capture their memories, while others need yards of tape, pounds of glitter and a page and a half of journaling to tell their story. Both are simple! You might wonder how this might be so. Here is what I believe is true about scrapbooking simple:

"Simple" means recoverable. What is your bottom line of what needs to be on your scrapbook page to be complete? For me, it's a photo, a title, some journaling and a simple embellishment or two. Often you do more, but if I have nothing less than these elements, the layout will not feel complete to me. The list could be very different; just as some women do not feel complete without makeup and dressed rings on each finger, others feel dressed to kill with a coat of cocoa butter and their wedding. Understand what you must have for your page to be "done".

Means "simple".If you spend three weeks researching a scrapbook page sketches, deciding between a dozen different page, improve your photos on Photoshop Elements, colour and black and white and sepia and hand-beading and full title of the page ... you're going to get burnt out pretty fast, if this is your standard for each page, going forward. Sure, it's fun to spend a little more time to create a special layout, but every now and then spending two or three days on each page is not an option for most of us.

Means "simple".If you need to create a seven-course gourmet, organic to feel like you're feeding your family well every night, which is fantastic-if you enjoy the process. But if you resent every nut and leaf of Arugula, what's the point? Might as well order Domino and sit at a table set with paper plates with a smile on your face. The same goes for scrapbooking; you need to enjoy the process. There is so much in our lives that we have to do, why do scrapbooking "should" or "grape?" The only "should" in scrapbooking is that "should" be fun!

For the most creative simple scrapbooking ideas and inspiration, visit the blog of scrapbook of Lain Ehmann at http://www.layoutaday.com. Through the video scrapbooking tutorials, projects, and inspiration, Lain helps its readers make scrapbooking fun, fast and fabulous!