New Thing #1 - Scrapbooking and SMASH

Back awhile ago, Shae posted pictures on her Flickr account of some scrapbook pages she did for derby. I've had the urge to scrapbook for awhile but this finally pushed me over the edge to try it. I apologize now; this is a very image heavy post.

1. Scrapbooking is much more involved than I thought. There are so many sites devoted to it, with some people viewing it as a very formal artform with structured designs and themes while others tell you that it doesn't matter what you do with it so long as you have fun.  With any particular page, you need to figure out where you're placing your pictures, add fun little crap to it, maybe write something to go along with the picture (I chose to skip this step because all of the pictures I used were old enough that I didn't really have anything to say), have a title for the page, etc. Before getting into this, scrapbooking to me was just putting pictures on pretty paper and maybe included some pretty stickers or something.

2. Scrapbooking is expensive as fuck. Seriously. I bought a beginners kit and used that so it's not been too bad. However, I went ahead and bought a whole bunch of extra papers and whatnot, plus some neat pens and wavy scissors and... next thing I knew, I had over $50 worth of stuff. I go home, do more research on it and realize how many little things I still don't have - a paper cutter, a cricut, ephemera... plus after I opened it, I realized the pen pack I bought isn't really what I wanted. They are very thin, fine point. I'm keeping them for use on other things, but for the scrapbook I'd like a thicker pen.

3. You can scrapbook without all of those expensive little things but you either need the stuff or the talent to make it look good. I have neither. My pages are a little boring so far. They might improve with time, but I'm not holding my breath. I bought a zebra striped scrapbook that I was going to use for all the stupid/awesome things I've done in my lifetime (drive overnight to Salem Massachusetts to see the Halloween decorations, drive overnight to DC for the Rally to Restore Sanity only to arrive so tired that we just walked around the museums and had conversations that resembled that stage between drunk and hungover, moving to Florida with no car/job/home just a sleeping bag and $400, joining roller derby, 1776 nights, etc.). Instead, I think I just might make it work as my fandom one (since I bought a HP scrapbook kit too that needs to be used) and use my new Smash book for all the random shit.

As for Smash book, if you're not familiar with it, the company that produces it has a cute little video with information on the concept.

There are a number of different pre-set themes for Smash books. You don't necessarily need to follow the theme; it's really just for the paper you start out with. I picked up two of them - one for travel (I was going to do a travel scrapbook, but this seems like it would be easier to keep all of my stuff together) and one for the more everyday stuff I do. I can easily see where this would be another hobby that could be easily expensive, but perhaps less so. The Smash accessories seem fairly inexpensive at this point. Once I get my printer up and going, I can print stuff that way as well. I'm thinking I should have started out with the Smash book and worked my way up to scrapbooking. It's a good way for beginners to get into the craft. I don't have any completed pages yet, but here's what I have so far.