Memory Books

Tuesday 21 April 2009

Like many crafters, I also love to scrapbook, though I prefer to call it Memory Keeping.

It's because a lot of the books I do aren't necessarily traditional scrapbooks.

Well - actually, in fact they ARE traditional scrapbooks... these are the types of scrapbooks we all kept as kids - before the current scrapbooking craze created a whole new denizen of pleasure for visual artists... and a whole new retail explosion.

My book on Japan is a good example.

It's essentially a collection of scraps - tickets, receipts, business cards, postcards, brochures, paper bags... any kind of flat memento from facial blotting papers found in a café bathroom on the Path of Philosophy in Kyoto, to pastry cases in pastel colours, once nestling Tokyo treats.

Whilst I fully delight in the retail scrapbooking explosion and am continuously bringing home something gorgeously and scrappingly fandangled (my latest fave are rub ons and large letters; can't get enough), I also delight in 'old-fashioned' scrapbooking...

Which can be done in enormous black spiral bound books like this one...

Or teensy little books. They can also be done on concertinas of card or on posters or simply be a mishmash of pinned up treasures on a pinboard.

Receipts are particularly fun to catalogue. Imagine how your grandchildren's eyes will pop out of their heads when they see it only cost you US$250 for a room in Tokyo!

I even scrapped my journal on these pages...

And it's lovely to pen some memories along the way...

And to keep material that will allow you to literally or figuratively recommend or revisit special places...

...and unique experiences...

Then there are the priceless and precious items you receive from a gaggle of Japanese school kids, who interview you to practise their English. I still can't work out how they did this, but this A4 sheet unwraps, flips and pops open to reveal a whole new picture.

Treasured.

1 comment:

Tiny Concept said...

Your memory books look amazing - That is the way treasured memories should be kept!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...