If you have stacks upon stacks of photos and are not quite sure how
to begin, you will love the amazing inspiration and ideas in Memory
Makers latest release, Get It Scrapped!
Here author and artist Debbie Hodge shares some thoughts about the scrapbooking process and authoring a book.
Snapshot: 3 Quick Questions
1. How did you get started scrapbooking?
I started scrapbooking as it's known today as many of us did. I went to
a Creative Memories party when my first son was born. Before that,
though, I'd always kept photo albums, but they didn't have the kind of
journaling my current scrapbooks have.
2. What other hobbies/interests are you involved in outside of scrapbooking?
I knit every other Wednesday night with my "Wild & Wooly" friends.
I also really love blogging – which does end up tying into my
scrapbooking. My blog has become my journal and my roadmap: I look to
it to see what I've recorded and what I, thus, want to get into my
family's scrapbook albums. The best part about keeping up with my blog
is that it provides ready-made journaling for my pages.
3. What scrapping product can you not live without?
My computer—I love it for planning, cropping photos, journaling, and printing to my pages.
The Deep Stuff
1. This book is all about getting different types of layouts
scrapped. What is the most important thing you’d like readers to get
out of the book?
If you: 1) establish an easy-to-maintain system for keeping your photos
in order as they arrive, and 2) take time to periodically review what
you have and make a plan for pages to be scrapped, then you'll be able
to grab a group of photos and scrap when you feel like it without a lot
of start-up effort. You can get it scrapped!
2. What gave you the idea for the book?
I love process (I have an MBA with a concentration in Operations
Management) and I love scrapbooking. As I watched my friends get
digital cameras, I saw them become overwhelmed by the quantity of the
photos they now had—to the point that they stopped putting them into
the photo albums they'd once kept. Chapter 1 in "Get It Scrapped" shows
an approach for culling, organizing, and storing photos as you receive
them, and for figuring out which ones are going into your album, and
what type of pages they are going on to. The rest of the book looks at
6 page types (Event, Everyday Life, Collection, Moment, Yourself, and
Leaving a Record) and offers processes for each that will help you
scrap your photos efficiently and appealingly.
3. What surprised you most about this whole process of writing a book?
That the best thing to come out of it would be two new friendships.
Hillary Heidelberg was writing Scrap Simple at the same time I was
writing Get It Scrapped, and I loved being able to touch base and talk
with her about the process—to see her getting it done and to share with
her as I got it done. Sharyn Tormanen contributed to the book, and I'd
admired her pages in magazines and online for a while, and was a bit
nervous to ask her if she'd work with me, especially since she'd just
given birth to her 4th child. I'm so glad I got over my hesitancy since
she has turned out to be generous, enthusiastic, funny, smart and just
a great-all-around-online companion throughout the process and
afterward.
4. Tell us something unexpected about yourself.
At the same time I was getting my MBA I decided I didn't want to work
in business—that I really wanted to write the "great American novel." I
did get a job, but I also studied and studied and wrote fiction for the
next 10+ years--and I have the stack of manuscripts to prove it. As I
started scrapbooking, I found that writing the stories of my family
became more compelling than writing fictional stories.
5. Your blog is called “Unexpected Destination.” Why that title?
When I was a girl, I told people I was going to live in a city and have
8 kids and a nanny to take care of them and a maid to clean the house
and I was going to travel the world doing important, businessey things.
I’m a stay-at-home, sometimes-work-at-home older mom with two kids and
a professor husband, and I live in a small town in a house with no
closet space on a river in the woods, and I like to craft and read and
write. That’s just one of the ways that things in my life have gone
differently than I expected. The tagline to “Unexpected Destination” is
“and not a bad one at that.”
6. Do you have a favorite layout from the book?
Every
time I see Sharyn’s layout “Monkey Love” I fall in love with
family-life and scrapbooking all over again. There is something very
grounding about seeing this day--in which her preschooler waits for his
stuffed monkey to be cleaned and dried--in photos. What's more they're
the right photos for the story. Sharyn has used the perfect combination
of detail and portrait to achieve a page that conveys both her son's
perspective and hers.
To keep up with Debbie on a regular basis, check out her Web site and blog.
