Scrapbooking, Then and Now - The First

I thought it would be interesting to compare some of my earlier pages with recent ones, spotting trends and identifying how I've matured as a scrapbooker. In particular, I want to return to the core of why I scrapbook and shed the compulsion to have the latest product or tool.

 

I first started scrapbooking in 1995. I was expecting Big One and spent many a weekend in Ben Franklin at Marina. I would pore over the magazines (Creating Keepsakes and Making Memories, then much later Paperkuts) and read over and over the few articles on how to get started. When I thought I was ready, I bought a kit with a baby theme, an acid-free glue stick and got started with some basic tools I already owned. It took several more trips to the store and lots of attempts to memorise some resources from the magazines before I completed my first pages. Soon, I was visiting online forums and accessing online articles. These were almost exclusively based in USA. I recall posting something on forums and being asked why I was posted to Singapore, everyone assumed I was an American living in Singapore.

 

Here is an early page. 

Die cut photo frames, paint and inks used with stencils and rubberstamps, fancy scissors, calligraphy pen - these same basics still available today.

Flouted design principle: cropped photos floating on the page – groan!

Fast forward 7 years.  Here are two pages from 2002. 

Dimensions through shaped brads and torn paper edges, corner-rounded photos.

More interesting materials – corrugated cardboard and vellum, textured cardstock.

Here’s one recent layout.

What's new: texture and dimensions - in the cardstock, the distressed and inked edges and the stickers. Even the patterned paper has more "depth" and no longer look like wrapping paper or wallpaper.

What’s back: paint, shaped photo, journaling meandering around the page, torn edges