Scrapbooker Ali Edwards made an interesting post today at her blog, which included the following statement:

• What if you collected stories the same way you collect supplies?
• What if you did your journaling first, rather than last, in your creative process?
• What if you began paying attention to your life in a way that enabled the stories to free-flow from your fingers onto the page?
• What if you encouraged your kids (by example and through encouragement) to be the kind of people who grow up telling their own stories?
• What if you truly valued your individual story and life experiences and were brave enough to share them with others?

When I think about what scrapbooking means to me, it is about telling stories as much as capturing images, yet we rarely devote as much time thinking about what we are going to say as we do to preparing our images, choosing our supplies and designing our layouts.

I know that I often I rush the journaling or leave it off completely (intending to come back to it later). Ali's statement really hit home, scrapbooking isn't about the supplies, or even the design, but about telling stories through the use of words and pictures. I am going to challenge myself to do the things in the bullet points above.