When I first began scrapbooking I was so thrilled that I could include the stories with my photos. The classes that I took encouraged you to list the Who, What, When, Where, and Why on each layout. Journaling was looked upon back then as one of the most important aspects of your scrapbook layout.

Things have changed a lot since I first started scrapbooking. More and more companies began manufacturing scrapbooking supplies and embellishmets. Scrapbooking websites, forums, galleries, magazines and idea books have become abundant and full of ideas and inspiration. While these things were unfolding our journaling has seemed to slip to the back burner. I am just as guilty as the next scrapper. I have numerous pages with a blank journaling box...because I was so much in the creative zone that I didn't want to take the time to sit and journal. Our scrapbooking has gone from including the stories of our lives to more of creating art masterpieces.

Look at the magazines and you will see these art masterpieces. Beautiful? Absolutely! But are they truly telling the story of a life? Most of them include a single photo, a word and lots of perfectly placed embellishments. Storytelling hasn't been a part of this trend.

Storytelling in our scrapbooks is so important. Just imagine that you are able to communicate with future generations long after you have left this earth. That is exactly what your journaling will do! If you had an art masterpiece layout from your grandmother that has the word LOVE and one photo, verses a balanced layout with several photos of your grandparents in their yojnger years plus a story of how your grandma and grandpa met, which would be most precious to you? When I asked many people...the response was always the balanced layout with several photos and the story. While masterpieces are fabulous...we must always remember the reason we are scrapbooking...to leave a legacy!

Your journaling is your voice put onto paper for posterity. I have decided that I want to go beyond the basic everyday life who, what, when and where. I want my children to be able to open up their scrapbooks and read my journaling and see the dreams I had for them when they were young, the prayers I prayed for them, the faith I have in the Lord and why I have that faith, the answered prayers in our lives, the hopes we have for our family as well as the everyday lives that we lived and the milestones.

I read a very good analogy the other day about journaling! It said something like this...underestimating the importance of telling your story through journaling is kinda like leaving out the spices when you are making spaghetti sauce. You'll end up with sauce, but is it as good as it could have been if you had done the extra work of adding the spices?

Make the stories of your life center stage in your scrapbook layouts!