SYW324 – How to Start Scrapbooking Again

Laura O'Donnell: [00:00:00] I started rethinking how it was with scrapbooking. Just focusing on the photos and the stories, and taking a moment to reflect on good things in my life. And I thought I should start doing this because it really, in a lot of ways, scrapbooking is definitely, it's a gratitude practice. It definitely is. So that's what made me wanna get back to it.

Jennifer Wilson: Welcome to Scrapbook Your Way, the show that explores the breadth of ways to be a memory keeper. Today. I'm your host, Jennifer Wilson, owner of Simple Scrapper and author of The New Rules of Scrapbooking. This is episode 324. In this episode, Laura O'Donnell talks about her seven year break from scrapbooking and how a gratitude practice brought her back to the hobby.

Her story offers a reminder that it's never too late to return to something that brings you joy.

Hey Laura. Welcome to Scrapbook your Way.

Laura O'Donnell: [00:01:00] Hello.

Jennifer Wilson: I am so looking forward to our conversation. Can you start by sharing a little bit about

yourself?

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah. I am Laura O'Donnell and I am 58 years old. I live in Westchester, Pennsylvania, which is outside Philadelphia. Um, closer to Delaware, very close to Delaware, but also outside Philadelphia. And I've been married for 28 years. I have two kids. Um, my daughter is 26 and my son is 18. Um, I, I am, well, I guess I'm retired, but I, I stopped working when I had my son when he was 18.

I had my son the day before I turned 40. And unlike with my daughter where I went back to work at, you know, when she was about 12 weeks old. My husband told me, you can quit. Now, we thought it would be a short term thing. We thought it would maybe a two year thing, but he, he has special needs and just, I, I just never went back to work.

Off and [00:02:00] on, during the time though, if I could find part-time jobs that fit in during his school day, I would do that. But currently I'm not working. And I have both of my kids living at home with me right now. My daughter and my son, well, my son will be with us for a long time. But my daughter after college, she went to University of Pittsburgh and she found a job locally, close to home and moved back.

And so I'm very, I'm really enjoying having everyone here with me.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that's lovely for sure. Um, definitely my daughter's 14, uh, in high school and I'm, am already scared about what happens next, so.

Laura O'Donnell: So tough when you have to send them. It's, but it's, it's heartbreaking they leave and it is.

Jennifer Wilson: For sure. All right, so before we get into the meat of this episode, I always like to ask our guests a little bit of, you know, a few icebreaker questions. Do you have a favorite recent layout or project?

Laura O'Donnell: Well, you know, that's, I don't know, maybe sometimes I think that I might be like the greatest scrapbooker in the world because I have a lot of favorite projects. [00:03:00] I mean, I, just thinking back recently over the summer, I, when I was more than 10 years ago, I recognized that I was having a problem with drinking wine and getting giant headaches.

Even after one glass of wine, you know, I was feeling it the next day. So I stopped drinking wine. I just totally went off wine. I haven't had any wine in, you know, at least 10 years. I was at a party at one of the neighbors, you know, over the summer, and I brought this up that I, you know, I get these headaches and they all told me, try organic wine.

There are wines labeled.

Jennifer Wilson: Okay.

Laura O'Donnell: Hangover proof wine. And you know, it it, there's a science that has to do with no added sulfates and no sugar. They were sending me all these links and then I, I found out even like Cameron Diaz, her wine brand is an organic wine. And I finally got up the courage to try the organic wine and, you know, so how do you know if it's gonna [00:04:00] work?

You find out the hard way, you know, if you wake up with a headache, you know.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah.

Laura O'Donnell: got the courage and my husband and I shared a bottle of organic wine. And so I was so excited. I took a picture, I was just sitting on my couch with my feet up. I was like, took a picture of myself holding the glass and I made a layout just about how excited I was.

But after a 10 year no wine, I could finally drink wine again. So that was one that I was really excited about. And then I, for 2025, I jumped back into weekly documenting, like Project Life style documenting. And I was using a set of templates. That it was a one page layout for the week, and it kind of had like a photo collage and there was a big number in a circle, like week one, week two, week three. And there was a week in March where my husband was traveling for work and just the different things that were on this page.

They're on this so random. Like I have an instant pot that I bought maybe [00:05:00] five years ago, and when I first bought it, I found out that there are these tiny six inch cheesecake pans. That you can make a tiny cheesecake in your instant pot.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah.

Laura O'Donnell: And I wanted to do that. I love cheesecake. No one in my family eats cheesecake.

So for that reason, I never bought the pan. I never made the cheesecake. But I decided I was gonna make the cheesecake. And it was gonna be just for me because my husband was traveling. So my daughter, I made the cheesecake and then my daughter came home from work and then she saw it and she's like, well, I, why do you think I don't like cheesecake?

I do like cheesecake, and I'm excited about this. And we also, we wanted to watch the movie that was getting some Oscar recognition called Amelia Perez. Which was on Netflix. And my husband had no interest in Amelia Perez, so he was away. So her and I decided to stay up late and do Amelia Perez and eat this tiny cheesecake.

And you know, just looking back on [00:06:00] that week that I had these photos and that week would've totally slipped my mind if I didn't make a page outta it, you know? And, and I just love that. I just love that I, I am stopping and pausing and making a record about these little things that I can look back on and, you know, refresh my memory about it.

So, yeah, there are a lot of, there are a lot of pages that I, that I like.

Jennifer Wilson: Oh, I love those stories. And now I think the most important question here is, did you have wine with your cheesecake?

Laura O'Donnell: Oh no, the, the wine was in the summer. The cheesecake was back earlier, maybe around March. But yeah, the wine, that was exciting. The wine thing was exciting.

Jennifer Wilson: Now, does it matter if it's red or white? 'Cause I've always heard that red, you know, is more likely.

Laura O'Donnell: You know what, I have not tried the red yet. Because I, I've, I've only been doing the white, I've only doing the white. So I don't know. Good question. Good question. Yeah.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah. When you like are making choices like that, you want it to be your choice rather than you know your body saying, no, I don't like this, so.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah. I mean, the, the wine bottles do have like the organic, the certified organic seal [00:07:00] on it, and it'll say things like, no added sulfates on it. So those are the ones that are, they're, they're gonna help you if you feel like you're having the wine problem with the headaches.

Jennifer Wilson: Okay. Great to, good to know. Thank you. Now I also like to ask my guests about something they are excited to do, use or try. And this could be inside of scrapbooking or in everyday life.

Laura O'Donnell: Well there is, there is something I'm thinking about. Have you heard about Blurb magazines?

Jennifer Wilson: Oh yes, of course. We actually publish our, our Spark magazine, uh, every other month as a print copy that members can order. So yes.

Laura O'Donnell: I'm thinking about doing a printed project. We have my family for the past three years, we have tried for the first time gonna the Poconos in Pennsylvania in the summer. And we have always been people that in the summer we would go to the New Jersey Shores. Which we love. We do love the shore, but the problem with the shore and with our son who he's special needs and he's, he's autistic and he's nonverbal and he [00:08:00] gets stressed out and you know, crowds and things like that.

Jennifer Wilson: Sure.

Laura O'Donnell: Are an issue. And we found out about vacationing in the Poconos in the summer. And three years ago we decided to rent this little cabin and we like to go outside and do trail walks and there all these trails in the Poconos and there are lake beaches for swimming. And we've done it three years in a row. We've gone the same place which is called The Rex Hotel. And we rent the same cabin. And so have a good amount of pictures right now. And some of them are very scenic and I had an idea that it would be fun, do a Blurb magazine. With kind of a compilation of all these trip photos from the past three years. And I could even maybe do one giant photo across two pages. Like how it really looked like. Like it could be sitting on our coffee table and people might think it was like a travel magazine. But then they open it up and then there's pictures of us in it and no it isn't. It's our, you [00:09:00] know, it's our trips in a magazine. So that's something that I'm thinking about and I would like to do it.

I'm not sure, I do probably have enough photos to do it right now, or I could wait until we do our trip again in June. And then, and include this year's in it too. I don't know. But that's something that I am excited about. I am just recently finding out about these Blurb magazines. And I think it's a great idea.

Jennifer Wilson: Yes. Yes. And I think, I mean, the quality of that is, is much higher than I would say just a traditional magazine. It's more like, you know, like a Flow magazine. Something that really is hearty.

So, um, I, yeah, I think this is gonna be awesome. So yeah, I'm excited to see what you do with that.

So, I was intrigued when I came across your Instagram account because your name is Scrapping Again, and I'm like, okay, what does that mean?

I need to hear all the story. I need to know what happened here. So, let's start by going back when and how did you get started scrapbooking?

Laura O'Donnell: Well, I started, I had my daughter, she was born in [00:10:00] 1999. I, you know, when you have a new baby, you get an interest in photography and, you know, I got a SLR film camera and was learning about manual settings and the importance of not having the flash on. And so I was turning into a picture taker. And then my, my sister-in-law had a little boy the same age as my daughter, and around 2003, she was invited to a Creative Memories party.

And she went and she bought all this stuff and I was so impressed with her album, and I thought, I, I need to do this too. I need to scrapbook with my photos. And my next door neighbor coincidentally invited me to a Creative Memories party. She was having one, and I was at the last minute. I couldn't make it.

I forget what happened, but I couldn't go. I was really disappointed. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna figure this out on my own. And I went to a bookstore to look for a book. What I found was found the magazines, you know, Creating Keepsakes and Simple Scrapbooker and Memory [00:11:00] Makers. I found the scrap magazines. And then I got home and I just did a Google search and I found Two Peas in a Bucket and I, I kind of just started on my own from there, and so I never did Creative Memories.

I never jumped on that bag bandwagon. And coincidentally, my sister-in-law who bought all this stuff. I think that one layout that she made at the party was the only one she ever did. She didn't continue with it either. Um, so I was a paper scrapper and I loved it, and I loved all the online communities. I loved Two Peas back when that was around.

Um, I started likeing stamping and doing card making and things, and then Project Life. I jumped all in on Project Life. Um, and then digital. Digital was interesting because I didn't think that I would wanna do digital. But then I figured out when I was doing stamping, how can I explain this?

So the Hero Arts stamp company, they, a long time ago, had some [00:12:00] digital stamps. That you could print out on card stock and you could color them in with your Copic markers. And they had a brief tutorial and they said, well, if you don't have any programs like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you can use Word. You can use insert picture from file in a Word document. And get the digital stamp in the document and then print it out on card stock and use your Copic markers and color them in.

Jennifer Wilson: Yep.

Laura O'Donnell: And I was like, wow, that's really neat. You know? And then I thought, well, I wonder what else I could, you know, use this insert picture from file. And I went to the Two Peas digital store and I searched the store price low from high and all the free stuff comes up first. And there was a lot of free stuff.

There was pattern papers and digital stickers and just all this stuff. And I started, you know, shrinking the paper to [00:13:00] be tiny size to use for card backgrounds and making up all these little different labels and things for cards and scrapbook pages. And I was posting all my stuff back then. I was posting all this stuff in the gallery on Two Peas so I was giving the credit to all these digital kits.

Jennifer Wilson: So you really, you were a hybrid scrapbooker at that point?

Laura O'Donnell: Well, I was, before I even knew what that meant, I was a hybrid scrapbooker. And then I got an email from the director at the time, her name was Melly. And she said, would you like to join our digital creative team? And I said, yes. And there was one other hybrid person on that team at the time. Her name was Lucy Abrams.

So her and I, now Melly didn't tell me that she only wanted me to make the hybrid stuff in the cards, you know? But that was all I did. But in the meantime, you know, every week I was building up a really impressive stash of digital kits. I was, I, so now you know, I made my design team project, but now I owned all this stuff. And I was like, it's kind of irresponsible for me to not [00:14:00] learn a little bit more about this digital scrapbooking.

So I took a class at Jessica Sprague and you know, I recognized that I was a beginner, so I was not, they were not creative team projects. I was, they were doing like personal projects while I kind of build up my skills with digital. But I really wound up liking digital a lot. And then I was, you know, then I was all over the place.

But I, at the time, I didn't, I didn't mind, I didn't mind that I was like still doing paper scrapbooking and Project Life and making cards and digital. You know, I was just jumping around from one thing to the next. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. I liked all of it.

Jennifer Wilson: I am curious if your Project Life, did you do that, like kind of purely physical or did you bring some of the hybrid elements into that as well?

Laura O'Donnell: No, I did bring the hybrid elements. Because that's what I mean. One of the wonderful things about having digital kits is there's a really nice journaling card you can print it out as many times as you want.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah. And then. Okay, so before we jumped on, you mentioned to me that you never printed any of your [00:15:00] digital pages. So like thinking back to that time, like you had, you had your Project Life albums, you had some physical work, you had cards, but then you had this increasing body of digital pages that have been on your computer?

Laura O'Donnell: They've been on my computer. Well, I save them a couple places. Yeah, I have them,

Jennifer Wilson: Or in the gallery too.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah, I have, I put them in galleries and then I have them on my Instagram page, and then I, I have them on a external hard drive, and I also have them in Dropbox. So there are a lot of different places.

Jennifer Wilson: Okay.

Laura O'Donnell: And

Jennifer Wilson: So they're safe.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah, they're, they're all safe.

And now the one thing I did not do in the early years that I wish I had done is, the way I do it now is I save the digital page in the layers. And then I make a copy of that and I flatten it to a jpeg and I save it at maximum size. And then I have another one that I resize it for web. And the part that I've missed, is the part where you save it full size.

Because if I ever, if you wanted to print a photo book, you need that full size page, you can't [00:16:00] use the one that you shrank. That wouldn't look too good, I don't think. Right.

Jennifer Wilson: Correct.

Laura O'Donnell: So back then I, you know, I was making the digital pages, but I don't, I hadn't thought through too well, you know, my best practices for the whole work flow for what I should save and everything.

But yeah, I basically, I, I really thought that the viewing quality was very good, looking at it on a screen, and I just didn't see the need to print it out. I didn't think that I would like a print out page more than the digital looking at it on the screen page.

Jennifer Wilson: How do you feel about that now?

Laura O'Donnell: Now, I totally agree with it. Well, now the thing is, um, so jumping ahead, you know, I'm 58 and my husband's 62. We're still in our, you know, our house with our kids and everything. But at some point in the future, we would probably like to downsize to a smaller place. And I'm looking forward to that. I think it'll be great to have less maintenance and, you know, more free time.

And I'm really starting to [00:17:00] think about having to get rid of, stu So I, I don't wanna increase the amount of the scrapbooks. you know what I mean? Like the ones that I have that are already printed out. I don't wanna add more to that pile.

Jennifer Wilson: Well, it seems like then, that printing your layouts in book format or even the magazine format may be something that takes up a lot less space for you.

Laura O'Donnell: It definitely would. Yeah. So yeah, so definitely if I printed out the book, I would still have it on the screen. I would have both, so I could do that.

Jennifer Wilson: Correct. Yeah. Well, and one thing also to consider is, you know, and obviously we don't know the exact quality of those older layouts, but I've always printed all of my digital pages at eight by eight. Um, now I had to make sure my font were big enough so that I could read them at eight by eight. But that always felt the most comfortable for me because printing a 12 by 12 digital just felt very large.

Laura O'Donnell: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Wilson: Even though now I, I scrapbook paper at 12 by 12, [00:18:00] digital still felt like so large at 12 by 12. And I know there's gonna be plenty of Digi folks here that disagree with that. But that is something also to consider is the size. Okay. So yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Um, had a seven year break from scrapbooking. How did that happen? Was it sudden? Was it a gradual departure?

Laura O'Donnell: What I thought I was doing was just taking a break, but the break turned into a really long break. And it was, I dunno, it was around 20, it was around 2014. And my son was, um, well he's autistic and like if he, you know, he's high needs and he's got behaviors and he's aggressive and nonverbal. And he was getting bigger and if you think about when you have a two year old and you baby proof for a two year old.

To baby proof now for a 7-year-old who he can get into any cabinet. You know, I was really, it was tough. It was tough. And at one point, I remember our living room in the front of the house [00:19:00] that I really never thought he had any interest in. That's where I had the scrapbooks in shelves. And I, I, I didn't know where he was and I went in there and he had taken the albums off the shelves. And he wasn't trying to take the layouts outta the pages. He was trying to rip through the front of the page protectors to get to the pages. And that happened more than once. So what I did was I boxed everything up and I put them in tubs, all the scrapbooks and all the photo albums, and I put them in tubs in the storage room in our basement.

And then I also found that I, it was tough for me to scrapbook. Every time I scrapbooked I had to put everything all the way away so that he couldn't get to it. And that adds a lot of work. You know, when you've gotta pull everything out and then put everything completely away, you know, it adds a lot of work to the whole process.

It makes it a lot more difficult. And then there were some things I, I, I recognized he was [00:20:00] maybe in first grade then, and I recognized that the school he was in, was not really a good placement for him, so I was battling the school district. I found a different school that I wanted to get him into. And I was, and that's, that's a very tough feeling when you know you want your child somewhere and you're not sure if you're gonna make it happen.

You know, if it's gonna be in your power to get them where they were going and then my husband and my, our parents were getting older and they were needing more help. And all of a sudden I just started thinking, I need to put this aside for a bit. And, um, just not do this for a while. And I, I, so I did. I, I was on a few, well I was on a few teams at that point.

There was a store. And the, the store team went away because the store closed. The store was called Pixels and Company So that's, so that team went away because the, because the store closed. And then I was on a team for a designer, Just Jamiee And so I [00:21:00] stepped down from Jamie's team. And then I was also on a team for the stamp company Technique Tuesday. And I asked for a break from Technique Tuesday.

And when I stopped scrapbooking and stopped doing everything, I found that I definitely appreciated the break. The things that I felt like I needed to give more attention. I really did genuinely need to give those things more attention. But then as the time went away and it wasn't in the routine anymore, I, I don't know, I just, I never got back to it. I never got back to it.

Jennifer Wilson: Well, I think this is ultimately a story of, uh, being a memory keeper who is also a caregiver, and how do you, what are the choices we have to make to also take care of ourselves when so much of our energy is going towards others.

Laura O'Donnell: Yes, definitely.

Jennifer Wilson: So how did you, were you doing anything that you would consider memory keeping during that time? Were you taking photos, doing other types of documentation? Are you a journaler.

Laura O'Donnell: That, that makes me sad because I, where I was a prolific [00:22:00] photographer, because, you know, getting more pictures for more layouts, my photography slowed way down. And that was disappointing. And even I remember it, even, I had to remind myself, you know, at somebody's birthday that I needed to take a picture of them blowing out the candles.

Like that's how much my photo taking had decreased over the years. And I'm kind of disappointed about that. I was doing, I was doing nothing. I was doing nothing. No memory keeping and no photos.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah. And I think it's hard when we can look back and see ourselves, um, and maybe what we were going through at that time and we weren't able to kind of get to that part of ourselves that, that loves the photos and, and wants to keep the memories.

Laura O'Donnell: Yes, yes.

Jennifer Wilson: So, okay. When did you decide it was time to return? Like how, how did things evolve during that time to lead you back to the hobby?

Laura O'Donnell: So, you know, COVID happened in 2020. If you remember at the very beginning of COVID where we were told, you know, we were initially told we can't [00:23:00] leave the house for two weeks, you know. And a lot of us kind of believed that. Um, and then there was a lot of things on the news and on TV about like, well, what can you do at home?

And of course, they brought up things like books and audio books that you can check out on Libby. And a lot of concerts and different things that you can look at on YouTube. And one thing that was getting a lot of attention was a class by a Yale professor named Lori Santos, which is called the Science of Wellbeing. And you could take.

Jennifer Wilson: Okay.

Laura O'Donnell: Class for free at an online school called Coursera. And it was apparently at the time, the most popular class at Yale. It was geared towards students anxieties and stress and pressure. How to deal with it. And I didn't jump on it at first, but I thought about it. Because, and the reason I didn't jump on it was because everything you know, was total chaos in the beginning of COVID.

And I was [00:24:00] like, how do I think I can take a Yale class right now, like a Yale class that can't happen?

Jennifer Wilson: Mm-hmm.

Laura O'Donnell: I had been talking to a few people that in fact had taken it and they were like, it's not, don't all the, that might be associated with a Yale class. You definitely can do it. And it's really good. And, and another thing that people were pointing out is, you know, it's free right now, but who knows how long this thing is gonna remain free.

You might as well jump on it now. So I, I signed up for the class and it's, it's a class in positive psychology and it's, it, it's geared towards students and it has a lot of approaches to positive psychology. That have to do with just basic things like getting enough sleep and eating right, connecting with people, getting outside.

Um. And then she talks about some interesting things like, you know, the whole idea of retail therapy. Well, no, as a matter of fact, shopping does not make you happy. You know, buying more things does not make you happy. Your brain a lot of times, fools you into [00:25:00] thinking that this thing will make you happy.

But no, in fact it doesn't.

Jennifer Wilson: No doubt.

Laura O'Donnell: And an important thing, 'cause you know, with my son being special needs, I mean, I. You know, it makes me sad. It does make me sad and I kind of had reached a point where I thought, well, this is my lot in life where I'm just gonna be sad from here on out because of my special needs child.

And what she tells you in the, in the very first one of the classes, it's, there are strategies if you wanna be happy, you don't, taking away what's making you sad isn't necessarily gonna make you happy. There are strategies that you can work on to improve your happiness. And so that really gave me some hope.

And um, I went through the whole class. And then she had this project that she wanted you to do, you could pick, and she called them rewirements, And you know, you could focus on exercise. There were different things you could focus on. And one of the things was [00:26:00] keeping a gratitude journal. And that was the one I decided to do.

And I had an abandoned Hobonichi Weeks that I pulled out and I thought, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a daily gratitude. And I'm not just, I'm gonna be specific. I'm gonna find something that happened during the day and I'm gonna tell this specific story. I'm not just gonna write. I'm grateful for my family, I'm grateful for a sunny day.

I'm gonna be specific in this little book. It was, it was a little bit of work in the beginning because some days were horrible. And it, it, I really had to stretch and, you know, find the bright spot, find the glimmer. But as I went through the book, you know the weeks were going by and it brought me so much joy looking at this little book and all these little gratitudes here.

And every once in a while I would come to a something and I knew I took pictures of that. And I was, I would think to myself, wow, what if I made like a little photo collage of the pictures with this journaling here that I have. And then I wish I still had my alphabet stickers. I could like have [00:27:00] a title and I thought, wow.

That's kind of a lot like scrapbooking. Do I want a scrapbook again? And I started rethinking how it was with scrapbooking. Just focusing on the photos and the stories, and taking a moment to reflect on good things in my life. And I thought I should start doing this because it really, in a lot of ways, scrapbooking is definitely, it's a gratitude practice. It definitely is. So that's what made me wanna get back to it.

Jennifer Wilson: Do you think if you had, know, kind of understood that or embraced that before you would've kept doing it?

Laura O'Donnell: Yes. Right.

Jennifer Wilson: Mean, obviously we are just, we're always making the deci decisions based on the information we have.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah. Because, uh, you know, especially when I, you know, was a paper scrapbooker and, you know, you build up a stash and stuff. Some of it you haven't even opened yet, and you, you start getting caught up into, you know, is this a shopping hobby? Like, what am I actually doing [00:28:00] here? Do, do, do my family, does my family like these books as much as I like these books?

You know, or is it just a selfish thing that I'm doing for myself? And it's all about shopping, you know. And, you know, should I be doing this? But I, I found that yes, I, I should be doing this. I definitely should be doing this. Because I need to, I need to appreciate the good times and I need to you know stop. And you know, like Heidi Swapp says, you know, Stop the Blur. And take a moment and recognize.

Jennifer Wilson: Yes.

Laura O'Donnell: And that's what made me wanna get back to it.

Jennifer Wilson: Oh, I love that. I love, yeah, I, and I love that something so challenging as the pandemic, uh, was able to kind of create that transformation for you.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah. And then, okay, so I've decided to go back digital. Because of the first thing I had told you about earlier about, you know, maybe possibly downsizing to a smaller house and just not wanting to bring. You know, but then over the years I had also given away my entire paper stash to the art teacher at my son's [00:29:00] school. So I didn't have any of that anymore.

And so that made it very easy for me to decide to decide that when I came back I was gonna be digital only.

Jennifer Wilson: Okay. Yeah. And did you find that you had the same kind of stylistic interests that you did that before, or had your, like, your aesthetic for scrapbooking changed in that time.

Laura O'Donnell: Well, I did. I guess when I thought back to my earlier pages, I did really like the Project Life style, documenting. I thought I'm gonna come back, but maybe, you know, since I'm kind of rusty with things, maybe I'll just do kind of a monthly recap for Project Life. I won't do it as a weekly basis. I'll just do like a month at a glance, um, in the, in the grid.

And what was so awesome was when I, you know, I hadn't looked at my digital hard drive. I, I wasn't even sure where my digital hard drive was, that had all my old kits on it. It was right where I thought it was, and I plugged it in and the kits opened up [00:30:00] beautifully. Like they were just sitting there waiting for me after all these years, just in perfect shape.

And I, I have a lot of stuff that really doesn't go outta style, like the, the plastic pocket pages. And I had, you know, digital alpha stamps and, um, nice card stock packs. Like I have things from, you know, 2010 that I am still using today. And I can just use them as many times as I want.

Jennifer Wilson: Yes, that's, that's one of the beauties. I still have, like, I think I have digital staples and stitches.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah.

Jennifer Wilson: From that like 2008, 2010 era.

Laura O'Donnell: Mm-hmm. And then when I originally did digital scrapbooking, I used Photoshop Elements, but when I came back I decided I was gonna do full Photoshop. And the reason, the one thing I remembered from the early days. There are a lot of on, you know, YouTubes and the blogs at the different scrapbook stores.

There are a lot of tutorials about some really cool techniques and different things you can do. [00:31:00] But most of those tutorials are written for full Photoshop. So I thought, okay, well if I'm coming back, I will get Photoshop in case if I wanna really work on skills, and then I can take advantage of these tutorials that are out there.

So I did, I did the, the cloud, you know, the Photoshop, I think they call it the photographer package. It's the Photoshop with Lightroom package.

Jennifer Wilson: And that's what I was gonna ask is how did photo management play into that?

Laura O'Donnell: Well, yeah, that's what I, that's what I did. I did the Photoshop with Lightroom package at first. I took a class to refresh. Well, since I didn't know Photoshop, there was a, and unfortunately this school is not around anymore. It was called Scrapaneers, but they had a digital scrapbooking for beginners with Photoshop class that I took.

And that's what got me really jump started and, you know, up and running, remembering how the screen would look and how the layers, like where the Layers palette is. How to clip things, you know, all the, all the how to recolor things, all this, all [00:32:00] the little things that you can do to make a lay layout. But then what happened,

so I had the cloud for a couple years. And I started thinking about it and I realized all these tutorials and things that I thought that I would wanna do. I wasn't doing any of them. I was like, I was in my, I was in my zone with my workflow and I'm comfortable with, I wasn't doing any of that. So I got of the cloud. And then I got Photoshop Elements. Unfortunately, I, I did it last year so I missed, I didn't get to buy it. I'm doing the thing where you have the 3 year license to it.

Jennifer Wilson: Okay. But you know, like I think you're not the only person who has done that. Um, who thinks that they're going to use like all the additional features and realize that that's, that's, it's not, yes, there's possibility, but if you're not leveraging the possibility, it doesn't really matter.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah, I was just not doing that at all.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. No, but it's all about the enjoyment of the process too, not just having the latest and greatest. So were there any [00:33:00] particular like stumbling blocks? Um, I mean other, other than that one, I guess, you know, that's the, was a, a perhaps a little false start and that's, that's very normal. Were there other things that, that you had to go through as you came back into being a regular scrapbooker?

Laura O'Donnell: Not really. Not really. I mean, I really enjoy that I can do this without having, you know, to worry about where I'm gonna store my stash. And, um, I love working on the laptop. I, I mean, some people have, you know, a desktop with giant monitors and everything, and I just have a regular laptop, and I, I think it's fine.

I think it works great. And I, I love that there's really, I mean, if you start a page and it's not going where you wanted, you just delete it and then you still have all the products. You still have the photos. It's all right there in, right there in your computer. So then you do something else.

Jennifer Wilson: What does your kind of creative rhythm through the week look like? Are you someone who is mo like scrapbooking along with the releases [00:34:00] on Fridays, or, um, when do we can, when can we typically find you scrapbooking?

Laura O'Donnell: Well, right now I am on two creative teams. And the two creative teams are Sweet Doll Designs and Clever Monkey Graphics. And both of those ladies have shops at the Sweet Shoppe. So Sweet Doll designs, she pretty much comes out with a new kit every week. So I have one kit that I do for her. Now, Clever Monkey Graphics, she doesn't come out with kits very often.

She comes out with maybe one kit a month. So really that's a very light requirement. And I do, I love teams. I love getting a kit being challenged to think of what I'm going to use it for. Um, so I have those two things. And then, um, I like to go around sometimes at the shops that have message boards and look at the monthly challenges and maybe do a challenge here and there.

Um, [00:35:00] I have the Project Life pages that I do. I, I still do the weekly pages and a lot of times I don't post them online. Because, you know, there's the whole thing where when you make something, you know, if you're gonna share it online, you have to think about how much you wanna put out there. You know. And that was a stumbling block.

That was a big stumbling block for me last year when I started doing this weekly documenting. Um, where, you know, maybe I would get some really good pictures from my son's school. There were photos of the other kids in the pictures and, you know, so I would be like, I would have to think in my head, okay, well maybe I could only use the picture with Willie, or I could blur the faces.

You know, it's when you, when you're having to put those kind of thoughts in your head about, well, how much do I wanna share with this? With posting online? I, every once in a while I would fall behind because I just couldn't start the page because I didn't know what I wanted to share. [00:36:00] So after a while I kind of just stopped sharing those pages online.

Um, and I keep those to myself. But that is a weekly thing that I very much enjoy. And um, so I have that. And, I mean, I, we, you know, we go and we take walks at local trails and I take a lot of photos. We live close to Longwood Gardens. And we go there quite often and I take pictures along with gardens. So basically as the events come up and the photos come up, that's what makes me wanna do a page.

Jennifer Wilson: Are there any things you wish you had done differently as you have gotten back into it in the past five, six years?

Laura O'Donnell: Well, um, you know, just the whole idea of when you have too many choices. You know, I wish I.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah.

Laura O'Donnell: I wish I would just make a decision and go with it. I mean, um, you know, you can get overwhelmed with all the kits and all the supplies and like, what's gonna be the best thing. And [00:37:00] should I buy something new or just use what I have?

And I mean, you really just have to make a decision and go with it. And, and, uh, yeah, that's, I get disappointed in myself when I put these kind of parameters, these kind of self-imposed parameters on myself that don't need to be there.

Jennifer Wilson: Oh, I think we're all very good at that for sure. You're not alone.

Laura O'Donnell: Yes.

Jennifer Wilson: So we've definitely highlighted ways in which your hobby has, has shifted and evolved and, and obviously you were very much into digital before and then it made, it was very clear that this is the direction you need to continue on. How do you think you are different than you were before your break and then even in the past five years?

'Cause I think the pandemic also changed a lot of us in a lot of ways.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah, well, I mean, when I did it the first time, my kids were little, you know, my son was a baby and you know, a toddler, and my daughter was in grade school and, and you know, now she's 26 and he's 18. And you know, you, when you're at an older person and you're not, you don't have all [00:38:00] these cute little kid pictures, you know?

You might think, well, might, why bother? You know, why scrapbook? But it's important to recognize the things that are going on in your, in your life. They're, they're different, but they're still really good. You know, and I, you know, my husband and I will, we'll go out to brunch or we'll go out to lunch or, you know, like maybe in the middle of winter we'll go walk in the mall when it's really cold outside.

And it's, those are things that are, they're worth recognizing. They're, they're worth, they're worth thinking about. And, there is definitely there, there's a way to transition from being a young mom with little kids to being an older person with no kids. And you'll still enjoy the hobby. And the digital hobby for me is definitely, it's, it's as, it's definitely creative.

I mean, if people who are paper scrappers, if, if they're thinking, oh, I I don’t think I would enjoy digital. That wouldn’t be creative. I think it is very creative. I find it very creative.

I [00:39:00] say, don't knock it until you try it.

Jennifer Wilson: So with you coming back with this gratitude project as the instigator, I'm curious if you scrapbook more about yourself now than you did before?

Laura O'Donnell: Well, I do. Yeah, I do. And it like, I'm still a super fan of Heidi Swapp, you know, and if I were gonna go back paper, her whole memory planner thing. Inspiring, but the way her focus is, she says, this is about my family, but I am the star. That's how I feel about my scrapbooking. I am the star of the show here.

Jennifer Wilson: I love that. I love that we all should have embraced that. I think that's, that's a great perspective to keep, especially to keep us motivated sometimes when the, I don't know, the guilt and the shoulds come into what we, we think we need to be doing as scrapbookers.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah. I have started within the past couple years, like I have a Hobonichi A5 that I [00:40:00] do kind of like a daily journal.

Jennifer Wilson: Mm-hmm.

Laura O'Donnell: I found that very helpful. You know, it's like a daily recap of what happened. And that is definitely very helpful if I do want a scrapbook to go back and refresh my memory on, you know, what happened when I took these photos.

I don't do any projects like December Daily. I fizzle out with those in the middle. I did a December Daily many years ago when I was on the Technique Tuesday team. And that one I did finish and it came out beautiful. But every time I look at that thing, the first thing I think of was, boy this was a pain in the butt.

Jennifer Wilson: Well, I, yeah, I mean, I love stamping. And I think there's been so many, you know, tools and technologies and, and different supplies that may have make it, made it easier today. But still I find it incredibly stressful because inevitably there's things that are in very imperfect sometimes to the point of I have to start over. So. So, kind of wrapping up [00:41:00] here and stepping back, what advice would you have for someone who has been listening to, maybe listening to the podcast for a while now and, and hasn't been able to get back into the hobby? You know, what, what should they be looking for? What should they be thinking about? What, what wisdom would you share with them?

Laura O'Donnell: Oh, well, I mean, the first thing that you can think of is if you're debating with yourself too hard about should I come back or not? If you come back and it doesn't work out, you can always stop again. You know, that's the first thing to think about. It's, you know, just stop again if it doesn't work. But if you're thinking about coming back, I think that there's probably a good chance that you would like it again.

And, um, yeah, I love digital. It's something to think about for everybody, especially if you like the idea of, you know, not having all of the physical supplies taken up space in your house. Um, I think it's very creative and a lot of fun.

I mean, there are people that I've talked to who have taken long breaks themselves and come back and [00:42:00] nobody's really regretted it. I mean, I, I, I think that, um, anybody's who's thinking about it, I think they should give it a try. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but it probably would work out.

Jennifer Wilson: Uh, here's something we, I guess we didn't really cover. Did you have a any sense of intimidation of I'm so far behind, why should I bother?

Laura O'Donnell: Oh, I did, yes, because there was that big chunk of time when I didn't take many photos, when I also wasn't scrapbooking. And that would've been if I had up kept up with, could you imagine if I had 7 years worth of photos to pick from? I think that would be awesome, but I don't have 'em, so I just try not to beat myself up about the fact that I, you know, that I fell off the wagon with the pictures too.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think there's, there's strategies, you know, you mentioned various, like trying to, when you're thinking about everyday life's type projects, but, but compressing it down to a month at a time instead of a week, or, you know, doing a week on one page instead of two pages. There's lots of ways to do more of a summary, uh, to feel more caught up. If you feel [00:43:00] like. I need to get some of this documented, uh, so that I can feel that, you know, a sense of completion, if you will, and in tandem with letting it go as well.

Laura O'Donnell: Right, right.

Jennifer Wilson: Any other things that you'd like to share today? Laura, this has been so insightful. I appreciate you sharing so openly with us about your journey.

Laura O'Donnell: Yeah, this has been fun. No, I can't think of anything else.

Jennifer Wilson: All right. Yes. I mean, I know I'm one of those who found digital with Two Peas in a Bucket and, and still miss that community. Things are just definitely very different today, but we still have community in lots of different ways and you know, the both.

Laura O'Donnell: I mean, I know you went from digital to paper. You started digital and then went paper.

Jennifer Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. It, and I, sometimes I try to do digital again and I definitely am still hybrid. But I appreciate having, you know, having had those experiences and I think it helps me be able to, you know, have these great conversations to be able to understand what it's like to be, you know, every different type of [00:44:00] scrapbooker.

All right, again, thank you so much for spending time with me.

Jennifer Wilson: And so all of our listeners, please remember that you have permission to Scrapbook Your Way.