A non crafting friend, having seen the little pile of card and scrapbook related mags on my coffee table, asked if I was totally up to date with my scrapbooks. I said yes, because I don't have unfinished layouts or scrap type projects lying around. It soon became clear that she thought that I'd scrapped every photo I've ever taken. Poor misguided friend also became deeply confused: the hysterical laughter was coming from me and she had no idea why! It's been quite a while since I was in the company of a 'brand new' scrapper, and so I haven't been able to deliver my little speech - you'll be familiar with it because at some point in your own scrapping history, you'll have told yourself the same thing. And that is that I don't think any scrapper should be under the illusion that they won't still have shoe boxes full - or some other sophisticated archive - of photos, no matter how many albums they fill. Not least because we all have a load of useless, non-story, non-event photos. And since we went digital, we have multiple images of the same damn thing. Oh you do, be honest - however slow to 're-load' your digi camera is, you still take shed loads more of the same thing than you would if you had to pay for film processing. Well, (this is going somewhere, eventually!) sometime in the last ten days, a thread appeared over on UK Scrappers asking for help with old photos. I wondered into the thread because I'm interested in the amazing things (other) people do to rescue old and creased pictures. Imagine how offended I was to discover that these 'old' photos were taken in the 1980s! I can't help with any tips or tricks on rescuing colour from faded or acid damaged pictures, and I can't keep my mouth shut to avoid asking the post author if she was deliberately being age-ist, so I slunk out of there. But it got me thinking. We (and for once, this is a collective term for the people involved in my marriage) do not have many systems in place in this household. Adequate archiving of photographs that didn't make it into some sort of album over the last 24.4 years has involved a lot of envelopes and a nice deep drawer. But at least I know where they are! So I've been through them a bit and dug out some corkers. Faded, colour damaged and certainly showing some shocking fashion, not to mention hair. But kept for a reason, for sure. So I'm going to scrap them. And the LO above is a start. These photos have been in the drawer of the Utile chest that Mr Dunnit made at school since the day after they were developed, despite the fact that I love them. Now the woman in me knows that Sissy will instantly cry 'how young we look' (and we do), but the scrapper in me cried because none of my wedges of lovely papers were really any good. Print processes are too crisp and inks are too saturated here in the 21st Century. I really struggled to find anything to put them on. And then I remembered my secret collection 'office' type stash. It's only a secret because office and general stationery really are the roots of my obsession with paper and ink, and I think it's sad that at 16 my favourite shop was WH Smith. It works better. It's not great, but it works better. I had to sand the black-ness off the journalling tag; everything was working harder than the pictures! Anyway, it's done, I'm happy with it and of course as a real bonus, I've increased the life expectancy of these 'old, 80's photos' and made a tiny dent in the ahem, Dunnit archives.
Sunday, 26 July 2009
Old or old(ish) photos
A non crafting friend, having seen the little pile of card and scrapbook related mags on my coffee table, asked if I was totally up to date with my scrapbooks. I said yes, because I don't have unfinished layouts or scrap type projects lying around. It soon became clear that she thought that I'd scrapped every photo I've ever taken. Poor misguided friend also became deeply confused: the hysterical laughter was coming from me and she had no idea why! It's been quite a while since I was in the company of a 'brand new' scrapper, and so I haven't been able to deliver my little speech - you'll be familiar with it because at some point in your own scrapping history, you'll have told yourself the same thing. And that is that I don't think any scrapper should be under the illusion that they won't still have shoe boxes full - or some other sophisticated archive - of photos, no matter how many albums they fill. Not least because we all have a load of useless, non-story, non-event photos. And since we went digital, we have multiple images of the same damn thing. Oh you do, be honest - however slow to 're-load' your digi camera is, you still take shed loads more of the same thing than you would if you had to pay for film processing. Well, (this is going somewhere, eventually!) sometime in the last ten days, a thread appeared over on UK Scrappers asking for help with old photos. I wondered into the thread because I'm interested in the amazing things (other) people do to rescue old and creased pictures. Imagine how offended I was to discover that these 'old' photos were taken in the 1980s! I can't help with any tips or tricks on rescuing colour from faded or acid damaged pictures, and I can't keep my mouth shut to avoid asking the post author if she was deliberately being age-ist, so I slunk out of there. But it got me thinking. We (and for once, this is a collective term for the people involved in my marriage) do not have many systems in place in this household. Adequate archiving of photographs that didn't make it into some sort of album over the last 24.4 years has involved a lot of envelopes and a nice deep drawer. But at least I know where they are! So I've been through them a bit and dug out some corkers. Faded, colour damaged and certainly showing some shocking fashion, not to mention hair. But kept for a reason, for sure. So I'm going to scrap them. And the LO above is a start. These photos have been in the drawer of the Utile chest that Mr Dunnit made at school since the day after they were developed, despite the fact that I love them. Now the woman in me knows that Sissy will instantly cry 'how young we look' (and we do), but the scrapper in me cried because none of my wedges of lovely papers were really any good. Print processes are too crisp and inks are too saturated here in the 21st Century. I really struggled to find anything to put them on. And then I remembered my secret collection 'office' type stash. It's only a secret because office and general stationery really are the roots of my obsession with paper and ink, and I think it's sad that at 16 my favourite shop was WH Smith. It works better. It's not great, but it works better. I had to sand the black-ness off the journalling tag; everything was working harder than the pictures! Anyway, it's done, I'm happy with it and of course as a real bonus, I've increased the life expectancy of these 'old, 80's photos' and made a tiny dent in the ahem, Dunnit archives.
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11 comments:
I love the LO and the whole post cracked me up.
I have spoken to some in their 20's who refer to the olden days and then I find they are talking about the 60's and 70's!!!!!!
If you pop to my blog, you will find another ***** waiting for you xx lol
It is NOT SAD that your favourite shop was WHSmiths. I still love all stationery shops!
It's a great layout, and I only wish I had more 'older' photos. Since I started scrapping, I've become very aware that there are great chunks of my life which are unrecorded.
The children in my class refer to the 1980s as the olden days. Really!
Fab LO love the photos and your story behind them.
OK, you have just confirmed a belief I have... that most scrapbookers played with stationery or collected stationery when they were young (and not so young)!! The number of scrappers that when asked if they played 'schools' or 'post office' and had loads of little books or pads or even a stamper and played with them for hours is amazing... so we must all just develope into scrappers and allow oursleves to continue playing into our dotage!
Quite right Annette! I used to sit at my dads desk and pinch things from the drawers on trips to his office, I used to make him steal pads from the stationery room for me lol. Anyone for a game of post office?
Julia - re the 80s pics - love the layout, you've managed to mute the stash so well. I couldn't read the journalling but it seems you were all having a rather good time!
PS - I was born in the 80s ;-)
reminds me of the drawers of photos I have, when I first got into scrapbooking I thought I would scrap every photo I owned...considering the fact that I have 5 kids and thousands of photos add the fact I havent done a layout in MONTHS..hmmmm...
Oh my god! I'm glad I'm not alone in my Stationery obsession which I have had since 'the olden days' of the 70's & 80's!!
I'm so glad that I can use papercrafting now and the choice is amazing. Can you image what we would have been like if WHsmiths etc was like that when we were kids?
As for the tonnes of photo's that's heirary in my family cos my Dad's got zillions!!!!
hugs Lol xx
I am just imagining the size of house I'd need if I scrapped ALL my photos!!!!!
O' I used to love playing post office! my favourite "steal" from grand-dad's office was the little brown envelopes that he used on payday. I bet if I searched hard enough through my old stuff I would find a few ;) I really must make the effort and do some scanning of old (yes..... 70's and 80's photos) durign the summer holidays.
Cheek of her - 1980's! Lol! I've scrapped lots of old photos and have boxes of them still to do - but you know what I find the hardest? The ones of my kids when they were little - I get all nostalgic and sad and find it hard to scrap them - how do I get over that hurdle then?
Ohhhhh I loved playing offices. My sister and I even had one of those toy offices that folded up into a type of case. remember them? And our bedrooms were connected with working Care Bear phones... till dad cut the wires on the landing. Pig! Still haven't forgiven him for that - he got fed up of us 'phoning' each other when we were supposed to be asleep! *g*
With me it was John Menzies - we didn't have a WH Smith near us!! I love that lo and the photos are fantastic! :D
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