After I blogged about my issue with wanting to “pocket” scrap but not ever being able to bring myself to stick with it, I made a page. I uploaded it to facebook — it wasn’t much to look at, it was really a whole bunch of my instagram photos thrown on to the page with some journaling cards.
But, I was surprised… I had a lot of friends chime in with their own reasons about why pocket scrapping doesn’t work for them, it really is a “mom with young kids” kind of niche that one feels they have to conform to.
It’s kind of ironic how pocket scrapping is marketed as being the SOLUTION TO ONES PROBLEMS when it comes to scrapping, when it really creates more problems for a majority of us. Like those of us who don’t have kids, and their jobs are super confidential… so there isn’t much to share daily aside from food and pets. Then there’s those with busy lives and teenagers, who really aren’t as interesting as young grade school kids. Then there’s the empty nester.
Also, another “unspoken” rule to pocket scrapping is that it needs to follow the calendar in some sort of way — daily, weekly, monthly.
But with regular scrapping, all of us find ourselves able to express things without a problem, with no need to conform to a timeline structure. What is it about pocket scrapping that makes us lock up and feel boring??
I think it’s the fact that it’s *too* simple. It also doesn’t really allow one to express themselves through art, like we do on our usual layouts. It’s also designed really to have a week on a double paged layout, and for people like us… we can easily fit two weeks on one page.
Which is exactly what I ended up doing…
… And then I did another random selection of dates, also using the February Storyteller kit & templates from Just Jaimee…
Kit: Candid by Mommyish and Just Jaimee; Template: Project Grids V 2 by Amy Martin
… and then I had so much to show and say for a single day, that I just threw that on a page!
It was surprisingly liberating to get rid of that preconceived notion that I needed to follow a calendar to share my life. One of my friends pointed out that as soon as she decided to just do her own thing, and not follow the “standards” of pocket scrapping — it came easy to her.
It’s so true, at least for me too. Of course I have only done a few layouts so far, but I plan on scrapping some more once I finish my products that are on a deadline. It’s fun to see all my instagram photos on a page like that.
I decided to use the hashtag “megsboringlife” when posting things to instagram that I want to pocket scrap later. Since I embraced this idea of non-conformity pocket scrapping, I’m finding myself to actually be more interesting than I thought.
Go figure.
Give it a try yourself, ditch conformity. No two people or families are the same, you’ve got plenty to share about your life — just don’t let it be restricted by the somewhat unspoken rules of pocket scrapping. I know I’m most definitely not the only digiscrapper who has tried pocket scrapping their life, only to fail epically and just have a few pages and a giant stash of products to show for it. Use that pocket scrapping stash — just throw out everything else you know about pocket scrapping and do your own thing!