When we sit down to create, we do so with expectations. We have goals of what we want to accomplish and sometimes those goals compel us, make is feel as if we MUST do something a certain way. For a long time, I had unrealistic expectations of myself as a memory keeper for my family.  I felt as if I was always behind and that the albums would never get done. It was crippling. Scrapbooking started to stress me out. In a lot of ways, I began to fall out of love with it as a hobby. One day something clicked for me which changed the way I scrapbook.

Over the years, I received advice about how to scrapbook in a way that made things simple. I am not talking about making your style simple( mine isn’t necessarily simple at all). I am talking about changing the way you think about how you do things so that you are better able to use the time allotted to you and set realistic goals and expectations. In a large part, it is about you letting go of this weight you have given yourself. You probably don’t think of it as weight, but it’s there. You feel like you have to scrapbook a certain way( perhaps a trend or the way your scrapbooking peers are doing things). You feel like you have to keep up and get those photos into albums. For some of us, we feel as though our job is to be the family historian. All of these things add up into a heavyweight we carry when we sit down to play with paper and photos. We become overwhelmed. We sometimes begin to resent what we started. Sometimes we feel guilty ( about what we have put into the hobby and that we don’t have the time we want to work on it).

Over the years, I received a lot of advice from people who had managed to step away from that weight. I listened but I didn’t really hear what they were saying. Sometimes it sounds like a cliche and you think ” yeah, yeah, I know!” and you just move past the advice. I was definitely in that mindset until I joined SImple Scrapper a few years back ( and later on, I would become a member of the Simple Scrapper Creative Team). Joining Simple Scrapper was one of my scrapbooking turning points. The things that Jennifer ( founder of Simple Scrapper) said made sense and what is most important is that I actually heard what she was saying. Her advice was a large part of what helped me to change my mindset and one day it all just clicked for me. I relaxed, became calmer, and approached my memory keeping( and really, many of my other hobbies) in a different way. I let go of rules ( rules I didn’t even realize existed and that I had been following). I became a lot more positive which in turn allowed me to be more productive. I create more within the limited time I have.

In a  lot of ways this is a recommendation more than it is a review. I am enjoying this book quite a bit and finding that I needed to read it. I needed the reminder that I am writing my own rules. I want to create things often. Need to create things. I feel more like myself when I do. However, within the last year the pressures of life have been forcing me to add a few rules, making me feel pressured as to the how and the why I can fit making stuff into a schedule filled with housework, blogging, and homeschooling a high school ages child. Reading  this book is making me realize just how many of the negative rules I have been letting back into my creative life. As I read The New Rules of Scrapbooking: Crafting With Your Photos Can Be Simple, I am reminded that it is once again time for me to relax, assess my creative life and move in a direction that helps me feel less overwhelmed.

 If you are feeling overwhelmed or hampered by time, this could just be the book that helps you learn to let go. Jennifer writes in a clear manner with the emphasis on the positive. She teaches you how to write your own creative rules, how to set realistic goals and how to manage yourself so that you learn how to move past creative blocks and create effectively in the time you have available. 

How to get your copy of The New Rules of Scrapbooking: Crafting With Your Photos Can Be Simple:

Jennifer has made this ebook available on Amazon.com through the kindle app. The kindle app is free and can be downloaded and used with a variety of platforms ( tablet, mobile and desktop). The Ebook is free until September 5th, 2016 after which it will be available for purchase.

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