When my son was born, I was introduced to Creative Memories who manufacture archival quality photo albums. I started to make Creative Memories albums with my photos from that time forward. I then made albums with the photos we had in other types of albums that cause photos to deteriorate and become discoloured.
I chose the best photos from my childhood albums and made one photo-safe Creative Memories photo album. Over the years, I found that it didn't fully tell the story of my life. It was great to see the photos in an album, but without the journaling that I hadn't finished, memories were fading.
I found other photos in childhood boxes that I wanted to add and also recognized that some photos that didn't make the initial cut were actually important to me.
For my siblings' 50th birthdays, I made them photo books. The first one was made in a few weeks with photos I had and photos that my siblings and mother emailed me. With a few years warning for the next two albums, I started scanning my parents' albums when I would go visit them. This meant that I scanned photos that I loved of my childhood that I didn't previously have.
I have procrastinated on improving my childhood album until now. As part of My Revive55 Memories Project, I started to collect all the photos that I have from my childhood that weren't in albums. I collected paper mementos that I would want to add like newspaper clippings, report cards, tickets and certificates. I took out my baby book and scrapbooks that my mother had put together and put everything out on the table.
The album on the bottom right is my Creative Memories childhood album. The scrapbooks at the top are filled with newspaper articles from our appearances in our local music festival and sporting events. On top of the scrapbooks are my baby books. Top right are some ribbons and report cards. I also have an album full of ribbons, badges and medals. All these things are still in a magnetic album that I wasn't sure how to better preserve.
On the left is a very useful tool that I'll speak about in a later post. It's a Creative Memories Power Layouts Kit that helps organize the pages of the album before sticking photos down.
Some pages in my childhood album had unrelated photos put together because I didn't have enough of one theme for a page so I had combined themes for miscellaneous pages. With extra photos now, I can separate them to tell a more complete story. I started to remove photos from the album to better organize it. I am adding pages and better grouping the photos that I have. Rather than having one childhood album, I will expand to two or three albums to include keepsakes and most importantly journaling my childhood stories.
While expanding, I am trying to remind myself of the quote in my last blog post that it's hard to see what is special if you keep everything. For years I had planned on expanding it to include all the photos and keepsakes but I now recognize that having an album with everything will not be more special.
By including the best and most memorable photos and keepsakes along with writing the stories to explain why they are special will make it into the album(s) I dreamed of.
The next step is to look at the scanned photos I have on my computer. I want to choose my favourite ones to print.
Then, I will look at mementos and keepsakes like trophies, souvenirs and other things I saved from my childhood. I am thinking that taking a photo of some of them to include in the album will make it more complete.
Once all the photos and keepsakes are together, I can get a better sense of what to include and what to leave out. With the album memorable and complete, hopefully I will also be ready to declutter what doesn't get included.
Thank you for reading.
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