I have mixed feelings about scrapbooking - detest that "business" of putting together pages of emotional self indulgence, recording a picture-perfect image of the world and buying into an industry where it's ok to copy, to lift and to follow every step of someone else's creativity. And yet, I enjoy looking in scrapbooking shops for the very details I love to include in some of the things I make, enjoy the inspiration of some of the "mistress scrappers" like Ali Edwards and sometimes, I even make "memory books" myself.
I've found that, after a very special event, a meeting of friends or family, one thing which is really appreciated is a collection of the photographs taken and a few memories recorded. I suppose these could simply be printed out and put into a small album, with labels of when and where taken and who's in the picture. But somehow that's all too straightforward and with my usual "why make it easy when with a bit of time and effort, you could make it a little more challenging" approach, I usually make little hand made books for the key people involved.
This year, rather than make concertina-style books from scratch myself as I've done in previous years, I decided to take an idea from the aforementioned Ms Edwards, and customise a ready-made 7gypsies mini tag book (Bought from the Craft Emporium whose extremely efficient service I highly recommend) and a few sheets of Basic Grey papers (in the "Fruitcake" series) I've done six of these small books, all ever-so-slightly different, and tailored to the person they were made for and am about to drop them into the post.
