Angie Pedersen's The Blog of ME

Scrapbooking End-of-the-School-Year Memories

The Legacy Project has posted a downloadable worksheet to help capture the past school year - anyone see scrapbooking potential here??  Star Highlights - www.legacyproject.org.

Use the Top 10 sheet to make a list of the top 10 moments or memories of the past school year -- a test you did really well on, something you enjoyed learning about or thought was interesting, a new friend you made, a class trip, a personal achievement like making the basketball team. These moments twinkle like little stars and are the highlights of your school year.

Be sure to check out the other resources available in the Legacy Project's Activity Center.  There are activities centered around Memories & Traditions, Crafts & Keepsakes, and Scrapbooking & Other Photo Fun, as well as other themes.  One that is particularly Book of Me-friendly is Genetic Ingredients.  I created a scrapbook layout version of that for Growing Up Me, but ended up not using it.  I should dig it up and post it.

Book of Me ideas: The Design Experiment

I recently stumbled across The Design Experiment., a blog that offers challenges that would work very nicely to inspire Book of Me pages.

We are The Design Experiment! We are a challenge site with creative journaling prompts, that are meant to provoke thought, and delve deep inside you. We are committed to bringing you real and raw challenges.

We are a group of fun girls who love to create art and get messy.

Some recent challenges:

• 
  We challenge you to remember a time when you had super-human strength, either physically or emotionally. Think back to this time, how did you feel? How do you feel know? How has this changed you?

• If you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger self? What would you want to know to get you through the years?

Take a moment to check out the blog - the layouts are just as inspiring as the prompts!

April = Book of Me Month at Fiskarscraft Blog

April is Book of Me Month on the Australian/New Zealand Fiskars Ambassadors blog.

We're going to be putting up prompts each day (maybe even more than once a day, so keep on your toes!), to help you along. We're even going to be designing pages and projects to go along with these prompts so you can get visually inspired too.

And they've been good to their word - they've posted 2-3 Book of Me prompts every day in April so far!  Some prompts that they've offered:

• What school/s did you go to? What do you remember about them? Why did you go there? Would you change anything about your time there?
• Do you remember having a best friend when you were little? One that was the next door neighbour maybe? Or what about your first school friend?
• What games did you play as a child?
• What did you and your siblings fight about?'
• What was happening in the world the year you were born?

For easy reference, you can check out all posts tagged in the Book of Me category.

Book of Me chat at Scrap-a-Latte

I just finished up a Book of Me message board chat at Scrap-a-Latte.  Here are the questions we covered:

• What was the motivation behind the writing of The Book of Me?
• Getting over the fear of scrapping yourself
• What is your favorite section of your book?
• Do you have other artistic interests?
• What appreciation have you heard from your family concerning your Book Of Me?
• How to scrap the "ugly" stuff
• Scrapbooking previous relationships/divorce
• Scrapping when you can't remember (or just THINK you can't!)
• Scrapping with No Photos
• Scrapbooking about yourself when you have no kids
• The Future of The Book of Me

Thanks for having me, Carla, and thanks for the great questions and discussion, SAL girls! :)

So here's your chance - any burning Book of Me questions that haven't been answered?  Ask in the Comments below, and I'd be happy to offer suggestions/tips/comments.

‘All About Me’ Topics & Silver Lining Scrapbooking at ScrapJazz

A heads up on an article on 30 ‘All About Me’ Scrapbook Topics at ScrapJazz, as well as an article on Silver Lining Scrapbooking.

Book of Me Idea: Don't Hold Back Your Truth

Spotted recently in e-newsletter The Lifewriter's Digest, an article titled Holding Back Your Truth.

"I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend and come out with personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt.... we have to know all we can about each other and we have to be willing to go naked." --May Sarton

Lifewriting pioneer Denis Ledoux goes on to discuss why and, more importantly, how to be "naked" when writing about your life.

If one of the main values of memoir for the reader (in addition to entertainment) is its mentoring ability, then the memoir that does not tell the truth is vapid. I think people are fascinated by the memoir because it gives them a glimpse into the human condition. If that glimpse is fuzzy or distorted, then of what value is the posturing that is trying to pass itself off as truth?

Here I am not suggesting that you tell cruel things about other people. I am not suggesting you tell things that were told you in secret, nor things that will get you in legal trouble if you shared it.

I am talking about the deeper truth that gives meaning and depth to a story, to the truth that will pop our story open.

He also offers four journaling prompts to help you determine what stories you may be holding back.  Scroll down to the bottom to find the journaling prompts.

Go ahead...Scrap YOUR story.

"Month of Stories" Tag Book - a la CZ

Seen recently on Cathy Zielske's (aka "CZ") blog: Can you tell little short stories, on and off, for one continuous month of your life?.

Presenting the "Month of Super Short Stories" Tag Book...

...So here’s the thingie I’m making (with an emphasis on making as it’s not even remotely done). I’m getting everything prepped to do a tag book that will span one month’s time and be a cute little holding pen for random everyday story snippets and photos. I will begin collecting said data on March 1.

...And what are you going to record? Whatever the heck you want to, but the challenge is this: just pick one thing from the day you're recording, and write down a little tiny story about it. The tags I designed for this mini-book only give you so much room to write, so the exercise is all about choosing your words carefully, and realizing you don’t need to write a thesis to adequately capture a moment/story/bit & piece of your daily life.

Maybe you will write about your wild success with laundry on a Tuesday. Or the way you had a massive, institutionalization-worthy meltdown on Saturday. Whatever goes, goes. Just find a way to write a mini-record of one thing from one chosen day.

Cool idea, CZ.

Scrap Yourself: Online Class

Kudos to Debbie Hodge for getting an online class out there to Scrap Yourself.

Who else would have thought of depicting one's life into sections like Childhood, Family, Friends, Work, and Beliefs?  Or helping others scrapbook about themselves by providing focus topics, journaling prompts, inspirational quotes, and lists of things to photograph?

Oh, wait.  I did.  And my tagline since 2002 has been "Go Scrap Yourself!"

But I digress.  Other than various (and plentiful) message board challenges, I haven't seen many classes that bring the Book of Me format to the online classroom.  Big Picture Scrapbooking has offered classes that showcase individual projects, and Shimelle offers project classes (such as I Have to Confess)  but they're not really an ongoing process (unless you count Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, which some students may still be continuing.)

This Scrap Yourself class bears a striking similarity to the framework I outlined in Book of Me - topic, journaling prompts, quotes, and photo checklists.  The class also seems thoughtfully prepared, with useful content.  So any self-centered scrappers out there may want to check it out.  (HA - too bad I don't get credit OR a referral fee!)

And if you need any more Book of Me ideas, well, you know where to find me.  ;)  Maybe seeing Debbie's class online will be enough of a kick to get off my butt and put together that ebook of Challenges I keep intending to compile.  I created a general "All About Me journaling kit" last year, and haven't decided how to best present the remaining material.  All in one ebook, like 52 Weekly Challenges for a Year?  Or in smaller topical "doses", like The Book of Me - Dreams, and The Book of Me - Childhood?  The latter is where I'm leaning.  Any thoughts?

P.S.  Did you know that the dancer there on the cover of The Book of Me is actually Shimelle?  The picture was taken at a local (to me) high school - did you also know she's originally from my own childhood suburb in Kansas City?  She has quite a few layouts in the book, from back in the day before she was a globe-trotting famous instructor. 

Nearly six years later, and I still love that cover.

DIY Scrapbooking : The Book of Me

It looks like DIY Scrapbooking is doing a show on The Book of Me later this month: Episode SCB-528.  But they didn't contact me at any point during the development or taping of the episode.  Does that seem right to you? 

I realize that while I was the first one to write a book on scrapbooking about yourself, I am no longer the only one "preaching the word".  But to title the episode "The Book of Me" - the exact title of my book - and not even contact me for any sort of content or contribution...not only am I little hurt and upset, it just makes it look like they didn't do their homework.

I mean, really, how hard is it to Google "book of me", and see that my book is the 1st through 7th results on the first page of 10 results?  ("Book of Me scrapbooking" yields similar results.)  If you were coordinating a TV show on Book of Me projects, isn't that how you'd start your research?

I have always tried to take the high road when I see comments about or references to various "book of me" projects, even when my book or myself are not mentioned - take it as a compliment that my phrase has been accepted into scrapbooking vernacular, and take pride that the subject continued to get so much buzz.  But this one bugged me.  Especially when my publisher and I pitched DIY when BoM came out in 2002, but they didn't think it worthy of a segment, let alone a whole episode.  Guess they reconsidered.  Which is fine, considering it's a more acceptable concept within the community now, nearly six years later. 

But DIY should have done their homework, and they should have contacted me.  Whether or not I appeared on the show - whatever - but they should have contacted me as a part of the show development.  To have not contacted me is incomplete research and unprofessional, in my opinion.

Book of Me Idea: Lessons You Want to Teach

Check out this Book of Me (BOM) challenge at Sisterhood of Scrap.

Tell us what lessons you would like to teach your children. When you look back 30 years from now, what life lessons would you like your children to have learned from you.

This reminds me of several Memory Prompts I included in The Book of Me:

• What would your 16-year-old-self tell your present self?  What advice would your present self give your 16-year-old self?  (Chapter 1: Childhood, page 7)
• If you were asked to share your wisdom with a child today, which life lesson would you teach?  What do you wish someone had taught you?  (Chapter 1: Childhood, page 8)
• What do you wish someone had told/taught you before you went out on your own? (Chapter 3: Youth & College, page 16)

With great Book of Me challenges all over the web, there's no excuse to not GO SCRAP YOURSELF!  ;)