Journaling by Peggy Nardini

I'm a journaler. I like to journal. There's an old saying, "A picture is worth 1,000 words", well I like to use 'em all! So let's talk about ways to get creative with journaling and incorporate a couple of different ideas into your next layouts.

We've all seen examples of journaling written on strips of cardstock and then adhered to the page, typically along the side of a picture. A fun variation of this style is to use the strip under a row of photos as in this example from a recent layout, "Roommates". A second row of journaling could easily be added above the row of photos if you need more room.

This second layout shows images from the NCAA Regional Championship my daughter's college softball team won last spring. I've done a number of layouts about the tournament with quite lengthy journaling, so I've already written a lot about the experience, but still have some great photos to include on my scrapbook pages. Here, I made tabs to go along the sides of the pictures, including just a few words of journaling.

This final example is a more traditional style of journaling, the journal block. The plain, simple block containing your journaling is sometimes all you need to finish off a layout. In "Alley Cats", that's what I did. But don't be afraid to step it up a bit and add an additional design element (die cuts, stickers, rub-on, etc.) to your journal block. Here I included small black circles representing bowling balls to tie all of the elements together.

On your next layout, don't be afraid to write it all down! Include those words along with your photos. Whether you computer journal or use your own handwriting, the written word is important in telling the complete story. It's even more fun when you get creative with it and use the new lines of paper Scrappin' Sports and More will be debuting at CHA later this week. All of the layouts in this article used our newest sports line On The Edge Sports. You're gonna love it.