In the last couple of weeks I've discovered that I have a few regular readers of this blog among my friends, which surprised me. I mean, I put a link in my Facebook profile, but it never really occurred to me that anyone would actually visit it! So I apologize in advance to you for the following post, which will probably be kind of boring to anyone but me. Since this is a craft blog, I thought I'd take some free time of a Friday evening and work out some thoughts on journals, scrapbooks, and the differences between them.
This will probably sound crazy, but the mention of scrapbooking makes me uncomfortable. The topic came up during work a few days ago, so I had to visit all these scrapbooking sites, and something was bugging me about it. I think I've figured out that it bothers me because I can't quite figure out the distinctions between journaling, scrapbooking, keeping a diary, etc., and it should be said right now that I'm the kind of person who likes to have clear definitions of things, if only for my own benefit. I like things to have a specific purpose. This blog is for art and craft-related things only. My journal is a record of my life that is ongoing. The scrapbook I'm working on for my baby cousin is dedicated to her birthday. So here, for the sake of posterity and figuring-things-out, are the distinctions between the two, as I see them:
From what I can tell, to make a scrapbook you take photos and papers and other meaningful things and glue them to pages and decorate the pages. Also, it seems to be that scrapbooks are dedicated to a single event or span of time, like Our Wedding, Winter 2009, or Baby's First Year. They are designed to be a complete work from the beginning, or at least only record a limited time span. For lack of a better word, they have a unified theme. Before scrapbooking as we know it came into vogue, with all the fancy stickers and decorations you can buy in sets, I thought of a scrapbook as a place where you would keep related news clippings on a certain topic, or photos of your favourite celebrity, or pictures that your kid drew.
The point is that it's thematic, short-term, and conceived as a complete entity or work of art. Like a book-length collage dedicated to one thing. Also, a scrapbook is somewhere you could keep things from the past, from your childhood or teen years, for example. I wouldn't put those things into my journal, which brings me to...
While scrapbooks are themed, short-termed, and complete, journals are ongoing and more all-encompassing. Before I go any further, I'm going to stop and say that of course journals can be themed. You can have a journal dedicated to your trip to China, your garden, the books you read, the Tarot card readings you do, whatever. But journals generally don't have a preconceived end, and if they do, it tends to be a larger time span, such as a year. In my case, at least, I would be more likely to record my week-long trip to New York as a scrapbook rather than a journal, and my two-year journey to Australia as a journal. I see a journal as a way to record the progress of something. I'd have a hard time seeing how you could have a scrapbook of your garden, unless it was specified in a way, like a record of your garden in summer 2009 or the garden you used to have at your old house. If you kept an ongoing book for your garden that was mostly photos and little clippings and short notes, I'd be more inclined to call it a journal than a scrapbook, even if it contained relatively little writing.
Still, though, I think that the heart of the distinction is in the intent of the undertaking. Journals can have photos and ticket stubs and drawings and whatever else glued into them, and scrapbooks can contain pages of thoughts and reflections, but ultimately the purpose is different. The scrapbook is meant to cover a certain event or relatively short-term time span and serve as a repository for memory and reminiscing, where a journal is meant to be continuous, ongoing, and a record of thoughts and ideas more than a place to be keep good memories.
Obviously, there's lots of overlap between the two categories. You could have a journal that contains a section which is more scrapbook-like, and indeed my own journal is a blend of writing, drawings, and little bits and pieces of things glued in (although I never include photos - that's a whole other post). And just as obviously, these are just my own working definitions to appease my desire to catalogue and classify. You might disagree. What I call my journal you might call a scrapbook.
It's kind of funny how much thought I put into these subjects sometimes. I've always loved keeping journals of things, or keeping books for whatever reason, but I always hated the idea of having too many of them and fragmenting them too much. I'm not comfortable with the idea of having a separate art and sketch book, written journal, book for lists, etc. I can manage separate journals for things like exercise or food, but as far as the personal stuff goes, I like to have a single book to carry around. I guess the best way to think of it is that I prefer to have one general journal for everyday life, and smaller journals dedicated to very specific subjects as I need them.
If anyone has stuck with me through all of that, feel free to comment with your own thoughts and definitions, or if you think my logic doesn't make any sense (be nice!).
I'd like to take some photos of journal pages sometime soon and post them, but I've been neglecting my daily drawings. Over the Christmas break I filled something like 40 pages in my current book, and since then I've hardly written or drawn anything. I think I'll be trying a little more collage, too. I've been collecting bits of paper and things for awhile now.
I'm planning on tacking that little project codenamed Heartbeat soon. First I need to get some potatoes or something to make some stamps. More soon (I hope).
