From Me-Mes to Us-Us's
Saturday, April 30, 2005 at 10:56AM There’s something happening in the blogging world lately. A lot of the Memes being challenged as virus ideas out there in the scrapblogging world are starting to be taken up as concepts for journalling or even scrapbooking within the Us realm. Secondly, a lot of the scrapbooking blogs out there are sharing so much of our lives that it’s a learning lesson for others (like me). The world is getting smaller - it’s no longer about them and me, it’s more about finding those areas in our lives that we can share and support. It’s about “Us”.
Enclyclopedias and Albums about Us
This is Bree Carlson’s blog (Creating is My Life). Bree is the founder of the excellent ScrapMaps website, but also is now facing a time tackling childhood leukemia with her son. Her blog is giving her the ability to write about this huge event in her and her family’s life, but scrapbooking is giving her the ability to create through it. As we know, Creating provides emotional healing as well. Take a look at Bree’s new album that she’s starting to create - a Life with Cancer Album. She has taken the concept of the Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, and is using it to deal with her feelings during this time in her life, whilst creating a memory album for it also.
Although her concept of using the ideas for the Encylopedia of an Ordinary Life are towards her own feelings over the event (surely every scrapbook album is pretty much one person’s - the scrapbooker herself - interpretation of family life), this album is going to be bigger than that. This will surely include her son’s and other family member’s feelings and discoveries through this process. She is making a Book of Us.
Sharing a passion (or a problem)
This is one of Anne McLellan’s blogs - One Digital Scrapper. It’s a great blog, and she finds the most beautiful digital kits within it. But she also shares a bit of her personal passions in life with we readers. Check out her review of the free Rakscrap’s kit for Autismn-Awareness week Anne’s son suffers from this disability, and in her blog entry she shares a lot of knowledge on this. Anne is not the only one with this disability in her family life. 3 different designers from Rakscraps share this with her, and if you check out Ali Edward’s blog you will notice all her links to websites dealing with Autism also.
And here is my rather shambolic call for help when the cliquiness in this industry just got to me a smidgeon , and I ended up finding a focus group to help me celebrate my square=pededness. Yes, this seems so minor now, when dealing with the health problems encountered and shared by others above. But it was national stress-awareness week also, and everything in this world has a purpose, and this was mine - I needed a short-sharp burst of self-truth, and more particularly - self-awareness and acceptance. Like many, it’s far to easy to focus outside of yourself for a long time (especially when a mother) and blogging is so introspective that you suddenly come upon yourself all over again - and when you’re least expecting or wanting it.
For more on the Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, see the Blog entry Other Me Stuff linked below
Follow the Meme
Take a look at the tracks through the Signature Challenge started by Tina Barriscale and through so many other blogs. By following these challenges, and linking into them, the scrapbooking community (at least of bloggers) is forming an even tighter Us-ness or grouping. What might be interesting is if this particular popular meme challenge amongst scrapbooking bloggers actually moved outside of this cultural group and we saw other bloggers exploring the idea.
For more on the Memes and associated challenges see the additional reading linked to below.
Memes into Us-Us’s (UsUs)
Many of the formations of both the Book of Me and the Memes themselves - lists, journaling challenges, photographic challenges are and should be taken out to further realms - that of the family or Us. The Book of Us deals with several different formations of groups of people - crop groups, women’s groups, families, extended-families and how we fit into these, and can celebrate these. Using such Memes or journaling topics can benefit in designing and creating scrapbook layouts which celebrate the Us’s we find ourselves within. Use the list topics (100 things about me or To-Do lists even, and throw them to your Us-people - perhaps as an interview, or for them to fill in also. Invite them onto your blog as a guest blogger, and see what makes them tick. Then scrapbook it.
So, are Memes relevant to the Book of Us? And are there other trends in the blogging world which may be beneficial to the scrapbooking community? I think so. What do you think?
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Additional Blog Readings:
- On Blogging Memes - discussing the meme phenomenum which is sweeping the net, with examples from the scrapbooking world also.
- Other Me Stuff - discussing further meme-like developments which are helping bloggers out such as lists, websites for photo-blogging etc.
- Other Blogging Trends - discussing subscription services, blogrolling and podcasting - other forms which can help an scrap-blogger build up their community of blogs.
- The Future of Blogs - discussing what’s happening now and what may happen for the future - and how these may help in our own lives.
Prequel Blog Entry:
Angie Pedersen
So, are Memes relevant to the Book of Us? And are there other trends in the blogging world which may be beneficial to the scrapbooking community? I think so. What do you think?Absolutely! The first one that comes to mind is the Photographic Interview — which you mention in your Other Me-Me Stuff entry. That would be easy to do about a couple or a family — whether followed exactly as presented at the Sh1ft.org site, or adapted as appropriate. That’s one thing I love about finding resources like prompts or lists to use as the basis for a layout — they’re so easily adapted. For instance, #6 on that list is “Something I always do…”. It would be easy enough to adapt that to be, “Something we do every Summer”. In the case of my family, I could take/use a photo of us picking apples at a local orchard, or going swimming at the Lake.
As far as other blogging trends — the biggest blogging trend is to create business blogs. Small businesses especially are “jumping on the blog bandwagon” and creating blogs to allow them to make quick updates to their specific audience/customer base. They are also using blogs to help build relationships with their customers, and to provide a more personal forum for communication. Scrapbookers who own their own businesses could print out blog entries (with customer comments), and create a paper Book of Us, depicting their relationships with their customers. The blog itself is an archive of these interactions on the Web, but the paper scrapbook is something physical the business owner could keep on their desk to show potential customers/clients, to prove their dedication to keeping the lines of communication open. The practice of business blogging is only going to expand from here; combining that with a paper scrapbook could be the next natural step for a scrapbooking business owner, and something to make her stand out from her competition.
Michelle@Scrapability
Wow - love that concept - printing out all the blog entries and comments as a resume of customer relationships for a small business.
A prime example of the business blogging is happening in the scrapbooking world at the moment - with the Slices of 2Peas Life blog setup by Kristina Nicholai-White. You get to it from the 2Peas site itself also. It is interesting reading the successes and concerns of owning and managing such a large internet precense and store-front. The blog also informs any reader of the latest store shipments and arrivals.
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Reader Comments (1)
Thanks, Michelle!