Although I started scrapbooking as a way to record family memories, I have to admit that I'm a sucker for all the gorgeous page kits and elements on the market. Word association is a technique that I use to gain inspiration and page ideas from the digital items I purchase, so that the focus stays on my stories and not on the products. I'll walk you through the process using one of my own pages, and then I'll give you an easy exercise that'll help you use the technique for your layouts.
I started with this great kit by Emily Powers called Dandelion Wine. That just happens to be the title of my favorite novel by one of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury. Immediately, my mind made that connection. The novel is about a young boy who is poised on the edge of adolescence, as the last magical summer of childhood stretches out before him. This in turn made me think of my own daughter, Cassidy, who is 11 and poised on that same brink herself. I wanted a page that encouraged her to hang on to childhood a little longer, and to not be in such a hurry to grow up. So now I had a general theme -- I just needed to gather specifics. I really wanted a quote from the novel to use on the page, but I was traveling out of town so I didn't have the novel handy. All the quotes from the novel that I could find online didn't really fit the message I wanted to share, so I turned to a list of other quotes by the author. That's where I found the one I used on my page. As luck would have it, I also had a photo of Cass blowing dandelions on my computer, so I combined all of these elements for a page that I can't wait to share with her.
That's word association -- simply following the connections that your mind makes among different elements and ideas and concepts. Here's how to try it yourself. All you need is a pencil and paper and the digital kit/element of your choice.
1. Begin with the name of the digital kit you want to use, and write it at the top of your page. If you'd rather focus on a particular element of the kit, that's fine too. Just put its name at the top of your paper.
2. Below that, simply begin listing all the words and images that come to mind when you think of that kit's name. Don't stop to evaluate them at this point -- just list whatever comes to mind. Spend about 10 minutes on this stage. You'll want a list of 20 or so associations.
3. Read back through your list and circle the three words or images that you feel most strongly drawn to.
4. Now, repeat step 2 with each of these three images. This time around, you want to start focusing on connections to your own memories, your own stories, your own family members. This is where you move the process from a general image-focused list more in the direction of a list of possible page topics and ideas.
5. At this point, you should have quite a list of potential stories to tell. All you need to do is start matching up photos and deciding which one to tell first.
Again, there's no right or wrong here -- feel free to write down whatever comes to mind. The key here is not to censor these ideas before you get them down on paper and make the connections.
{storyteller} audrey
