Personally, the first thing I do when I arrive back from a trip is plug my beloved digital camera into my laptop and scroll through the photos I have taken. I then traipse into town to print my photos out, usually before I have even unpacked my suitcases. In this article, I am going to explore the importance of physical media such as scrapbooks and journals and look into why, despite the prevalence of social media, scrapbooking remains such a popular activity today.
There is something I just love about having my photos printed out and either stuck up on my wall or collated into some sort of scrapbook or journal. Scrapbooking can be a great way to treasure precious memories, and flicking through my scrapbooks from the different trips I have been on allows me to relive the experiences and memories I have made.
I think the desire for physical media such as scrapbooks, journals, and printed photographs remains strong in the modern day, despite the ever-increasing popularity of social media. However enjoyable it may be to scroll through photos on your camera roll and share them with Instagram followers, I personally do not find this nearly as entertaining as sitting down, sorting through my printed photos, and putting them up on my wall or in my scrapbook. I think this comes down to the fact that, as humans, we crave physical items to help us hold onto our memories. Moreover, producing a scrapbook is an artistic activity, which cannot be completed at the click of a button in the same way that posting a collection of photos on your Instagram page can be, and thus, inevitably, the end result is something which is more treasured. I also find scrapbooking and journaling very therapeutic–it gives me a chance to sit, reflect, and be grateful–and therefore I think it is an extremely valuable thing to do.
So what are some ways to get into scrapbooking? The fun thing about scrapbooking is that you can create a scrapbook on literally anything you like. One of the most common topics I see on my social media feed is students scrapbooking their university life. Although I haven’t made a scrapbook on my first year of university yet, I have printed off enough photos to fill up multiple scrapbooks, and when I get a chance, I am definitely going to do this. One of my flatmates also suggested to me the other day that we make a scrapbook at the end of our second year of the best recipes we have made together. As we both started university pretty much unable to cook, I think documenting our progress through scrapbooking is a great idea.
I hope this article has given you an insight into the importance of physical media such as scrapbooking and journaling, and also given you some inspiration to get scrapbooking yourself!
Illustration by Katya Roberts (@katyaillustrates).