Tell Your Story Every Day

Welcome to Tell Your Story Every Day!

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We are a new sister site of The Digichick, a digital scrapbooking community whose main goal is to help you “Capture, Record and Preserve Your Life’s Story.” It is my hope and prayer that this new site will help this mission statement of ours come to life in an amazing way this year.

First—let me introduce myself! My name is Nicole Seitler and here’s a little bit of my story:

In 2004 a girlfriend of mine sent me a stack of hand-stamped baby thank you cards that changed my life forever. It started me down a path of creativity… and my crafty endeavors seem to keep getting bigger and bigger!

I found that I had a heart to teach and share papercrafting with others. So, I started hosting in-home workshops and created a rubber stamping blog. But papercrafting wasn’t enough for me and I soon found that I was passionately in love with scrapbooking.

Then one day in 2006, while browsing the web late at night, I stumbled upon digital scrapbooking. For the first time it dawned on me that behind every piece of scrapbook paper I loved there was another person—an ordinary person, just like me. And I could learn how to make beautiful papers, too.

So, in 2007 I opened my own shop selling my designs. Then in 2008, I was invited to join The Digichick. In 2009, I was given the opportunity to take over this wonderful site… a great responsibility that I have thoroughly enjoyed for the last three years.

So, what’s this thing all about?

This year at the Digichick, we wanted to do something special.

You see, I’ve been around long enough to notice that there is an epidemic the digital scrapbooking world…

While all digital scrapbookers passionately love this great hobby of ours, only a small number of people are actually scrapbooking.

And even fewer are printing out their pages and making them into books.

Digital scrapbooking was a dream come true for many people who discovered that they were frustrated with their ability to record their special memories using paper, scissors and glue. Paper scrapbooking can be a difficult art to master! You’re dealing with real world product that you can ruin and destroy.

In digital scrapbooking, we all know that there’s nothing quite as wonderful as using CTRL + Z to undo something!

In paper scrapbooking, you could spend three hours moving around two photos and a journaling card… and still not like the way things look.

Digital scrapbooking gives you the tools to easily alter photos and elements.

Don’t like the color of something? You can change it. Don’t like the size? You can change it. Want to use something more than once? There is freedom in digital scrapbooking!

But here is our downfall:

It is too easy to focus on the beauty in digital scrapbooking and forget what scrapbooking is all about!

Getting back to the heart of scrapbooking

I’d like to stop for a moment and ask you to watch this little video from Paper Coterie with NY Times bestselling author Kelly Corrigan.

It will change your life.

Go, on. Click it.

Gaah! That video just hits me right in the heart…

What I most desire for us all to remember is that this passion and love for memory keeping is why we got so excited about scrapbooking in the first place!

And this is what Tell Your Story Every Day is going to be all about.

Are you telling YOUR story?

Over the years, I have seen countless layouts created that are full of intricate layers and clusters with gorgeous photographs… but no journaling in sight. Heck, I’ve even done this myself.

Theses pages have no story to tell. They are just a couple of decorated photographs.

And more recently, I have heard a number of people say that they have made dozens and dozens of pages but they have never printed them. This saddens me even more!

No one can touch them. No one can read them. I wonder, are these people just praying that their backups never fail them?! Sigh.

The key thing we have forgotten is that the goal of scrapbooking is to be recording our most precious memories, telling our stories, writing it all down while these things are still fresh in our minds!

Pictures are beautiful things. Scrapbookers love the art of photography. But, I’m sorry, most photos are not worth 1,000 words—photographs cannot speak for themselves. If you were given a photograph of your great-grandmother as a child, what would you know about it by just looking at it? Where was it taken? Why was it taken? Is there a story behind this or that little detail? Wouldn’t you want someone there to tell you all about it?

As a memory keeper, this is where YOU come in. That is your role!

You have a story to tell.

And that story matters.

If you don’t tell it, no one else will because no one else can. Who else knows the words you have in your heart?

I can already hear the the excuses welling up inside your head. You’re not good at this. You’re not good at that. You don’t think you can do it. Well, stop!

Instead, what you need to always keep in mind is that the only way to get better at something is to keep. on. doing. it.

So, please—this year, tell that negative voice in your head to go take a hike. Let’s move on from degrading self-talk that this year—in the name of getting things done and getting our memories into books.

I want you to remember: It doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful.

But you do need to be telling your story.

And you need to recommit yourself to doing that NOW.

Will you join us this year as we seek to do this together?