Stories in Hand

A lot of people signed up for and completed the Stories in Hand free class being run by Jessica Sprague on her blog. I discovered Jessica way back in 2004 when she had a simple blog and gave away a couple of free kits. I followed her for a while but when she joined Creative Keepsakes Mag I kinda lost touch with what she was doing. More recently I rediscovered her and so I was really pleased at the opportunity to join her free class.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, and as most of the forum was full of american girls at first I got caught up in the 'awesomeness' of it all. The first few days Jessie gave us free downloads in order to make our album (or cover a bought one, of course I took the 'make-your-own' option) and it was brilliant fun. She gave us page after page after page of 'sparks', questions and prompts to get us thinking about the 'stories' in our lives, the anecdotes, the information, the forgotten tales, of our families and our own existance. Pretty soon my post bound home made album needed a set of extension posts, and another set, and we hadnt even started to write yet!

There was also a jotter for your hand bag and checklist sheets to write the bones of your story on once the sparks had made you think.

It was at this point I stopped. Oh I still loved the idea, but it just wasnt working for me. I need to be way more organised, I need to take the time to write the whole story, not make notes or jot. I needed all my stories in one place, and I simply couldnt work out how the checklist worked at all. Plus there was no way it was going to fit in my album. That was already chock-a-block.

Tonight I have taken a second look. I still love the idea and want to do it, but it needs to work for me.

So I am going to dispense with the jotter, loose the checklists and just use the 'spark's as a kind of reference book, much as you would any other inspirational scrapbook or mag. I am going to make a whole new album to house my stories all in one place. And I am going to pester my family and mainly my girls so that I get the stories right!!