and now I have the scrapbook to prove it!

Actually, I have to say I’m way ahead on this trend. I’ve been scrapbooking about me and my life all along, but then again, I’m very into the power of the personal narrative and I believe that everyone’s own story has meaning and importance. yadda yadda yadda.

I made a little 5×7 album a couple of years ago, entitled “The Year of Turning 40″, and included pics of the many birthday parties I had, some decent looking pictures of me, shots from the tattoo palour when I got my tat and alternated them with my thoughts about hitting the big four oh. I found kind of therapeutic actually, as it made me reflect on what being forty meant, beyond merely whining about it!

Image via Wikipedia

Anywho, I found this article while surfing and I thought, “yes, my vanity is validated!” So, read on, go start an album just for yourself and be trendy like me!

Make scrapbooking about you

Add an artful, introspective twist to your albums, which are playing a journal-like role in one of the hobby’s hottest trends.
BY SUZANNE PEREZ TOBIAS
The Wichita Eagle

When Desiree McClellan discovered scrapbooking, her albums were “all about Gavin,” she says.

“Everything was Gavin, Gavin, Gavin,” McClellan says of her 5-year-old son, who was a toddler when she started chronicling his life with words and pictures.

But somewhere along the way, the Wichita mom turned inward. She began writing about her memories, hopes and dreams. A photography enthusiast, she even tried self-portraits.

The result: pages that inspire and motivate her, and also give friends and family members an intimate look at her life.

Click the “read more” link below to see the rest of the article

It’s a growing trend among scrapbookers, most of them women with children, who are interrupting their endless stream of first-tooth, Christmas and birthday-party pages to tell their own stories.

“Some people may think you’re self-absorbed if you do a page about yourself, or ‘Who wants to read about me?’ ” said McClellan, 28. “But I think about how I wish I had this information about my mother, how great that would be…. And once you start, it’s almost therapeutic.”

McClellan, a designer for California-based scrapbook company Autumn Leaves, created several layouts for “The Me Book,” which is expected to arrive in stores nationwide next month. Her pages include ones about her late father, her hometown and a rocky relationship with her sister.

She recently started an album, titled “One Day,” that features things she wants to accomplish or experience during her lifetime. (“One day,” she writes, “I will ride around in a VW adorned with flowers, roaming the streets of France with daisies in my hair.”)

Tracy White, editor of Creating Keepsakes, a monthly scrapbook magazine, appreciates the trend toward personal pages.

“For years, we have spent so much time scrapbooking about everybody but ourselves,” White said. “There’s the mind-set that we’ve got to get all caught up and do it right now, and there’s no time to really reflect.

“But my mantra has always been: You are an important person. You have a story to tell.”

Nikki Vancuren is among a rare but growing category of scrapbookers who don’t have children but find plenty of material to save and savor in their albums.

An instructor for Scrapbook Garden in Wichita, Vancuren teaches an “All About Us” class that encourages women to chronicle an important relationship in their lives.

“So many times you see family books where you see the kids, the holidays, the rest of the family, but there’s nothing about you,” said Vancuren, 32.

“I try and emphasize that if you’re doing this to leave a legacy for your family, then your family needs to know about you and the relationships you have.”

More women are getting the message and having fun with personal albums. Magazines and Web sites show artful pages — and even whole books — titled “My Favorite Things,” “On Turning 40,” “What Makes Me Smile,” and “A Day in the Life.”

Women concerned about privacy use techniques such as “hidden journaling,” where stories are written on tags tucked into pockets or beneath photos. And some keep books private, like diaries under the bed.

“Even though I don’t have children,” said White, the magazine editor, “I want my album to be a place I can go back to and draw strength from and say, ‘Wow, I’ve grown so much.’ ”

And she said she’s excited to see other women focusing on themselves.

“As moms we think, ‘If I document every day of your life, I’m showing you that I love you,’ ” she said. “But I think that one of the truest gifts you can give is a piece of yourself.

“If you show your heart, your soul, your fears, your joys, and how deep you feel, it reveals you to them. And when you’re honest, when you’re real, that’s when you connect.”