The Quote Book: The Simple Answer to Complicated Scrapbooking

I’m not the typical scrapbooker.  I am not talented enough or patient enough to spend hours cutting, assembling and arranging a litany of small pieces to make a true scrapbook.  I am, however, a collector of memories, and I love having them all in one spot.  My friends must have been similar in scrapbooking sentiments too, because in high school we had a group “quotebook.”  It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t well put together, but we totally treasured it.  We had that binder everywhere and every time someone said something hilarious, we would write it down.  Different colored pens and pencils, lunch spills on the papers, no pictures — just quotes.

I must have picked up some habits from my high school friends because even now as an adult I love quotebooks.  I love the idea of capturing a quote for all time — those little sayings that make us laugh deep in our bellies, yet vanish like the mist on the wind in just a few days.  So a few years ago, I grabbed a regular old notebook and started keeping quotes.

The system worked, but as an adult, I was ready to graduate up a step.  I didn’t need a full on scrapbook, but I wanted a better version of our high school scrapbook.  So I gathered a few supplies, a few photos and within an hour, my quote book was more than a quote book, but not yet a scrapbook.  Join me as I show you how you can put together your own quote book today!

Supplies needed to make your own quote book:

• Lined Sketchbook /Journal or SMASH Folio
• SMASH Pads (various)
• Smash Stickers
• Glue Stick
• Clothespins (Buy STRONG ones, not dollar store versions!)
•  Fine Tip Sharpie Markers
• Core’dinations Tags

The secret to this book is the simplicity with which you can put it together, but also the way it functions as you look through memories.  One of my favorite aspects of the quote book are the clothespins.  I don’t know about you, but when I take photos, I tend to take a full “shoot” and then put the camera away.  I don’t typically take one shot here and one shot there.  So when I look through memories, I love looking through an entire shoot, but that means a large portion of the scrapbook is filled with one event.  The solution?  Clothespins.

You see, I glue a couple photos from the day into the book, along with some quotes from the day.

 The rest of the photos sit directly on top of the first photo and are simply clipped in.
You can flip through the photos like a flip book, spread them out in a fan and then scrunch them back together again, or go ahead and take the photos out and look through them.

Sometimes though, I do only have a couple photos and to spice up those pages, I turned to the SMASH stickers.  These cute little stickers say “makes me happy” or “Don’t forget” — things I say to myself all the time.  Simply stick them onto or beside your photos and your book with some pictures and quotes turns into a polished history of your family’s daily life.

So you’ve gotten all your supplies, you are ready to start your book, but you can NEVER remember to write good quotes down from your kids.  You tell your husband, “PLEASE don’t let me forget he said this today!” and inevitably you both do.  The solution?  SMASH pads.  These little pads fit easily into your purse for everyday travel and can be grabbed at a moment’s notice to jot down a memory or quote.  Check out how Shaunte used them on her vacation SMASH book!

Divided into categories such as travel, entertainment and quotes, each of these pads are full of sweetly designed little papers designed to get you writing about the things you don’t want to forget.

There is even one for travel disasters which feel like torture at the time, but make some of the best memories.

The little pad papers work seamlessly with the stickers and other SMASH products, so once you have filled a SMASH pad, it is just a matter of matching them up to the right pictures and voila!  Memories kept!

I finished off the look with some tags and baker’s twine to set off categories, years, and such.

All in all — the actual making of the book that covers two years took about two hours in front of the TV.  If you have ever tried scrapbooking, you know that is a record!  So what do you say?  Why not try capturing those sweet little quotes that you know you will forget and pair them with a simple and easy scrapbooking system?  It is easier than you think and a project that gets sweeter with age!

Feeling brave and want to take the next step from quote book to full on SMASH book?  Make sure you check out Shaunte’s post!