Tuesday Tutorial with Trina: Storytelling

Hello everyone! I'm happy to be here today to share a little bit about how I tell stories when I craft. On today's blog I'm focusing on telling some of those stories in our new Skinny Traveler's Notebook (available in our Shop) but you can use any size, format or medium to do this.

Supplies
I kept my supplies pretty basic for these stories including:

• Fiskars trimmer
• Skinny TN Album
• Tombow Adhesive Tape Runner
• Tombow Glue
• Precision Pen
• Scissors
• Two Inks: One black, one in Sunflower
• Stamps
• plus bits and pieces of elements from the September "Heartbreaker" Pocket Life kit

I like to tell stories of our life and usually find myself about 6-8 weeks behind (anyone else behind?). I also like to include flashbacks from my past including my childhood and our daughter's. The events in today's blog post were from a trip in July, taking our daughter back to college in August, plus a flashback. Here is what happened.

Story 1: Back to College
I like to start with a clean desk and it definitely gets messier as I work. This story focuses briefly on McKenzie's return to college. This is how my desk looked partway through the first spread I worked on.

I documented the story crafted around two photos: in the car when we arrived on campus and a photo that our daughter sent to us soon afterward when she successfully assembled her first piece of furniture for the new campus apartment on her own. This story is short and simple. Don't worry about how much you write — your stories can be short or long.

Story 2: California Trip
The next story is from a trip that McKenzie and I took to California (we do this annually) and our California trips always include a lot of mountain time, hiking and swimming in rivers and lakes. It's up to you if you like to tell your stories in your handwriting or by typewrite.

I like to mix my stories up between typewritten and handwritten. The graphic designer, vintagy part of me likes how the old typewriter looks. But the storyteller part of me loves handwriting, too, as it is my signature. I love looking back at the letters my mom wrote me. Now that she is gone, her handwriting is a part of her that I get to cherish. I know one day all of my scrapbooks will pass onto McKenzie and I want her to feel that touch, too

I used vintage ledger paper to journal on. I found old ledgers in my dad's belongings and love that I can put them to use with my storytelling. (These ledgers are from circa 1950 and are a great way to weave a little vintage family into my albums.) Since the paper is quite thin, I glued it down onto white cardstock.

Here is another close-up. I added a foam pop dot to the back of the heart ephemera for some dimension.

Story 3: Flashback to My Childhood
This is my last story for this tutorial and is a flashback to one of my childhood birthdays. I love that the photo is black-and-white. It's of my sister and I standing in my aunt's backyard. This photo drew me in because I have a big bandaid on my cheek and this became part of the story.

I used three stamp sets for this page.

• September This Is Life "Magic Happens"
• Conversation Starters version 2
• plus July This Is Life "Daily Routine"

The Conversation Starters (v1 and v2) are fun to use. You can use some of the phrases as a jump-off to tell one of your stories. In this case, the "this childhood memory" and "in three words" instantly pulled at my heartstrings.

Before I stamped I mounted the layered photo onto the lower half of my page. The photo is matted, framed with a pattern paper border, then mounted on a strip of town fabric.

I used numbers from the July This Is Life "Daily Routine" stamp set to stamp the numbers 1-3 in Sunflower yellow. I used my Precision pen to write out the 3 words.

I layered some fussy cut vintage music with a shell button and epoxy heart sticker on top of the photo.

On the facing page I told part of the story behind the photo. Again, I used an old piece of ledger paper that I matted with pattern paper. I typed the story onto the ledger before I mounted it on the pattern paper. Last, I included embellishments plus one of those lovely gold phrase puffy stickers.

Don't be afraid to tell your stories. I'd love to see some of yours so be sure to tag us on Instagram at @citrustwistkits and use the hashtag #ctkstorytelling.

Happy storytelling!

xo,
Trina