SCRAPBOOKING FOR THE MIND
One man's trash is another man's treasure; a personal anecdote on how junk journaling promotes mental wellness.
Not only did I harbor a curiosity for the medium. A newfound vacancy in my life had me itching for a project that would keep my mind occupied. I had just graduated high school months prior, and was about to enter a gap year. Not by choice, I'll note. My original college of choice denied my housing request just three months before I was supposed to attend, leaving me grappling with the uncomfortable fact that I would be spending a year in my hometown, watching my closest friends move away to cities like Boston and New York to live idealized lives while my own life stagnated.
It was August 18th, 2023 that I picked up the blank, 8x8 inch sketchbook I'd been saving. The day after my two closest high school friends left for school. With a pit in my stomach, I printed out Snapchat selfies I had sent them, screenshots of our FaceTime calls, and so on. I wanted to time capsule that summer, knowing well that the year ahead would be a long one; memories of hangouts with friends would surely help carry me through the year.
It was August 18th, 2023 that I picked up the blank 8x8 inch sketchbook I'd been saving. As an artist and a writer, I hold a deep appreciation for physical mediums, and notebooks are one of many guilty pleasures of mine; back home in Florida, I've dedicated a drawer to various notebooks and sketchbooks I've collected over the years. The sketchbook I pulled from the drawer was starkly untouched, with crisp and lifeless pages and unfolded corners. It was one I'd been preserving for a while now, for a project I'd been planning for longer.
A scrapbook.
CHAPTER
ONE
Inspired by TikToks and Pinterest boards that detailed aesthetically-curated junk books filled with polaroids and pressed flowers, I wanted to try my hand at scrapbooking.
Week One - Allie Gesdorf, Page 1
Holidays - Allie Gesdorf, Page 10
And surprisingly? It did. A lot. That first scrapbook page pulled me right from my head, easing my anxieties about an uncertain year ahead of me. There was comfort to be found in the methodical organization of the images I had
printed, and the sketches I created with purpose, instead of mindlessly doodling like I had in high school. I had never taken an art class in high school or middle school, so the purposeful creation of art with finalization in mind was a novel concept to me, but was something I grew fond of quickly. Those early days, where I slowly became accustomed with the lonely quiet of gap year life, were spent experimenting with the basics of scrapbooking and developing an understanding of what I wanted to accomplish with what I would soon be calling my Gap Book; the 8x8 inch scrap book I would be using to chronicle my life in image and art.
The
Process
This time-lapse video showcases what the scrapbooking process looks like. Each page starts as an idea. First, I organize the collected scraps and drawings I want to use. I then sketch additional content within the page's color scheme to add additional cohesion. Finally, I tape everything down and make final alterations to the preliminary design.
The idea for this scrapbooking page originated from the focal point of the page, the Tempest Tea business card. As a supporter of local businesses, I wanted to showcase Naples' newest
boba hotspot, which opened just a few months ago. This business card is surrounded by various other collected scraps, including a sticker collected at DePaul's job fair, a ticket to Paris, Texas at the Music Box Theatre, a P.F. Chang's fortune cookie fortune, and two sketches of cats, which I had done during my time working at The Village School and had saved. Except for the two cat drawings, the other scraps were recent acquisitions gathered in Chicago, which I wanted to include in this showcase, as I wanted this to be an encapsulation of my life thus far at DePaul. After deciding to use these scraps, I then drew a girl drinking boba tea, as to play into the undercurrent of boba tea imagery and to tie the orange of the flowers on the business card to the rest of the page. This, along with some added drawn hearts and a written date, were added in addition to the already collected scraps and were taped to the page, backdropped by a collection of patterned paper to give depth.
Tempest Tea - Allie Gesdorf, Page 19
Holidays - Allie Gesdorf, Page 6
CHAPTER
TWO
While my preliminary forays into scrapbooking were formative to my love of the art form, my interests only really boomed when I began work.
After hearing that I would be taking a gap year, I had to hastily find work for the year ahead before my hometown hit season and jobs became scarce. And found I did; as September's humidity blanketed Naples, my coastal Floridian hometown, I found myself loitering on the concrete steps of The Village School of Naples; a K-12 private school. TVS, as acronymed, is any nondescript stable of southern suburbia; a little white steepled church, patchy green-spaces. It was here that I was hired to work as an Aftercare Teacher's Assistant, hosting events for the school's afterschool program, helping out with homework and activity setup, so on.
And it was also here that I found solace in the supply closets, stickers, and paper scraps that influenced my formative months of scrapbooking. At first, it started as nothing more than a way to pass the time. During work, I had a thirty minute break, in which I was confined to a closet with no cell service or wifi; oftentimes, drawing was the only thing to do. Then, I found that many children in the afterschool program enjoyed art projects and drawing, so I took my sketching sessions public, hosting drawing lessons and free draw sessions with my students. The constant creation of artwork made for the perfect inflow of content for my Gap Book, and soon I was churning out several pages a month.
Working with children everyday, especially the youngers, was incredibly taxing work (and gave me a much more profound level of respect for those working in the childcare industry). Scrapbooking not only became a way to ease my anxiety about my gap year, but also helped to shut off my brain, giving me an outlet to properly unwind after a stressful day of work. Many of the kids I worked with had behavioral issues or dysfunctional families, meaning many days were no cakewalk; on any given day, I would have to handle emotional outbursts or confront parents on student behavior.
Holidays - Allie Gesdorf, Page 13
But through it all, I had the Gap Book to fall back onto. Now, I take it with me everywhere; on vacations, to college, so on. While I haven't scrapbooked as much due to college studies, I've still been collecting scraps so add to the book, a collection that has quadrupled in size due to living in the vibrant city of Chicago. If it wasn't for scrapbooking, my gap year would have been far less productive, seeing as it taught me valuable lessons on patience, mindful introspection, and creative intent.
Make Your Own Scrapbook Page
Your turn! Use the simulator to the left to craft your own scrapbook page.
Drag the elements on the left onto the sketchbook. When hovering over an element, use the Q and E keys to resize it.
Simulator coded on Scratch
Anatomy Practice - Allie Gesdorf, Page 18