Just Lemons

No, not the fruit! The lemons I mean are those we all have in our boxes of photos. The images we have that are unscrappable. You know, the ones that are precious because they capture a special moment... but they are blurred, too dark, too light, the backgrounds are distracting or Aunty Joan's head is cut off! (By the way, the photo above is not a lemon, it's meant to be blurred!).

I was hoping for some inspiration from a book I ordered at the library recently on how to scrap such 'difficult' images. The book is called 'When Life Gives You Lemons' by Sherry Steveson. It's full of lovely scrapbook layouts and there are ideas I will scraplift for my good photos, however, the photos she uses are still .......well, lemons.

You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear as my Dad would say. Lemons are just lemons.

Sherry has been brave for a professional by showing the World her 'reject' photos, and made the very best of them with her imaginative layouts. Well done to her.

For me, scrapbooking is about telling a story and recording the details of family for future generations. It's fun to play with different techniques, and buying new papers and embellishments are what keeps a massive industry going, and yes, they do make it more fun. But the individual photos tell the story, and journalling fills in the detail for the generations ahead who will not have met the people in the photos.

Sadly, no amount of embellishments on a page can bring a blurred photo into focus. Patterned papers cannot bring back Aunty Jean's head! So the lemons in my photo collection remain just that. I will continue to keep them and hope, someday, I am inspired with what to do with them!