In case you were wondering, I’m still fully onboard the scrapbooking train. In fact, I’m more onboard than ever. Obsessed, you might say. Scrapbooking is that magical thing that reconciles not one but two sets of conflicting paradigms in my life. Item one: creative self-expression feeds my soul, but the drive for external validation that is built into many creative pursuits feels soul-crushing. Item two: having a meditation practice contributes to my mental wellbeing, but my neurodivergent brain can’t handle most typical meditation practices. Scrapbooking is a creative but inherently personal pursuit; the objects I create cannot be monetized and, therefore, their value is entirely independent of external validation. Scrapbooking is also (to me) a very meditative activity, in the sense that it effortlessly puts my brain in a state of flow, which is my version of a “clear mind”.  

I’ve been sharing what I call my “daily pages” (full-page collages I make in my scrapbooking journal) on Instagram because (a) I find vicarious enjoyment in looking at other people’s scrapbooks and want to share that thrill with others; and (b) as a devoted hobbyist, I want to (passively) spread the scrapbooking bug, lol. Basically, similar reasons to why I share my thrift finds.

I guess it’s been working too, because I’ve had a few people reach out to me, curious to learn more about my methods for creating my daily pages. Since I am not sufficiently skilled in Reel-making to create video tutorials or even progress videos, here I am writing this post instead. With photos. And my best attempt at breaking down the process, step by step.

Step one: blank page

My current scrapbook journal is a 9 x 12 inch, spiral-bound drawing notebook (purchased at Dollarama). I think it originally had 80 pages, but I can tell you, that’s too many. By the time you collage both sides, 40+ pages become extremely chunky. Even with a spiral binding, there’s not enough room to keep the pages from getting bent, etc. I’m not sure what the sweet spot would be; I am only here to tell you that you don’t want a book with too many pages (or, like me, be ready to rip some out).

My preferred style of collaging is full-page coverage, so the goal is to find scraps that cover the entire surface of the page. I like to think of it as a blank puzzle that I assemble as I go along.

Step two: choose the focal piece(s)

In every collage I make there is a focal piece — sometimes 2, but rarely more than 3. This is usually an image of a person, animal, or unusual/interesting object. Basically, focal pieces create the first landing place for the eye. They also set the tone/vibe for the rest of the collage. Everything else gets built around them. To put it in clothing terms, these are your “statement pieces”.

Focal pieces tend to be the largest individual scraps on the page, though this is not always the case; if I’m using smaller focal pieces, I tend to use 2 or 3 to create a composite arrangement. Most of the time, I end up using one large and one (max two) smaller focal pieces. The key is that the pieces have to be big enough for the details to be visible and catch the eye at a first glance.

Once I got serious about scrapbooking, one of the first things I did was to sort and organize my scraps. I keep focal pieces in 2 folders, one for large pieces and one for small pieces. This makes it easier to peruse my available options and choose whatever strikes my fancy on a particular day.

To help illustrate, let’s build a page together. Here are the focal pieces I chose:

Step three: arrange your players

Once I’ve got my focal pieces, it’s time to decide where they go on the page. For this, I use their shape as a guide and eyeball a position that feels “right”. Personally, if the image is partially cut off, I will often try to line up the straight edge to one of the edges of the page. But there’s room to play around; I have a bunch of techniques I use to “hide” missing parts of an image, if need be, which gives me leeway to put the image pretty much anywhere I like.

In this case, I decided I wanted to put my focal pieces roughly here:

This now creates a bunch of space that needs to be filled in, and defines the general parameters of the other puzzle pieces. I think of this blank space(s) as the “stage” for my players (aka the focal pieces). Time to design it!

Step four: set the stage

Background or set pieces can come in a variety of flavours, but mine tend to fall into four general categories: landscape and other figurative images, abstract patterns, solid colours, and printed materials (book pages or musical scores). To make my life easier, I also sort these.

First, by size. I have larger pieces organized in one accordion folder, and smaller scraps in a different one. Second, by directionality/positioning. I separate scraps into a number of categories, like: top (of page), bottom, right hand edge (full page), left hand edge, bottom right corner, top right corner, bottom left corner, top right corner, non-directional, etc. What this allows me to do is quickly find and review available materials based on what “puzzle shape” I’ve got to fill on the page around my focal pieces. Choices are made based on vibes – what feels like it “goes” with the focal pieces and the vibe of the page. If I need to, I re-cut and re-shape existing scraps to fit.

I start by filling the biggest “holes” and go from there. I “dry fit” each piece as I add it, without gluing anything down at this stage. Part of this process includes deciding how to layer pieces. To continue the theatre analogy, some pieces are foreground, some are background. Focal pieces are often in the foreground (aka top layer) but not always.

Here’s the set pieces I chose:

And here is how everything fit:

Step five: gluing time

This is pretty self-explanatory but a small tip. Once you’ve assembled the complete collage in the previous step, un-assembled it in reverse order in preparation for gluing – and keep that order straight. That is to say, you want to make sure that you are gluing your bottom layer first, and then gluing pieces in sequential order so you end up with the correct layers. I have been burnt on this in the past. I rush and don’t pay attention to the order that pieces are meant to be layered in, and end up gluing layer 3 before layer 2 that’s meant to go under it. Ugh, it’s the worst!

Step six: frosting time

Frosting is what I call adding the final finishing touches; for me, this is usually stickers and lettering/block text (that is meant to be read, not part of the setting). I almost always add stickers – because I love stickers, lol! – but I don’t always add text. Sometimes, I add stars in contrasting colours (made using paper punches) because it’s a motif I enjoy, as an extra pop on the page.

To keep with the cooking metaphor, this whole step is basically “season to taste”. [Sorry, I’ve mixed my metaphors! Hopefully, you get the idea.]

Here’s the final collage, all frosted:

If this all sounds complicated … trust me, it’s not! It takes much longer to explain than it does to actually do. The whole point is not to overthink it. And, keep in mind, this is only my preferred process. If you’re wanting to give scrapbooking a try and don’t know how to start, feel free to use it. But once you’re comfortable, I would encourage you to explore different approaches and see what feels right to you. There are no wrong ways of scrapbooking! That’s the beauty of it.

This week, the kids had three days off school so we got a preview of the summer holidays to come. Two of those days coincided with my non-work days, which meant that my personal to-do list suffered but lots of fun was had. The novelty of hanging out with mom will wear off soon enough, so I’d rather have other things fall behind than miss this particular window.

My son has his junior high grad next week. I mean, wow! Some of you, who were reading the blog at the time when he was born, will understand how mind-boggling it feels to realize that my once-little baby is off to high school in the fall. He’s 6’1, a straight-A student, athlete, and top-ranking video game player (lol!) – and he still asks for hugs on the regular. I’m trying to savour these moments, as long as I can. (And brag a little, when I can.)

We had a blast of summer temps, which caught be a bit unprepared, tbh. It was so cold, for so long, it’s like I’ve forgotten how to dress without a million layers, hah! I’m back to skirts and dresses, on rotation, which feels delightful. My summer wardrobe is bursting at the seams with pieces I love – a great problem to have – so I am not planning to buy anything new. In the past, the thrift gods would usually laugh at such plans and send dozens of cute items my way to tempt me, but I have a feeling that won’t be the case anymore. It’s been slim pickings at the thrifts for a while now.

In fact, even my daughter has been struggling to find clothes she likes these days. The irony is that all she wants is Y2K stuff – the stuff I used to have, back in the day, and got rid of because “surely, no one’s ever going to want to wear something this hideous.” Sigh. Lesson learned. Every week, she complains about how sad she is that I donated all my super long, lace-trimmed camisole tank tops. Along with all my other circa 2002-2005 “going out” tops. Remember those? She was so pumped recently to find a Y2K-era velour BCBG zip-up hoodie with the brand written across the front in rhinestones. I mean … ok, it’s kinda cute, but who would have guessed it would be a hot ticket again in 2026?

Have a great weekend!

I recently read Charlie Porter’s Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion and found it both fascinating and thought-provoking. There is much to unpack in it, and I won’t even attempt to do an exhaustive review here – do read the book if you’re interested in fashion as a form of self-expression and its philosophical/existential dimensions. What I want to share today are some thoughts inspired by the title and Porter’s entry point to his exploration of the topic.

Bring no clothes: words written by Virginia Woolf (then Stephens) to her future husband, Leonard Woolf, prior to him coming for a visit to her house in the countryside. Similar words were found in other letters from Woolf and her sister, artist Vanessa Bell, to their Bloomsbury friends. Here is Porter explaining what it meant.

“By ‘clothes’, Woolf meant the traditional fashions of her Victorian upbringing. This was an oppressive world codified by garments, with outfit changes throughout the day … All Woolf needed to say was ‘bring no clothes’. Her meaning: come as you are. We are no longer living by those rules. We refuse them, we reject them, we are pushing for something new.”

Elsewhere in his book, Porter makes the argument that clothing is archetypal, even today. Items of clothing – the classic suit, for example, but even basic items like shirts and dresses, etc. – carry meaning and symbolism, associated with and imbued by social structures and norms. He writes that “they provide the subconscious messaging that gives us knowledge of another human before they speak.”

Porter says:

“This knowledge of clothing is unconscious, like our knowledge of language. As with our knowledge of language, we are always learning. Our understanding of clothes is not finite, but is always evolving, and yet we tend to brush it off. This dichotomy … is at the heart of our contemporary experience with fashion. It is the tension between our self-denial and our subconscious knowledge.”

He invites us to consider this: “Imagine waking up one day and dressing without pre-conception, in response to your own body, its physical needs as well as your desire for expression. This would answer Woolf’s call to ‘bring no clothes’.”

Porter recognizes that this is not always possible — and frequently less possible for some people in our society than others — but he thinks that it can still be a goal that those of us who have the privilege to do so can work towards. I agree. I also find the phrase “bring no clothes” very inspiring in broader sense, beyond fashion. To me, “bring no clothes” can be equated to something like “bring no unexamined ideas or preconceptions to any ritual of living or of creative expression.”

We all inherit an enormous amount intellectual/psychological baggage dictated by the social environment in which we grow up and live. Traditions, norms, ideas, expectations, etc. etc. If society is the house in which we live, it comes already furnished, so to speak. In this context, bring no clothes means … bring no furniture except whatever you actually like, find valuable, etc. Redecorate. Keep and toss things as you please. If, in a metaphorical sense, we inherit and live in our parents’ houses, that doesn’t mean that we must keep them unchanged forever. We can make them our own.

For me, ‘bring no clothes’ resonates in the same way as ‘living in discovery’, which is a mantra I have been using for several years now. I consider it one of my guiding principles for living with intention and with meaning. Both of these approaches require curiosity – curiosity that is bold and fearless, but also humble. Another way that I think about curiosity as a concept is “openness”. Openness to the world – people, experiences, ideas – unblinkered by preexisting judgments. Openness is not the same thing as automatic acceptance. To be curious is not the same as being gullible.

To return to fashion …

Over the last decade or so, I have thought a lot about clothes in the context of my exploration of identity and self-expression. Without having consciously set out to do so, I ended up deconstructing my relationship with clothes and then reconstructing it, after my own pattern. Or, at least, mostly after my own pattern. It is loose enough to allow me room to move and grow and evolve. And, funnily enough, nowadays I rarely (consciously) think about clothes anymore. I know what I like and I wear what I like (and I recognize my own privilege in having the freedom to do so) and I am never not comfortable in my own clothes – as I have learned to be in my own skin. It is a state, and a freedom, I hope everyone can get to experience. As Porter writes, “[c]lothes are at the heart of how we experience ourselves.” The first step is to acknowledge that clothes have meaning and power and to start consciously thinking about them in those terms – and see where that takes us.