a smashing good time

I am a memory collecting addict.  Yes, I am one of those people who keeps almost everything I pick up -- generally paper things though.  Business cards from artists, pamphlets and brochures, tickets from concerts, plays, and movies.  I kept the majority of the notes passed to me in boring high school classes, photobooth pictures, letters from penpals, Valentines from friends and my brothers that harken back to the '90s.  I'm also a journaler, and even though there are those inevitable gaps of a month or two here and there, I've regularly journaled since eighth grade, making that...about eight years.  There are a few problems with this though.  The first is that I have memory box upon memory box that stand in teetering stacks in the basement and in my room (and trust me, there is not nearly enough room in either place for the number of boxes I have).  The other problem is that I've been very concerned about journaling with a "traditional look".  That means cursive writing in black pen only.  Of course I've tucked little keepsakes into the pages, like pressed flowers and leaves, subway tickets from Montreal, even a Yugioh card from a little boy at a camp I counselled.  I realized that as much as I love bygone eras, I'm not a part of them.  Of course I still draw influence from them, but there are plenty of things from my own generation that I love.  And when I came across these Smash Journals, which are essentially a notebook meant to keep all of those bits of ephemera in one place, I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to get out of my left-brained journaling rut, condense my memory boxes, and have a place to collect memories of my own time.  I have to say, that while I'm not nearly as messy (the good kind of messsy) when it comes to scrapbooking as a lot of other people, the fact that I'm overlapping corners is a big step for me.  Plus, there are so many cool products, like journaling spots, date stamps, funky tape, and pockets from Smash that it makes it that much more fun!  So here's a few of the pages I've been working on in the past couple weeks!