For Valentine's Day, I surprised my teenage daughters with a Smash Book. No, not a smashed book -- a Smash Book. Big difference. Never heard of Smash Books? I bet you're familiar with the concept, just not the name.
Smash Books are reminiscent of that old composition notebook/journal from your high school days. You know... the one you spent hours pasting in old ticket stubs, magazine clippings, notes, pictures, etc? Yep. That's the concept. Smash booking is a little messier, more random (one of my daughters' favorite words) version of scrapbooking. It doesn't seem to take as long as scrapbooking simply because it's more relaxed, less pretentious, and well... more random (there's that word again).
And frankly, that's what drew me in to the whole Smash Book thing. I've always been a bit intimidated by the perfect 12x12 scrapbook page with brads, embossing, ribbons, and all the trimmings. That's an awful lot of space to fill when you don't consider yourself to be a "visually creative" person. Maybe that's why I usually spent WAY more time chatting it up when I went with my friends to "Scrap Mania" events while they were churning out 8, 10 and even 12 pages in six hours. I, on the other hand, came home with a whopping two pages to show for my six hours in the crop room at the local scrapbooking store. (But, hey, I still had fun!)
So for now, it's Smash Books for me. (Of course, I had to buy myself one, too!) "Smashing" is way more my style. More do-able. I love this little blurb the company put at the beginning of the book as a reminder (especially the "messy and beautiful" part):
Check out the K&Company website for more info on Smash Books. (They're not paying me to mention them. Sigh. :-) I just like their stuff enough to write about it.) So what are you waiting for? There's a beautiful mess in your junk drawer just waiting to be smashed.
