Timeline Album Challenge - January 2025

[Cassel]

Have you ever created an album that tells the story of your life, one chapter at a time? For 2025, I’m inviting you to embark on a year-long creative challenge to document your personal timeline in a unique and meaningful way.

We’re calling it the Timeline Album Challenge! The idea is simple: divide your life into 12 periods (the length of each depends on your age) and create one scrapbook page for each. Whether you include photos, memories, or simply words that describe those times, it’s up to you! By the end of the year, you’ll have a complete album that reflects your journey.

For example, let's assume you are 72 years old (it just makes it easier to calculate):

• 0-6 years old: you can talk about your birth place, your first tooth, your first day of school
• 7-12 years old: you can remember some birthday parties, friends, places you visited
• 13-18 years old: those teen years! what were you doing, your first crush, your high school years
• 19-24 years old: maybe your dates, or wedding (if it happened in that time)
• 25-30 years old: maybe when you moved town, when your kids were born, when you purchased your first house
• And so on. You get the picture.

Here’s how it works:

• One page every month: Start with your earliest memories or your childhood, and work your way to the present. You can also document specific milestones, achievements, challenges, etc. You can pick and choose any element to document.
• No pressure: Share your pages with us as you create them. There’s no strict commitment, and you can always catch up later if life gets busy.
• Make it yours: Add photos if you have them, or create pages without photos by focusing on stories, quotes, or embellishments that symbolize those moments in time.
• Include what was around you: seeing how some world events (or local ones) can relate to us can be interesting. What there a new fashion trend? What were the newest inventions? Any famous people that you might have heard of (or met) during that time period?

This is your story to tell. Whether you want to focus on key milestones, favorite memories, or even everyday moments, it’s all about capturing what makes your timeline unique.

Who’s ready to take on this creative timeline journey in 2025?

Let’s make something amazing together! Who’s in?

[Rene Marker]

I've already done a lot of layouts that fit this challenge for what I call my "Book of Me" so as the year progresses, I will post some of them. I'm not quite 72 but the age breakdowns work for me.

This is a layout that I did about getting glasses at the age of 2 and wearing them for approximately 3 years. The template is a retired template from Scrapping With Liz. The kit used is called "Doctors Visit Eyes" by Meagan's Creations at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

 

[Cassel]

@Rene Marker It is cool that you have pictures for it too!

[Rene Marker]

31 minutes ago, Cassel said:

@Rene Marker It is cool that you have pictures for it too!

Well, I was an only child so they did take a lot of photos. My mom's parents were big on taking photos that they developed as slides. So between my parents and my grandparents, there were a lot of photos of me (and my 2 older cousins). Mom actually was a scrapbooker although it wasn't called that at the time. She put photos in albums for me (the ones that had black pages and ties to hold the front/back together). She journaled in white pencil about them and included birthday cards and other ephemera. She quit when I was 18. It was 2 albums that were falling apart so I took the time to transfer everything into 3 Creative Memories albums and scanned all the photos before I did. 

[Bonnie Ballentine]

I am also an only child. Lots of photos early on...not so much later. I am going to see if I can motivate myself for this. May be a lot of journaling...and I am not good at that.

[Cassel]

6 minutes ago, Bonnie Ballentine said:

May be a lot of journaling...and I am not good at that.

Write like you would leave us a written note. No need for anything fancy, just tell a story! Your story.

[Bonnie Ballentine]

Good advice, Carole! Thank you!

[Ann Seeber]

Interesting, so far there's Rene and Bonnie joining me in the Lonely Only Club! LOL Unfortunately, my parents were just average with "snapshots."

[Cassel]

42 minutes ago, Ann Seeber said:

Unfortunately, my parents were just average with "snapshots."

Photos are optional. It's the story that matters.

[Corrie Kinkel]

Ann I come and join the club it will make an addition to the AAM challenge and the P52 as well. Like Rene and Bonnie I'm an only child and my dad was an enthusiastic photographer so I have to delve into my photo albums and see what I want to use for this challenge. I roughly will keep the age categories although I wil turn 76 in April and maybe extend a year  somewhere. With the Affinity Bootcamp and other challenges it will be a slow start and I have to be very careful with the use of my hands at the moment. In my rightside wrist I have a nerve that is pinched, which will take time to heal according to the doctor. I can scrap lefthanded but that goes more slowly and I mustn't overdo otherwise I will get the same problem there.

[Ann Seeber]

1 hour ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Ann I come and join the club it will make an addition to the AAM challenge and the P52 as well. Like Rene and Bonnie I'm an only child and my dad was an enthusiastic photographer so I have to delve into my photo albums and see what I want to use for this challenge. I roughly will keep the age categories although I wil turn 76 in April and maybe extend a year  somewhere. With the Affinity Bootcamp and other challenges it will be a slow start and I have to be very careful with the use of my hands at the moment. In my rightside wrist I have a nerve that is pinched, which will take time to heal according to the doctor. I can scrap lefthanded but that goes more slowly and I mustn't overdo otherwise I will get the same problem there.

Oh, my, so we have Rene, Bonnie, Corrie and me in this exclusive club - The LOs 😉 (anyone who qualifies can join!)

[Cassel]

I might try to join this time around 🙂

[Susan Ewart]

Sounds interesting. I think I'll be a cheerleader and pop in from time to time, ready with my basket of hearts to hand out. I am hoping to get back on track with the Labs.  I'm the 4th child and much less pictures than the first 3.  

[Ann Seeber]

9 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

I'm the 4th child and much less pictures than the first 3.  

Isn't that always the way? I have way more photos of my first and hardly any for my second. 😁

[Ann Seeber]

I was messing around with Microsoft Copilot and asked it to design a logo for my Lonely Only Club. These are what came up...

[Rene Marker]

4 hours ago, Ann Seeber said:

Isn't that always the way? I have way more photos of my first and hardly any for my second. 😁

My cousin, Bruce, the first grandchild for Mom's parents has so many pictures. He was the only grandchild for 3 years. Then his sister came along (Sue) and she also has a lot but not as many as Bruce. I was a year later so then I started being in the photos. Bruce and Sue did not live in our town by this time so my grandparents didn't take as many photos of them. But I was the only grandchild in town for 6 years so I am in quite a few of their photos. The last 3 grandkids (Tiger, Jack and Mark) don't have nearly the photos taken by my grandparents. Jack is the younger sibling of Bruce and Sue so was not in town. Tiger and Mark are brothers and did live in town (Tiger and I are the only 2 left in our town).

When my grandpa passed away, my uncle went through all the slides they had and pulled out the ones for each grandchild. It took him over 2 years to do. He gave me a big baggie full of slides of Mom, Dad and me. I'm not sure how he divided up the Bruce/Sue/Jack and their parents slides but the amount Sue got was not quite as many as me probably because she didn't live in town. Poor Jack didn't have many at all.

[Julie Magerka]

1 hour ago, Rene Marker said:

My cousin, Bruce, the first grandchild for Mom's parents has so many pictures. He was the only grandchild for 3 years. Then his sister came along (Sue) and she also has a lot but not as many as Bruce. I was a year later so then I started being in the photos. Bruce and Sue did not live in our town by this time so my grandparents didn't take as many photos of them. But I was the only grandchild in town for 6 years so I am in quite a few of their photos. The last 3 grandkids (Tiger, Jack and Mark) don't have nearly the photos taken by my grandparents. Jack is the younger sibling of Bruce and Sue so was not in town. Tiger and Mark are brothers and did live in town (Tiger and I are the only 2 left in our town).

When my grandpa passed away, my uncle went through all the slides they had and pulled out the ones for each grandchild. It took him over 2 years to do. He gave me a big baggie full of slides of Mom, Dad and me. I'm not sure how he divided up the Bruce/Sue/Jack and their parents slides but the amount Sue got was not quite as many as me probably because she didn't live in town. Poor Jack didn't have many at all.

Oh how I wish someone would hand me a big bag of family pix. We have some, but cameras were not as ubiquitous back then.

[Rene Marker]

1 hour ago, Julie Magerka said:

Oh how I wish someone would hand me a big bag of family pix. We have some, but cameras were not as ubiquitous back then.

The sad thing is my uncle threw out a lot of slides from the family vacations that did not include people aka the places they went. They traveled a lot and went to out of the way places that I'm sure people would love to have photos of these days. Photos were from the 1940's. Sue was livid when she heard that. She was a teacher and would have loved to have had them to possibly use in her classroom for history lessons. He never told anybody he was doing this and just presented us with what he thought we would want. I asked if I could look through the slides he wasn't giving to others and that's when I found out he had thrown them out.

Thankfully, my grandfather let me go through the magnetic photo albums he had about a year before he passed away. He told me to take whatever photos I wanted for my genealogy work. When I took the albums back, there were a lot of empty spots and I'm lucky to have photos of his cousins and Grandma's siblings and the families for all of them.

[Julie Magerka]

43 minutes ago, Rene Marker said:

The sad thing is my uncle threw out a lot of slides from the family vacations that did not include people aka the places they went. They traveled a lot and went to out of the way places that I'm sure people would love to have photos of these days. Photos were from the 1940's. Sue was livid when she heard that. She was a teacher and would have loved to have had them to possibly use in her classroom for history lessons. He never told anybody he was doing this and just presented us with what he thought we would want. I asked if I could look through the slides he wasn't giving to others and that's when I found out he had thrown them out.

Thankfully, my grandfather let me go through the magnetic photo albums he had about a year before he passed away. He told me to take whatever photos I wanted for my genealogy work. When I took the albums back, there were a lot of empty spots and I'm lucky to have photos of his cousins and Grandma's siblings and the families for all of them.

I do volunteer work for the local genealogy office, and I hear stories all the time of someone who just pitched out all the "junk" after a family member died. If only they would tell/ask before they do it! There is usually someone who would LOVE to have the old photos.

[Cassel]

My grandfather was an amateur filmmaker and took lots of photos. I remember when he was filming us, at Christmas mostly, he would walk in a room and his camera was rigged with probably a dozen lights. They emitted heat so we knew when he was closer, even if we had our eyes closed! I remember that he was doing some stop animation, and one of the film was on my first birthday, where he would have all the letters jumbled up, and gradually unjumbled to write "Bonne Fête Carole".

He had lots of films and photos and after he passed, my mom got it all. Unfortunately, at some point, my mom got upset for something (no idea what) and she threw everything out. I only found out many years later that none of grandpa's films and photos had survived. 😞

The few very old photos I have, were in my possession before my mom threw everything else.

[Susan Ewart]

9 hours ago, Ann Seeber said:

I was messing around with Microsoft Copilot and asked it to design a logo for my Lonely Only Club. These are what came up...

My favorite is the second one.

[Corrie Kinkel]

2 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

My favorite is the second one.

Mine too, and it is great we have a logo and Ann can you please put is somewhere to download!

[Corrie Kinkel]

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

My grandfather was an amateur filmmaker and took lots of photos. I remember when he was filming us, at Christmas mostly, he would walk in a room and his camera was rigged with probably a dozen lights. They emitted heat so we knew when he was closer, even if we had our eyes closed! I remember that he was doing some stop animation, and one of the film was on my first birthday, where he would have all the letters jumbled up, and gradually unjumbled to write "Bonne Fête Carole".

He had lots of films and photos and after he passed, my mom got it all. Unfortunately, at some point, my mom got upset for something (no idea what) and she threw everything out. I only found out many years later that none of grandpa's films and photos had survived. 😞

The few very old photos I have, were in my possession before my mom threw everything else.

I'm very fortunate that my dad had photography as a hobby and being an only child I have quite a lot of photos from my childhood, but later he switched to slides and most of those didn't stood the test of time and are ruined beyond repair. If only I had discovered that sooner, maybe with the modern computers I could have salvaged some.

[Ann Seeber]

31 minutes ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Mine too, and it is great we have a logo and Ann can you please put is somewhere to download!

I'll put it in Files on the Scrapbooking with PaintShop Pro Facebook group.

[Susan Ewart]

Dont be lonely.  Aren't we (here in the campus) all sisters (and brothers) from another mother (or father).🤗