Documenting Our Traditions, Culture, & History

I started a mail club this year called the Creative Spark Club! Every month I send out a different project to try so that we can stay inspired and creative all year long. I do the project alongside members and will be sharing them on my blog. If you're interested in the club, you can either subscribe and become a member or purchase individual projects as a one-time purchase, no subscription needed. Here are the links.

Inspired by Lunar New Year and a recent trip to Taiwan, February's Creative Spark Club project is about the celebrations we've had throughout our lives, our histories and heritage, traditions we’ve had or want to create, where we come from and where we want to go. I wanted club members to explore these topics and pick something from it to document.

The project itself is a cross between a collage and a scrapbook page, utilizing images, layers, patterns, and other paper goods to help us tell our story, share a recipe / game / tradition, highlight a memory, or something else that may come to your mind.

Here's what I sent out to help us get started: matte photo paper, photo corners, vellum paper, mini translucent envelope, quote card, prompt card, letter with details and ideas, and a little something from my culture to share!

It’s interesting I gravitated towards creating this project because growing up, my family and I didn’t really have big celebrations or traditions that came to mind. There are many reasons for this and it’s not a bad thing. In fact, it made me really reflect and how being first generation and the daughter of immigrants shaped my experience in positive ways (instead of negative, which I think can be what comes to mind first.)

I realized if I didn’t have a connection to both the US and Taiwan, where my parents are from, I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to travel there as a kid and see a different place, eat different foods, hear and smell so many different things! I may not have appreciated it enough when I was little but I do now. My collage scrapbook piece is a representation of this and a nod to my visits to Taiwan throughout the years.
We didn't get to go often, but because my parents are from there and all of our extended family still lives there, I got the opportunity to travel and experience another country throughout my childhood. It never occurred to me what a special privilege this was until I became an adult. I actually also lived there for about a year when I was 2 years old (which is where the younger photo of me is from) but I don't remember any of it!

My piece is also about appreciating where I come from, where my family comes from. I was born in the US and grew up here so of course when I was a kid and teenager, I just wanted to fit in. That may have meant rejecting my own culture to adapt to the culture here. So this is also a reminder of how I am also connected to Taiwan.

I liked the idea of then and now so tried to share some experiences from when I was little and going back there as an adult.

Here's what I used:

  • 8 1/2 x 12 inch white cardstock for the background. I'll be adding this page to my travel journal which is bigger, so this size background worked great.
  • A postcard of Taiwan, this is what I used my photo corners for. The photo corners allow for the postcard to be switched out in case I ever wanted to change it. I like how this postcard also serves as a map!
  • 2 photos (I used my original photo but if I didn't want to, I would have printed it out on the matte photo paper in this month's mail) from the past and present.
  • Torn strips from a map as the background
  • My vellum paper has my mom's writing in Chinese characters of different locations in Taiwan we have been to or want to go to. I loved getting to involve her in this project--feel free to ask for help on yours too! I love how the characters look and thought that would be a fun element to add and layer on top of the map and photo (which had a lot of empty space).
  • In my pocket I added: prints of the stamps I've gotten in Taiwan (I still have the ones I got when I was in 4th grade!), candy wrapper, stickers, and cut outs from a brochure from our recent trip to Sun Moon Lake.

Can you relate to my experience or does yours look very different? What celebrations did you participate in growing up? What is your history and heritage like? What traditions do you still carry with you or what new traditions do you want to start?
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