Balancing Motherhood, Memory, and Making

How creativity can grow alongside family life

Motherhood and Creativity Can Grow Together

Motherhood doesn’t have to mean putting your creative life on hold. Creativity can grow alongside family life, although it may look very different once you have children. You may have less uninterrupted time, more responsibilities and many more reasons to put your own projects aside. But that doesn’t mean the creative part of you has to disappear. Sometimes creativity simply has to become more flexible, more patient and more closely connected to the life you are already living.

I know this because I didn’t begin Trinketz after my children were grown. Trinketz was born around the same time as my second daughter. At the beginning, I wasn’t making junk journals or thinking about becoming a book artist. I was making bespoke favour boxes for weddings and baby announcements from home, while raising a young family at the same time. My creative work had to exist alongside feeding, children, household responsibilities and all the interruptions that naturally come with motherhood.

Looking back, I don’t think motherhood and creativity were two separate parts of my life that needed to be carefully balanced. They grew together. Trinketz changed as my life changed, and my understanding of creativity changed with it. That experience has shaped the way I think about making today: you don’t necessarily need a perfect studio, hours of uninterrupted time or an elaborate creative routine. Sometimes you simply need to keep making in whatever way your life allows.

Why Creativity Matters When You Are Raising Children

For many mothers, creativity is about much more than producing something beautiful. It can be a way of noticing what is happening around you and giving those moments somewhere to live. When you are raising children, everyday life is filled with small details that can be easy to overlook: a child’s first attempts at writing, a drawing brought home from school, a funny sentence repeated at the dinner table, a photograph from an ordinary afternoon or a small object connected to a family outing.

Memory keeping gives those details a physical place to stay. Instead of relying entirely on your memory or leaving everything inside a phone gallery, you can bring photographs, handwriting, paper and little found objects together in a handmade journal. The result is not simply a record of what happened. It becomes a physical reminder of a particular period of family life and of the person who was there experiencing it.

Motherhood can also take up so much of your identity that it is easy to forget that you are a person who notices, makes, collects, remembers and creates. Making something for yourself doesn’t mean that you care less about your family. Your creative practice can be one of the ways you remain connected to yourself while your children are growing.

How Motherhood Became Part of the Trinketz Story

My own creative journey began at home while my children were young. Trinketz started with handmade favour boxes for weddings and baby announcements. These were small, carefully made objects created for important moments in other people’s lives, and they gave me a way to build something creative from home while also being a mother.

Over time, the kind of things I made began to change. The favour boxes led me further into paper and handmade construction, and eventually towards journals, vintage papers, fabric, ephemera and the world of junk journaling. What began as a small home-based business gradually became a much larger creative practice built around paper, textiles, memory and found materials.

So when I talk about making alongside motherhood, I am not talking about finding a perfect formula for balancing the two. There wasn’t one in my life. There were busy periods when family naturally needed more of my attention, and there were other periods when I had more space to make. My creative practice simply changed shape as my life changed.

Let Your Everyday Life Become Part of Your Creative Work

One of the easiest ways to combine creativity and motherhood is to stop thinking that creative materials have to come from a craft shop. Some of the most meaningful materials are already around you because they are connected to the life you are actually living.

A child’s drawing can become part of a journal page. A school card can become a pocket. A photograph can be mounted onto an old book page. A ticket from a family outing can be tucked behind a photograph. A flower picked during a walk can be pressed and preserved. Even packaging, pretty paper bags, fabric scraps, old envelopes and handwritten notes can become part of a memory journal when they carry some connection to your family.

You don’t have to save everything. The idea is simply to become more observant about the small things that have meaning for you. A piece of paper that looks completely ordinary to someone else may become incredibly important years later because it takes you back to a particular person, place or period of your life.

What Can You Put in a Motherhood Memory Journal?

A motherhood memory journal can hold much more than photographs. You might include your children’s drawings, school notes, birthday cards, photographs, tickets from family outings, recipes you make regularly, handwritten memories, funny things your children have said, invitations, pressed flowers, small pieces of fabric or other objects connected to a particular moment.

The important thing is not how valuable the object is in itself. Its value comes from what it reminds you of. A small piece of paper may mean very little to another person, but years later it can take you directly back to a particular day, place or stage of your child’s life. That connection is what makes physical memory keeping so meaningful.

You also don’t have to document an entire childhood in one journal. A handmade journal can hold one year, one holiday, one particular season of family life or simply a collection of moments that you don’t want to forget. There is no requirement to make it comprehensive for it to be meaningful.

You Can Create With Your Children, Too

Creativity doesn’t always have to happen after the children are asleep. Sometimes children can become part of the creative process itself. They can choose a photograph, sort buttons and ribbons, select a flower, add their handwriting to a page or help decide where a little piece of ephemera should go.

The finished page then becomes more than something you made for them. The making itself becomes part of the memory. Years later, you may remember not only the finished page but also the afternoon when you sat together choosing what should go onto it.

Creativity can happen at the kitchen table, on the living-room floor or in whatever small space is available. It doesn’t have to look like a formal craft session. Sometimes it simply becomes another part of ordinary family life.

You Don’t Need Hours to Make Something

One of the biggest obstacles to creativity during motherhood is the belief that you need a large block of uninterrupted time before it is worth beginning. If you only have ten minutes, it can feel easier to do nothing than to start a project that you know you cannot finish.

But handmade journals don’t have to be completed in one sitting. You can choose a photograph one day, write down something your child said another day, prepare a pocket later and eventually stitch everything together when you have the time. The project can remain open while your life continues around it.

One page finished gradually is still a finished page. A journal that takes several months to make is not less meaningful than one completed in a weekend. In fact, the slower process may allow more of your actual life to become part of the finished book.

What Can You Do With Ten Minutes?

A short amount of time can still move a creative project forward. You might print or choose one photograph, write down a sentence your child said, press a flower, save a small piece of packaging, prepare a journal pocket or arrange the materials you want to use next.

The important thing is not to measure your creative practice by how much you accomplish in one sitting. Small actions accumulate. A few minutes spent noticing, collecting and making can eventually become a finished journal filled with memories.

This is one reason I like the idea of keeping creative materials accessible. When you only have a short window, you don’t want to spend the entire time finding supplies, clearing a workspace and deciding what project to begin. A project that can be picked up and put down makes it much easier to continue.

What If You Feel Guilty About Taking Time to Make?

Many mothers know the feeling that time spent doing something for themselves is time taken away from their families. That feeling can make even a small creative activity seem unnecessarily selfish.

But making something does not automatically mean neglecting everything else. There will be seasons when your children need more of you and seasons when you have more room for your own interests. The aim isn’t to force the same creative routine through every stage of family life.

Instead, your creative practice can become flexible. Perhaps one year you have time to make whole journals. Another year you may only make a few pages. There may even be periods when you collect photographs and materials without making anything at all. That doesn’t mean your creativity has disappeared. It means your creative life is moving with your life.

Your Creative Practice May Change After Having Children

Before children, creativity may have looked one way. After children, it may look completely different. You may have less uninterrupted time, work at the kitchen table instead of a dedicated studio, choose smaller projects or stop worrying so much about making everything perfect.

Something else can happen too. Your work can become more closely connected to real life. You begin noticing the tiny things that might once have seemed insignificant: a child’s handwriting, a flower brought home from a walk, a school photograph, an old piece of fabric or a sentence you don’t want to forget.

Those things can become the raw material for meaningful creative work. Your circumstances may have changed, but that doesn’t mean your creative life has to end. Sometimes the things that make making more difficult also give you more to make about.

Slow Making Has a Place in Family Life

Handmade memory keeping doesn’t need to be rushed. You can choose a photograph, find the right piece of paper, write a few words, add a piece of fabric or stitch something into place, and then return to the journal days or weeks later.

That slower rhythm is part of what makes handmade work different from something produced quickly and discarded just as quickly. The process gives you time to notice the materials, think about the memory and decide how the different pieces belong together.

A handmade journal can therefore become a record not only of what happened but of the attention you gave to it. The photograph, ticket or piece of fabric becomes part of a larger object that was made slowly enough for you to consider why you wanted to keep it.

How Can You Make Creativity Easier as a Mother?

The simplest approach is to remove as much friction as possible. Keep a small collection of materials together rather than putting everything away in different places. Have a memory box, envelope or folder where you can temporarily collect photographs, tickets, notes and little objects. Keep a journal project that you can pick up and put down without needing to start again each time.

You can also use what you already have. You don’t need to buy a new collection of supplies every time you want to make something. Old book pages, receipts, letters, packaging, pretty paper bags, fabric scraps, pressed flowers and other everyday fragments can become part of the work.

Sometimes having fewer materials actually makes it easier to begin. When everything is immediately available, the question becomes much simpler: what small thing from my life do I want to preserve today?

How Can You Preserve Family Memories Without Making a Traditional Scrapbook?

You don’t have to follow a traditional scrapbook format to preserve family memories. A handmade journal can combine photographs with handwritten memories, pockets, envelopes, fabric, stitching and pieces of ephemera. It can be structured, informal, decorative or completely personal.

You might dedicate a few pages to a particular year, a family holiday, a child’s birthday or simply a collection of ordinary moments. The structure can be as loose as the memories themselves because the purpose is not to create a perfect record. It is to create something that allows you to return to those memories later.

This is one of the things I love about handmade journals. They can be practical memory keepers while also becoming objects that reflect the person who made them and the life that surrounded them.

Does a Motherhood Journal Have to Be About the Children?

No. A memory journal can hold your children’s lives, but it can also hold your experience of being their mother.

It can contain your handwriting, your observations, the things you were learning, photographs you loved, little frustrations, funny moments and pieces of your own creative life. It can even contain the things you were making while your children were growing.

One day, your children may not only want to know what they did when they were little. They may also want to know who you were while you were raising them. A journal can preserve that part of the story too.

Creativity and Motherhood Don’t Have to Be Perfect

There is no perfect creative routine for mothers. You don’t need to make something every day, you don’t need a dedicated craft room and you don’t need to finish every project you start.

Your creative practice can be small. It can be interrupted. It can change. It can disappear for a while and return later. What matters is that you leave some room for the part of yourself that wants to notice, make and preserve beautiful things.

Motherhood doesn’t have to exist on one side and creativity on the other. Sometimes the two become part of the same story.

The Memories Are Happening Now

It is easy to imagine that memory keeping is something you will do later, when the children are older, when the house is quieter or when you finally have more time. But the memories you will eventually want to keep are being made now.

The drawing on the table, the funny sentence your child said at breakfast, the flower they brought home, the birthday card, the photograph you almost forgot to print and the ordinary Tuesday that seemed unimportant at the time can all become part of your family’s story.

You don’t have to preserve all of it. You simply have to notice some of it.

A Journal Can Hold More Than Memories

A handmade journal can become a record of the person who was there to notice those memories. It can hold your handwriting, your observations, your creative experiments and the materials that caught your attention while your children were growing.

We don’t only preserve the memories. We preserve the person who was there to notice them.

That is one of the reasons I continue to love handmade journals. They give ordinary fragments somewhere to go, and sometimes, years later, those fragments become the things we treasure most.

Start With One Small Thing

If you have been waiting for the perfect time to start making again, don’t wait for a completely empty afternoon. Choose one photograph. Save one small object. Write down one sentence. Make one page. That can be enough to begin.

My own creative life didn’t begin with a perfect studio, a carefully planned business or hours of free time. Trinketz began at home, alongside motherhood, with small handmade objects made for important moments. It grew because I kept making.

Perhaps your creative life can grow in the same way, not separately from your family, but alongside it.

Want an Easy Place to Start?

If you would like to start creating without having to design an entire journal from scratch, I created the Trinketz Kit Builder to help you build cohesive vintage-inspired journal collections from printable elements.

Start with what you have. Save what matters. Make something that can be kept.