To Scrapbook or Not?
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Years ago, I was a scrapbooking queen. I spent every spare dollar on supplies. I drove miles to visit scrapbooking shops and to attend scrapbooking conferences.
This was all pre-internet, too!
As our family grew, I determined that I would make sure that every milestone of my children’s lives would be carefully documented within the pages of color coordinated scrapbooks. I was a dreamer.
Yes, yes, I was.
Fast forward ten years or so. The boys, ages 13, 10, 8, and 6, each have at least one album. The girls? None. Other things have taken precedence over my scrapbooking hobby.
However, I don’t want my girls to follow the typical pattern of “the baby doesn’t have a baby book.” So, I’m turning to you for advice and input.
What would you do?
As it’s been four years since I last cropped a photo, I’m a little “behind the times” in terms of products that are available and techniques that are being used.
One of my goals this year is to do something with our photos. I figure this project is a good one to figure out.
I don’t have time for cute or elaborate layouts. I have four years of photos stored digitally. The choices, as I see them, are
- do nothing
- do my best to physically cut and paste simple designs and get my girls’ albums complete
- create my albums online via Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly
- or ?????
Any suggestions?
If you had four years and two albums to document, what is the quickest and simplest way that you would approach it?
I don’t know if you solved your dilemma on your scrapbook situation, but I am going to post what I love to do now for quick easy scrapbooks. It is Studio J from Close To My Heart…..yes, I am a consultant….not spamming, just sharing something I love. It is free to try, but once you do I know you can get those albums whipped out in no time and beautifully too! Let me know if you give it a try and if you like it. If you have any questions feel free to contact me!
https://myheartscraps.ctmh.com/Login.aspx?sj=go
Hello. I know this is an old thread but I thought I’d add my 2 cents. I’m a photographer and a busy mother of 2. (Is there any other kind?!) I used to hand scrap, then I moved to digital scrapping….now I’m about 4 years behind. (And yeah, my youngest is about to turn 4.)
Because of what I do, my home is filled with nice pictures on the wall of both kids, but my youngest has no pics of himself in an album. Both of my boys love to look through the albums that we have, and I always feel bad for my Micah. My recommendation for you is to buy the big binder type of scrapbook with sleeves for your 4x6s and try to organize by date. Perhaps add a SMALL bit of text, like a label…not some massive S.B. journaling. That’s it.
My mother has always taken lots and lots of family pictures. And she always got them into an albulm one way or the other. And I can honestly say that I enjoy looking back at the pictures in the plain albums every bit as much as the 3 or so nicely scrapped ones she has. Maybe even more, because there’s no competition for the image….just my childhood memories plain and simple. <3
Thanks for answering. I understand time going by quick 🙂 I have made 2 storybooks last year for my twin niece and nephew, and am working for two for this year. In the meantime my sister has not done much on putting her pictures into her books (she does make them traditional ones, but only with the highlights…but still is behind). Good luck on working on your books. (you might want to find a group that meets every so often and crop with them…seems that was the only way I got my sons books done).
I just came across your question and I am curious to what you decided to do with your girl’s pictures. As you can see I am a CM Consultant, I am surprised how many people answered your question. I would like to know which way you went and what your experience was. I did not read all the answers here… There is just not enough time 🙂
Thanks!
I went with…. nothing. Last year just got away from me, and I haven’t done anything yet. I keep waiting for a time to print and just crank out pages. I’ll probably do a CM book for each girl and then try to finish off the boys so that they make sense.
I am in the same boat. My son is graduating in May and I am at age 3! I use CM 12×12 albums and I have decided to scrap in a similar fashion to the Project life pocket pages. You can trim the photos to fit in a square pattern like the pocket pages and use one for journaling. You can mat the pics if you like, round corners etc. all journaling goes in the one box. Catch up on putting the pics in and then let your girls embellish with the stickers they like later. It’s about the pictures anyway, not the embellishments. By doing it this way I can use the simple Project Life format, but use the albums and pages I already have.
I’ve been following with interest this whole Project Life phenomen (spelling?). However, these albums cost about $100 each to get sent to Australia, money I just don’t have 🙁 Soooooo, here’s what I do:
1. I bought some albums with blank black pages. I would look for as big as you can afford, my pages are just smaller than a normal scrapbook page and this makes for extra fiddling.
2. I take my photos and get them printed on a weekly basis. I also crop, remove red eye, delete double ups, play with the lighting, etc BEFORE i get them printed.
3. Glue some nice paper down over the black page (not necessary, but makes it look purdy).
4. Compose your photos and glue ’em down. I also add things like a nice painting or recipe that matches up with my photos (this week’s will include a lock of hair from their haircuts today). I use clear contact paper to hold these down.
5. Then I measure any gaps between photos to create a little commentary. This is where I write a little about the photo or my child’s current obsession.
6. Write out all the dates for this year’s weeks and glue them on the page as needed. This helps you keep track of what week and month of the year the photos were taken at.
7. I keep a wallet called “Photo Album Project” and keep everything (like photos, paper & those dates I mentioned) in here.
8. I sit down one night a week and do all this gluing and commentary and I’m done.
Even my husband is impressed with our ‘storybook’ for 2011. I hope this helps. You may wanna do this per kid, but ours is simply a family project for now. I will play around with this concept in years to come, but for now it’s a family album!
I wanted a great scrapbook for my daughter’s first year and was a collector of scrapbook supplies but never took the time to make a traditional one. I found the site howfasttimeflies.com and love it. Great classy layouts. Not too much manipulation so you can make great progress in a short amount of time. It can add it, aorudn $5.00/page to have printed, but they always run sales. I have foudn the quality to be wonderful adn I don’t mind paying the money. I’ve even asked for their giftcards for holidays.
I would personally suggest trying Creative Memories supplies. We are not about scrapbooking anymore we are about helping you with easy and quick solutions to get those photo into albums quickly through traditional or digital!! I would suggest two things that will make getting years of photo’s done quickly, for photo’s on hand I would us the PicFolio Album, the Expandable PicFolio or Quick Kits. What makes these album So quick is that you just slide each picture right into a sleeve, use a album kit to decorate and you are done in less then 30 min. You truly could get 4 albums done a month taking one day a week to put them together. http://www.mycmsite.com/sites/sonyaschroeder/Content/Shop/Catalog.aspx?path=/Hierarchy/Traditional%20Scrapbooking/Albums/PicFolio%20Albums
Another opition with traditional is CM carries power pallets that everything you need to complete an album, embellishments, paper, journal paper and our paper is reversible you can use both sides. If you didnt want to you could stick each page in as is, add embellishments and your pictures and have a great album in again about 30 minutes!
For all your digital pictures I would suggest Storybook Creator Plus 3.0, http://www.mycmsite.com/sites/sonyaschroeder/Content/Shop/Catalog.aspx?path=/Hierarchy/Digital%20Scrapbooking/Products%20for%20PC/Software/Scrapbooking%20Software
This is the newest and easiest way to put together tons of picture quick and easy. Our storybooks are high quality hard cover back with quality printing. We have pre-designed pages that make this even easier cause all you have to do is drag and drop your photos right into the book. You can also edit any part of the book there is NOTHING you are stuck with on each page. You can also design your own pages. With this software you can also make awesome gifts to give, such as calendars, posters, mugs and photo cards. CM did as much work as they could to make this super easy for all those who take pictures.
I would say YES to doing something with your photo’s. They tell a story and show those in the photo just how important they are. I would love to help you in any way get started.
Please visit my CM site at http://www.mycmsite.com/sonyaschroeder and Facebook for my work http://www.facebook.com/jugglingjpegs or you can email me [email protected]
Hope you find a solution to all your photo needs!
In his love,
Sonya Schroeder
I haven’t read over the other replies, but my advice is to go digital. I noticed your albums look like Creative Memories albums. I use their Storybook program and Memory Manager. I wouldn’t use one without the other because it’s too much work otherwise. You purchase kits and add-ons online, which you use over and over again, and they also have some free stuff. The catch to this, as with traditional sb-ing is the fact that you have a few kids, like me, so that will require more pages. And the more pages you have, the more money you spend. I didn’t notice it when I did it traditionally because you bought along the way and used old supplies, etc. Purchasing the album all at once, however, makes it harder to spend it because it seems like so much at once as opposed to having in spread out over the time you put it together.