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 soooo feel your frustration! That’s exactly what brought me to this site…looking for perspective on my photo hobby. I miss the days when I just took my 35mm roll to walmart, got the pics, shared them with everyone, dated the envelope, and put them in a pretty box to store. That was simple. Then I got into scrapbooking and went crazy! I even became a CM consultant. It became overwhelming on top of my full time job. So I kinda just quit cold turkey. I realized I had all the milestones done: babies first years, their preschool years, and their school years, my wedding, their sports, my and hubby’s high school. I then started doing year books. But lost my steam by that point. Now I have a couple years of photos on my computer, two completed CM digital albums on my computer (but lack of cash to order them) and now trying to make my life simple again. I think the point is sit down and think about what is really important and set some goals. For me, the handmade milestones were important, but now they are done and I have to decide what to do about the everyday, year to year stuff. Do I create a digital album for each year? or do I just get each set of pics printed and throw them in a box like my pre-scrapbooking days? or do I get them printed in a spiral bound 4X6 with some journaling (done this with shutterfly and love it). Right now I’m sitting on two free shutterfly coupons for digital albums. My husband likes the digital – he seems to be more impressed with them, and my kids like my handmade – but they are mostly about them! But my need is to get them done simply and regularly and not let them pile up or even wait til the end of the year before I put together a year’s worth. SIMPLICITY is what is important to me at this point.
I had the same problem. I have now turned to pocket pages. I use a 12 x 12 binder or album and use the 4 x 6 pockets or sometimes the other “hybrid” sizes. I only “scrap” a 4 x 6 title and just put the pictures in the pockets. If the pictures are something special I can always scrap those. It has been such a relief to those under control. I also started with current pics and worked backwards. Using the pockets makes it so flexible to ad or remove and the picture are uncut. SO FAST. Hope this helps
Jessica, Today I made a digital album using iPhoto. I don’t know if you have a Mac but this really only took me 6 hours. I think my pics are further behind than yours. I have 6 years on my computer. My decision is to make an old fashioned album for my 6th and try to catch up my other children’s albums that way, but to do one digital family album a year. I do think the old fashioned way is cheaper. All of my research is showing the digital 12X12’s can be very expensive. You can see my family album I created today on my last blog entry. Thanks for doing this post. It truly inspired me and I appreciate all the input from your readers.
Has anyone used seehere.com? I used them this year for our Christmas cards and they turned out great. I noticed they have 12X12 books that you can buy by the page. That looked intriguing to me but I’ve not seen anyone mention their products.
I’m one in the same dilemma as Jessica. I’ve got 6 children and have albums for some of them. I’m about 5 years behind on family albums. My 3 year old has no printed pictures 🙁
I’m thinking I may do an old-fashioned album for all the children but try to catch up family albums digitally.
I started out making a “real” scrapbook for my son and I got a whole 5 pages into it. It has sat on my table for over a year now, completely unchanged and unfinished. I decided to make digital ones using Picaboo and they have turned out great! I made one that documents his first year, and another one that was a little simpler to give away as gifts on Christmas (huge hit). I used coupon codes to offset the cost of printing them, but the program and digital copies are totally free.
I’d definitely recommend the Picaboo program because it has options that fit any level of effort you are wanting to put into it.
You can always do the digital ones now and save the “real” ones for graduation/18th birthday/wedding gifts. That way you’d get the best of both worlds.
Good luck!
I do a both paper and scissors as well as digital scrapbooking. I would say digital saves time and money, what with the tons of free downloads online!! I personally love shabbyprincess and peppermint creative. I use Photoshop CS and that’s really simple. And to save some money on printing, instead of doing the usual 12 x 12 size, create on a A4/ letter sized format and print it off your regular photo printer at home! 🙂
I had the same dilemia. About 5 years backlog for both of our boys. Decided to donate all of the old scrapbook materials & tools to the school and go digital. I chose Picaboo after review 2 or 3 others & just got two completed books back. The boys are happy & I think they are terrific. Hit the highlights and keep it simple. The kids mostly want to look at themselves & laugh at the memories. Picaboo is affordable & easy. There is a sale every few weeks.
http://www.picaboo.com/products-pricing/
I’m all about the digital photo books – greatest invention ever. And I love that you can always get 5×7 deals, so I’ll make little flip books just about certain events – the kids love to look thru these over and over (and it keeps them occupied to not over-look at the “good” ones). I also love that they are saved on file and if I want to print out extra copies in the future (one for each kid?) I can. Something spilled on it – print another one!
If you have hundreds of prints sitting around, like I did, there’s a great service thru scanmyphotos.com where you send them all off and they scan them for you and a few days later all your old prints are digital files. Of course they aren’t great quality (not because the scans aren’t high-res, but because the prints weren’t that great). I had over 3000 prints scanned and I’m now in the process of putting together a photo book of my study abroad trip from 1997!
Have fun!
I may be unpopular but I think you should try your best to do an actual physical scrapbook!!! Let’s face it, your daughters will appreciate it so much more than sons would…
I would only scrapbook the most special photos and then you could include digital print outs in the same album of the more day to day stuff, but I would try and have one album for them at least… I know I am really behind on my boy’s baby books but for my second baby’s month by month album I am going to use a sort of “template” type idea and do each month page the exact same layout, just different paper, accessories, photos. I find the most time consuming thing is just designing the layout so if you have that figured out the rest is not so bad right?
You’re not unpopular. My own sister said the same thing. 😉
I put together a years worth of photos in about 3 hours on Shutterfly. It’s quick and easy and they run great specials all the time. Good luck!