Welcome to another Make It Monday!
You may be coming here from Alice’s site where she tells us that broken bones can lead to creative scrapbooking. Hmmm … I’m intrigued, how about you?
Today I am bringing you Part II of my series on album Organization – Layouts to Memory Books. In Part I you saw my dirty little secret – stacks and stacks of layouts with no albums! I’d love to say that I have made a huge dent already and my dining room table is mostly cleared off but that simply wouldn’t be true. I am amazingly good at letting other things distract me from tough jobs!
In an attempt to make that first dent, I decided to tackle just one album. An album with a theme, not a yearly chronicle or anything massive like that! So, here’s a look at the album about our trip to Disneyland in 2012.To simplify things I have a video for you. It’s a bit long perhaps but hopefully gives you a good idea of the process I’ll be using for all my albums going forward.
Today I will leave you with some of my main tips about creating/maintaining a themed album like this one. And it can be about any theme, not specifically Disneyland.
1. Start with a plan
This may seem obvious or you may feel this is too hard. It’s all dependent on how you create.
For me, the best thing I did when starting this album was to purchase specific supplies that I could use throughout the album. I in no way want all my layouts to look the same but in order for the album to flow and read as more of a story, it helps if there is some continuity from page to page. Your plan can be as simple as starting each layout on white card stock or as detailed as sitting down with your photos and figuring out what stories you are going to tell and then creating page kits for each. I’ll be honest, I’m now at the point where this second option is looking really appealing!
Whatever your plan is, having a selection of supplies – papers, stamps, motifs, punches, or whatever you decide you’re going to use – set aside for use in that album will make the rest of the process more streamlined. If you have a bag like mine that you can grab when you’re heading to a crop, all the better. But it’s not necessary to physically separate your supplies like that. If you know all your pages are going to start with white card stock and they’re all going to have a butterfly on them, make sure you a) keep your stash of white card stock filled at all times, and b) don’t accidentally sell or lose that butterfly punch!
2. Refer back to your album as you go
This is where my plan fell down. I did not refer back to previous pages to make sure that I wasn’t repeating stories (like meeting the Princesses) or using completely different supplies that wouldn’t fit with the rest of my album (like the Pixie Hollow layout). If you have an album purchased from the start, and can get into the habit of adding your layouts into it as you create them, this process becomes much easier! Lesson learned!
3. Don’t feel pressure to “Git ‘er done!”
You all saw how many photos I still had in my shoe box, and I’m sure that is not an abnormally large amount of photos for a family trip to Disneyland! It would take one of those week long, late night, no sleep type crops to get that album finished in one sitting. I’m not that dedicated to the process that I’d give up sleep for a week!!
Scrapbooking is at its core, a pleasure activity. It’s a hobby. It’s only going to stay a pleasurable activity if we don’t put pressure on ourselves to do things in a certain way. Maybe you’ll feel motivated to scrapbook every single photo from an event right away, maybe you won’t. Totally okay! Having a plan in place for supplies, an album ready to go for finished layouts, and getting into the habit of referencing what has already been created will keep the pressure off.
4. Back up. Back up. Back up!
Learn from my mistake and back up your hard drive regularly! Also, when you get home from a special trip, or party, or other memorable event in your life, take the time to get those photos printed off. Once they’re printed you are more likely to want to create layouts with them anyway.
I’ll be back on Wednesday to show you how I turned the duplicate double page layout into a single page about a different aspect of the story. And it will have an fun interactive element too! Today’s post is already long and late so I feel totally okay in baiting you to return later for more! 🙂
Now head off to Melissa’s site where a super cute baby and his teddies = a super cute and super fast page.
Thanks for joining us today!
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