Welcome to a new blog series!
Yeah that’s about all I know about it right now! LOL! It all started when I was tidying my Scrap Cave. I’d cleared off my desk, hung my blinds (that had been on the floor after a repainting job a couple years ago – gulp), moved my laptop from the dining room table back onto my desk, and ruthlessly gone through all my mixed media supplies to get rid of anything that was now old and yucky (mostly my Gelatos – sniff). And then I looked at my floor and the giant box of unsorted layouts ….
Why not dive into those? Should be a piece of cake!
Well, this series will allow you to follow my adventure as I finally find homes for layouts I’ve had in this box for years. I kid you not. Years!
Part I – Making a Beginning
A.k.a. Where the heck do I start??
My answer was fairly simple. Organize into piles.
But what do the piles consist of? Well, that is kind of up to you and how you want your stories to be told. I have done much research on this and taken classes from Shimelle Laine and Stacey Julian to help sort through some of the most pertinent questions. While I love Stacey’s philosophy of grouping by people, places, and things we love, I have basically adopted Shimelle’s method of chronological and upgrade albums. Let me try and briefly explain what I mean.
Chronological Albums
These are the albums that house those layouts that tell the story of your year. From whatever viewpoint you, the storyteller, have at that moment. I didn’t start scrapbooking until 2009 so my stories always centred on family life. We had two daughters and I was pregnant with the third so there were a lot of baby photo layouts! In fact, one of my first projects was my eldest daughter’s 1st Year Album. I also had no concept of longevity or planning or any idea that this hobby would take over to the extent that it did so that album was very unplanned. In fact, I recently completely redid it and you can read all about it on my blog here. I tore it apart! I wanted to integrate the idea of upgrade albums into the plan and that baby album in essence became an upgrade album.
Upgrade Albums
These are the albums for special occasions. Whatever YOU deem special. Could be an over the top birthday party, a trip to Europe, or a day at the Harry Potter Studios (okay, 4 hours but who’s counting!) For this last example, I have two albums for this one day and I made most of the layouts during LOAD218 – you can find them starting here on the blog, or view the playlist on YouTube, or see stills on my Flickr Gallery.
If we can return to my eldest daughter’s baby album as an example for a minute. Originally I’d included basically everything we did that year and it was two, very full post bound albums when it was done. After taking the classes I talked about above, I decided a better way to go was to create an album that highlighted her growth over that first year and move all the other layouts into her chronological albums (more on those in a bit). That gave me a nice tidy story for one post bound album to handle. Birth story, each month’s milestones, and a 1st birthday layout to end it. I could also control the products used since I was tackling it as one project this time. That helps immensely with the overall cohesion of the album! I’ve done the same for all three of my girls so each of them have this type of upgrade album in their personal library.
Where does that leave me?
My chronological albums are in the most disarray and that is what I will be focussing most of this series on. I have a few types too. Each girl has (or will have – currently they’ve each got two but they’re pretty full so I need to go shopping soon!) a set of albums full of stories that are about her alone. These include things like birthdays, birthday parties, personal achievements and milestones, back to school, end of school and school class photos, etc. I’m toying with the idea of creating upgrade albums for their school photos but at the moment these layouts all live together with layouts about soccer teams, and anything else that is daughter specific.
You see the biggest pile of layouts on my dining table in the photo above? Those are the family stories from … actually, I’m not sure how far back they go as I don’t scrapbook chronologically so some may have really old photos and stories on them! Suffice it to say, this is the crux of my problem!
It did not take me too long to pull out the layouts that are only about one daughter or another and get them into the proper places in their albums. I did make notes along the way of layouts that were missing or needed fixing so I can return to those at a later date. For now though I was happy to just provide each girl with chronologically accurate albums containing all the layouts of her that I’ve made so far. Are there gaps in their stories? For sure! That is a giant project for a future day!! For now though, this sight makes me happy.
On the left, from the left is my middle daughter’s two chronological albums, and the three Baby upgrade albums for my three girls. then on the right are my youngest and eldest’s two chronological albums. Each one’s story starts in a light pink fabric album and then they got to pick a pink patterned album. I’ll continue that idea for any subsequent albums I buy for them too. Hopefully managing to convince the teenager to stick with pink! LOL!
Okay, that’s all I’ve done so far. I will talk more about our family story albums in a later post. First, I need to wait for my order of page protectors to arrive! I’ve got enough albums (I think) to tell our story so far with the layouts I’ve made so far, but I have no extra sleeves for my layouts! Once those arrive and I can tackle that giant pile of layouts on my table, I’ll come back and update you on my progress.
Have a great week everyone! And if you have tips for me, share them in the comments. Thanks!
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