I get asked about scrapbooking by a variety of people and one of the most popular questions is "how do you ever catch up?" (and variations of such.)
The answer is very, very simple--I don't.
Not to be snarky, but getting "caught up" is not even a goal. I would surely be sunk if it were. This is my hobby--something I do because I enjoy the process. If there was a bunch of pressure to make some kind of quota, I wouldn't enjoy it. At all.
I scrap the photos that I like and the stories that I wanna tell. I ignore chronology. I have fully embraced the concept of "scrap the best and store the rest." I take thousands of pictures every year...there's no way it could ever be practical to scrapbook every single photo. (I'd have to build a wing onto my house to store all those books!)
So what to do with all those photos that I don't scrapbook?
Well, I'll let you in on the secret. I edit them heavily--meaning I don't print them all--just the best ones. Then I pull the super dooper ones for scrapbooking and put the remaining photos into these lovely subdivided page protectors. Each page protector holds six 4x6 photos on each side. The beauty of these page protectors is that they fit perfectly into a 12x12 album...just like my layouts.
So, I can store the layouts and the unscrapped photos right together. How's that for a little touch of organization?
Each album holds about 50 pages = 600 photos (at least). The albums are photo-safe and not too expensive. The photos are organized and can be easily enjoyed by my children/family, just as a regular scrapbook. (They are stored on the same shelf as my finished scrapbooks.) If a mood to scrap something in the album strikes, I can pull out the photos I want and scrap them, but there is no pressure and this prevents me from being completely overwhelmed by feelings of "I'm so behind I'll never get it all done". It also prevents me from loosing out on all those back up pictures--the good ones that I can't bear to throw pictures away. This keeps them safe and accessible--and well-organized.
The sub-divided photo protectors are Ultra Pro item #57020 is available at Hobby Lobby and at www.ultrapro.com
3 comments:
We missed you at NSD at Scrappuccio's.. it was fun!
I think the longer I scrapbook, the more I like this model of thinking. Now since I have the digi camera - I don't take as many or at least I can edit them before ever getting them printed so it seems I have fewer pictures to put in the scrapbooks. BUT I still go through them and only use the best so I can have only a double page spread. Special events like birthday's might require more pages ... depending on what we did. I need a good photo album to store all my extra pictures in.
Thanks for the info!
I'm with you. I will never EVER be caught up and I'm okay with that!
My take on this is "why would I want to be caught up?" What fun would that be?
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