It doesn’t seem like it would be a big issue. You make an album. You add some pictures. You journal, add some embellishments (stickers, borders, mats for the pictures). Done!
The BIG Debate
There is, however, an ongoing discussion among scrapbookers:
“How do you organize your albums?”
Last week, there was another discussion on the Creative Memories Advisers discussion board on the same topic. Yep, the folks who do this for a living don’t all agree! Why is this hard? You add them in chronological order and – Voila! – you are done! Well…not quite. There are some reasons that doing only an annual album can cause some problems.
Major events don’t always fit in an annual scrapbook
You wouldn’t just tuck a few pictures of your formal wedding into your 2018 scrapbook, right? Similarly, if you went on your dream vacation to Paris (or whichever place fills YOUR dreams), those pictures would probably overwhelm the three pictures of the Mother’s Day breakfast your kids cooked and the selfies you took when you went to a concert with friends. Many scrapbookers do separate albums for major events when there are a LOT of pictures they want to include in their scrapbooks on a single event. Examples include weddings, graduation, 25th or 50th wedding anniversaries, baby books, retirement events, and major vacations…essentially any event that can fill or nearly fill a scrapbook.
Major event albums don’t cover the “times of your life”
If you only do scrapbooks of major events, you end up with a lot of important pictures that don’t fit. What do you do with that last wonderful picture of you and your grandmother on the day you stopped by to bring her some groceries? You don’t have enough pictures to do a whole album unless you are doing a whole album on Grandma. And what about those two great shots of the kids covered in cookie dough and flour? Or that precious picture of the dog looking guilty after he ate the tomatoes off the counter? And that cute selfie of you and your sweetheart at dinner. Those have GOT to be in your book. You can post them on Facebook or Instagram but that is not preserving them, as we have discussed before.
Here is my solution…but it’s not the only one!
I do an annual album (Jan-Dec) and make separate albums for major events such as big vacations, graduations, and weddings. Do I keep EVERY item in chronological order? Mostly, but not compulsively. I have tried to relax about having everything in exact chronological order, but I DO put the month and date on each page or group of pages. What about those major events like weddings or graduation? I usually put a key picture or two into my annual album so I capture when the event happened in our family history. I have friends who do things differently, with a birthday album for each child with a couple of pages devoted to each birthday. Some do albums about their parents and others do an album for each child. Some do ONE album and make digital prints for each child. Consider what you want to preserve, how much detail you want to keep, and who will be the lucky recipient of those albums when you are gone. Then pick a strategy and get scrappin’!
A Great Opening
When you open a published book, there is always important info up front about the author, publisher, place of publication. In recent years, I have started filling in the signature block on the inside cover of my albums. After all, it’s my work!
Next, I include an album cover page so the reader knows something about the album. I have not done so, but it would be nice to have a standard piece of text on your cover page, e.g., “This album is part of the Smith-Wilson family history, Laurel, MD.” I always include the date. The cover page design (see slideshow below) is always tough for me. I do it last, as I’m finishing the album. Sometimes I try to sum up the entire year…other times, I just give it a label. I did ONE collage in 1999…took a LOT of time and a LOT of pictures to make it look right. In 2008, I did a page of pics and headlines to highlight the year (see below). In 2015, I was inspired by the stickers and papers in a packet.
Wrapping it up.
In my albums, the closing page usually follows Christmas photos. In recent years I have added our annual Christmas letter that goes into our Christmas cards as a closing page of the album. It usually sums up the highlights nicely!
It takes a village…
I also have started adding notes or pictures on where I was when I made the scrapbook. If I was at a retreat, I take pics of my fellow scrappers. They all offer advice and inspiration so it’s only fair to acknowledge their help! And it’s fun later to remember when and when I scrapped the book!
Don’t get bogged down in the details!
Having said all of this, don’t let planning and organizing get in the way of DOING your album. Pages can be added and rearranged. Cover pages can be an afterthought. Just make that initial decision about what kind of album THIS will be and get scrappin’!
Marsha's Scrappin' Circle 