Scrapbooking — Organizing Supplies and the Scrapbooking Process

Okay, so I might get banned from participating in any future monthly organizing round-ups that the Organizing Junkie puts on, but I just couldn't resist this month. And I can't help it if I couldn't put it all in one post. It just wasn't possible. This way I have three novellas so far instead of a complete novel. I'm thinking that I still might get in trouble signing up three times under Mr. Linky though.

This time I wanted to show you two completely different things that are totally related to each other. One is how I store and organize the majority of my scrapbooking supplies, and the other is how I organize the process of scrapbooking to complete albums quickly. I'll show you my supplies first, working from boring to not so boring.

This is one of the cubbies from the other post, and if you'll notice the blue fabric box.

It holds the majority of supplies I need every time I scrapbook...adhesives, cutting system tools, pens, cloth to wipe off fingerprints, etc. I can pull it out and put it back with ease.

I keep extra supplies in a basket on a lower cubbie close to where I sit. That's handy for when I need to grab adhesive refills.

I also keep other templates from my cutting system and punches I don't use very often in a cubbie under the desk.

I keep all of my stickers and papers fairly close to where I sit, or depending, stand. This basket holds all of my smaller sticker packs (in alphabetical order, of course) and the little white basket contains all of my smaller loose sticker strips.

These all hold larger packages of stickers and odds and ends.

Here is where I keep my printed 10 x 12 papers in accordion files.

They sit two cubbies up directly over my desk area. That way if I need to pull one out, it doesn't knock things that are on the desk already. Here's what one looks like labeled and up close.

I keep my solid colored 10 x 12 paper in a zippered box under the desk. It's heavy and large and needs to live there. 12 x 12 paper lives in something similar.

Up on the top shelf I have three-ring binders that hold a multitude of things, from borders for scrapbooking, to idea sheets I've printed off the computer, to printed Creative Memories ones, to printed idea books.



This also usually lives up there.


My current ideas hold ideas I've printed from the computer, some of which I've done and some of which I haven't. Okay, most of which I haven't. It's mostly ideas for page borders.

Here are samples of what are in some of my border books and how I keep them.

Have you noticed my love for page protectors?

Now for the actual scrapbooking process, I have tweaked one that came around about three or four years ago. It was designed to finish a 30-page album in four 4-hour sessions. I'm not going to complicate the explanation by telling you what it was and how I've tweaked it, I'm just going to do a quick run-through of what I do.

I'm going to try to be quick.

I start out with a Creative Memories Power Layouts system. I have the box and two sets of plastic guides (30 total). At this point I either spread out the first two pages or a whole bunch across a desk, table or floor, depending on my mood.

I take the pictures for the album I'm working on and start placing them on the guides something like I might on the album page. I figure out if I have enough for two pages, if I need to cut back to one, combine pictures into a seasonal page because it's not an event...you get the idea. I also put any memorabilia with the pictures at this point.

After I have all the pictures on the 30 guides and the guides stacked up into order for the album (if I didn't lay all of them out), I go through and pick out either an already prepared border, printed paper and/or stickers. I throw these on top of the page. What I end up doing is stacking the whole thing backwards as I do this, and then at the end I have to reverse the stack, but it's not a big deal. If I lay out all 30 guides, or even half, I can do them all at the same time and then just stack them in the proper order top to bottom. I don't crop any photos or paper until I am actually ready to put everything in the album.

This would also work if you don't have this particular system. I had a friend who used, of all things, page protectors to store her photos and stickers for each page. She just kept it in a three-ring binder.

So here is my layout system in action with the top four layouts in the box I currently have going.

I took several pictures of some random pages from one of Sparky's books. You can probably tell from these pictures the way the layouts above coordinate with the how the final product will look.




I keep shapes simple to speed up the process and I'm not real fussy. There's some cute stuff out there, but I would never get a book done if I tried most of it.

Here is a side view of the layout box. It currently holds what will end up being 24 pages (12 double layouts if you will).

I also have to confess that I have two of these, complete with 30 guides each. I will often have both of them going at the same time, especially when I'm working on the girls' books simultaneously.

This post is linked to The Organizing Junkie's Monthly Organizing Round-Up.

If you haven't had enough of my scrapbooking and organizing obsession in this post and you haven't read them yet, you might be interested in these posts:

Scrapbooking — Picture Sorting and Organization
Organization — Scrapbooking Room
Memorabilia...To Keep or Not to Keep