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

Scrapbooking — Picture Sorting And Organization

I should probably start off by telling you that I'm one of the last two people in the entire world that still hasn't gone digital with their pictures. We purchased a nice 35mm Minolta back in 1999 when our little Kodak broke, and since then we've purchased a couple of extra lenses and an add-on flash for longer distances. For a long time we were dragging our feet because the picture quality wasn't as good, but now the digital cameras take fantastic pictures. It's just a matter of time, so we need to save up.

In the meantime, we did have an inexpensive digital camera with a memory card that holds something like sixteen pictures for when we absolutely needed one. But then one of the girls got a camera for her birthday and the other one for Christmas (same camera, different color), and those little cameras are great! I've been borrowing them right and left for everything. They even take little movies.

Here is a portion of one of the two scrapbooking storage cubbies in my scrapbooking area.

The first long brown box includes developed photographs still in their original store envelopes.

Right underneath that are more packages of pictures that haven't been sorted.

The second long brown box contains primarily photos that I have already gone through and sorted. It's the overflow for three of the kids that don't fit in large black lidded boxes I have.

You might wonder how I could let that many pictures stay in their envelopes for that long, but honestly, it's just as easy for me to sort out 50 (or more!) envelopes of pictures as it is to sort out 10 envelopes. Plus, if I'm not ready to put the pictures in albums yet, and I am seriously far behind right now, then why be in a rush. That way they have dates on the packages and stay in something of an order.

When I do get ready, here's how I sort them:

• With four kids, I always get double prints. I have five piles, one for family and a pile for each of the four kids, in age order.


• If I have a picture that I want to go in the family book, it goes in that stack. If I want it to go in all four kids books also, the double goes in Chatty's pile. Then I put a note on my negative storage envelope that I need three copies of whatever the negative number is for the kids' books. Since I've put three and I got doubles, when I get the reprints back I know all those go in Sparky, Buddy, and Caboose's picture piles.
  
  
• On the other hand, if it's a picture of say, Buddy and Caboose, and I've gotten one reprint, I know the duplicate goes in Caboose's pile when I get it back. The two originals went in the family and Buddy's stack, since he is the older of the two.
  
  
• If I know I will not remember when the reprints come back which stack a picture will go in, meaning that it doesn't follow the normal pattern, I put the person's first initial(s) in parenthesis next to the number of copies. Since the girls have the same first initial, I have a cheat with them, but I can't tell you without telling you their names.
  
  
• I often take multiple shots of the same thing, so I don't have to get tons of reprints. I'm able to use the duplicates to spread out among the books most of the time.
  
  
• And just in case you were wondering, I do family scrapbooks plus books for all four kids. I want them to have books to take with them and enjoy, and I want books at home to enjoy when they leave home, although little did I know when I started that Caboose plans to live with us forever. Plus I didn't want one set of books they all fought over when we died, assuming they would care.

I have two large Power Sort boxes by Creative Memories. I have pictures divided by Kayren growing up, married/college years, married/before kids, military trips, etc. Then I have family pictures that are sorted waiting to go in the family book (I am stuck back at May, 2002) and kids pictures that are sorted and waiting to go in their books (I'm farther along in their books).

They do all have white tabbed labels. I had to hide a few where the names showed.

Here is where they go on the other large cubbie shelf. They are heavy so they live at the bottom.

Those smaller black boxes above hold negatives, because I still go back and have reprints done. They are labeled — it's just to fit on the shelf and get them out easily I put them sideways and the labels aren't showing. Same with the big boxes and the green and cream cardboard boxes you see in the other two cubbies (they hold memorabilia that might go in the scrapbooks from trips and events, birthday cards, etc.).

On one of the top shelves I keep some three-ring binders. The second one doesn't have a label, but it's my stuff.

I use page protectors to keep things organized, sorted, and protected until I am ready to use them. This is a sample from the first binder, the sports pics and portraits binder.

I have so many sports pictures from my kids' teams and I needed a good way to keep them contained and from getting damaged. That's when I came up with this idea. We don't hang these up anywhere in our house, but I wanted to put them in their albums.

These are a few samples from the second binder, the unlabeled one. I just have little post-it notes stuck on the front of each page protector.

I use a couple of different things for my kids' items, other than those cardboard boxes you saw. Like I mentioned, those are kind of like a 'holding' tank. I go through those and sort them into these accordion files by year for each child.

When I am getting a group of pages ready for one of the kid's scrapbooks, I pull out the accordion file and find whatever memorabilia goes along with it.

I'm having to be really careful with my pictures because I have the kids' names plastered everywhere on these with labels.

It's really all a simple system, but I'm not sure that I was able to get that across with words. I talk with my hands, and I can't do that here! It also doesn't bother me that I have unsorted pictures, only because I know they are all in one place and the store envelopes are in order. I was able to do very little scrapbooking the last two years in our small military quarters, so now that we are settled I'm hoping to get tons knocked out fast.

And since I have an entire area pretty much dedicated just for that, Hubby might not be so happy if I don't.

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

You might also be interested in reading:

Organization — Scrapbooking Room
Memorabilia...To Keep Or Not To Keep?