Finding the Time to Scrapbook

I'm often asked "where do you find the time to scrapbook?" With everyone's busy lives these days, it can be really hard to find the time, or make the time, to do any craft or hobby. There was a lot years when my kids were younger that I was literally years behind on our photos, and back then I took a lot more photos than I do now...my kids were little and everything they did seemed like a big milestone that must go into a scrapbook! So I started to "bulk scrapbook" every few months. I tried to print my photos every 3-4 months as to not fall too far behind, and as soon as those photos would arrive I would pull out all of my supplies, commandeer the dining room table for a week or two and scrap them all - at least get everything on paper and in the books. I could always go back later and add embellishments, journaling, titles, etc. I just wanted the pictures in the books. While efficient and practical, sometimes it felt like an assembly line. I just didn't have the time to be super creative, spend hours on each page or keep my supplies out and accessible all of the time. But it got done and they turned out to be decent pages, although somewhat repetitive and predictable. When I was done I'd pack everything away and wait for the next batch of pictures in a few months.

I was very lucky though, my kids loved art and crafts! I could put my kids at the table with some leftover papers and stickers, let them cut up a photo I wasn't using, and we could spend the whole afternoon there. It got to be that the kids loved it when I pulled out scrapbooking stuff - they couldn't wait to "help" and make their own little creations. We spent a lot of hours at the table together while I worked on scrapbooking and they worked on their projects, or did playdoh, or built a puzzle. I also spent a lot of late nights at the table, long after everyone else was in bed, to finish up "just a few more pages." It was quiet time for me to do something that I enjoyed, and I was able to get a lot done with no distractions.

I no longer have to bulk scrapbook, and now that my kids are older I do have more time on my hands. But I still have to work hard to fit it in my schedule. If you are struggling to find time to scrapbook, try to break it up into smaller 15-30 minute increments. Scrapbooking doesn't have to be a long, exhaustive process. You can do it in small steps.  

1. Organize your supplies. One of the most time consuming things is constantly digging through supplies to find the thing you want to use - that one sheet of paper you just know you have somewhere or that one sheet of stickers you thought you bought last time at the hobby store. Bin systems are a great way to eliminate this - I use several 12x12 bins and have supplies sorted by theme. I have bins for: school, sports, travel, spring/summer, fall/Halloween, winter/Christmas, and kids/family. Embellishments and theme specific papers go in these. So when it's time for Christmas pictures, grab the one bin and have the bulk of what you'll need. I also have a "project bin" with pages waiting to be done - more on that below.

2. Organize your photos. Having your photos ready to go is just as important. When you get your photos, sort them into piles of what you will scrap together, and use some sort of a filing system to separate them. I use a photo box with dividers, as well as an old bill organizer on my desk.  The bill organizer holds all of the day-to-day photos, and I use the box for any large-scale projects like vacation pictures. Taking 15 minutes to sort and divide the photos when you get them home will allow you to just grab the stacks later when you are ready to scrap. The box or divider is also good for holding any personal mementos you want to add - tickets, brochures, etc, and put them with your pictures.

3. Reserve your supplies. If you know you have a holiday, birthday, or special event coming up and you have supplies you want to use - pull those supplies out and put them into a special folder. I keep a bin on my desk with kits and supplies "reserved" for upcoming events during the year. If I buy a kit that I want to use for my son's next soccer season, I label it with a post-it note and put it in the bin. This way it won't get used for anything else, and once I have those photos back, I can grab the kit and go, instead of rummaging though supplies looking for stuff to use. Sometimes I'll have things "reserved" for several months or a year in advance. (This also keeps me from buying supplies I don't need since I know in advance that I have Halloween or Christmas already covered for this year.)

4. Gather supplies and photos together, but don't scrap them yet. Some people call this "kitting" your own supplies. You're basically making your own scrapbook kit from your own supplies. Pick out the supplies that you want to use, pull the photos from the box or divider, and then set them aside. If you only have an extra 15 minutes, you can match up, or "kit together", what you want to use. Pull the papers and embellishments out, grab the photos, and put them in a "Project bin". You'll grab the bin later when you have more time to work on the actual layouts.

5. Use a Project Bin. Now that everything is together and ready to go, and when you have 30 minutes later that evening, or the next day or next week, you can just grab the bin and get to work. Although I have a desk, I like to scrapbook at the dining room table - it has more space and better lighting. But if I don't finish and need to clean up, everything goes right back into the project bin and I can finish it up when I get my next 15 minutes.

By breaking up the process, it becomes a lot less cumbersome and a lot more fun. Some days I can't seem match up anything, and other days I can match up 5 layouts in 15 minutes! Things just click like that sometimes. Some days you may not be in the mood to pull supplies, but you may want to make a layout you already have set to go in your project bin. If you have an extra 20 minutes before picking up the kids or heading off to work or an appointment - pull out your supplies or project bin and you can get a layout started or completed! 

    

Organization on the Cheap: Ribbon

Organizing your scrapbook supplies can sometimes be a tedious task. But it is an important one! Having your supplies organized can help speed up the scrapbooking process when you can quickly find what you need and match things up easier. It can also save you some money by not purchasing things you already have stashed somewhere!

Today I needed to organize my ribbon. I don't usually use a lot of ribbon, but from time to time I will add it to a page or make it a consistent feature in an album. But my ribbon box has been a mess for YEARS. And having this mess has actually made me use less ribbon on my projects, since it was so unorganized and I had no idea what I had. I didn't even want to look in that box for anything!

I really didn't want to spend any money to do this, and organization units and racks can get really expensive. Since I don't use a lot of ribbon, it wasn't worth investing in a ribbon rack, so I needed to come up with something on my own. All it took was my $2 photo box, a few pencils, and a few sheets of cardboard! I was happy to find that unsharpened pencils are the perfect length to fit into the photo box and would be the perfect thing to string the rolls of ribbon on.

I began by pulling out all of the rolled ribbon, and put them on the pencil dowels. This did not work as perfectly as I thought it would, due to lots of unraveling of the ribbon. I could have taped down the ribbon to the rolls, but chose not to - again since my use of ribbon is so limited. If you use a lot of ribbon and are in and out of the box all of the time, you may want to tape down the ends and save yourself lots of re-rolling!

Once I had the rolled ribbon all on the pencils, I needed to decide what to do with all of the unrolled ribbon. I decided wrapping it on cardboard cards could work. I cut out 3 pieces of cardboard to fit the size of the box, and began wrapping the ribbon the on cards. I did have to tape down the ends on these to prevent unraveling, but it was quick and easy and definitely worth the time to do. 

I was very happy with how the wrapped cards came out! I ended up needing to a fourth card to fit all of the ribbon, and did end up discarding a few small bits of ribbon that were too short to wrap or were just scrap pieces from used up rolls that I no longer needed. I tried to match up the ribbons on the cards by theme or color pallet, which worked out pretty well. If you have a lot of ribbon you could easily do one card per theme or color.

In the end, it only took me about 40 minutes to organize the ribbon box, and cost me nothing! Hopefully I'll be more inclined to pull out my ribbon box more often and use it. Happily, I only found one roll of duplicate ribbon in all of this!

     

Creating School Year Albums for Kids

Some of my favorite scrapbooks that I've made have been school albums for my kids. When my kids started school, I knew I'd create an album of their school years, and I naively thought that it would probably be just one album for their younger years, and maybe an album for high school. But once I started scrapbooking preschool and kindergarden, I quickly realized that more albums would be in order. I now have one album for PreK - 2nd grade, one album for 3rd-5th, and one album for middle school 6th-8th. High school will be its own album as well.

Scrapbooking school year pictures and mementos can take take some active planning all year long. I am always on the lookout for things they bring home from school that I can keep to put in the books - notes from teachers, small projects they made, things they have hand written, and artwork. And I always have a camera handy so that when they pull something out of their backpack, I can grab a picture of it.

What can go into your child's school album? Just about anything! Each year I try to take some of the same photos like:

• first day of school
• last day of school
• photos by the school sign
• school concerts
• art show and open house
• projects they made
• artwork

Since I don't tend to take a lot of photos at the school (except for concerts and the art open house), I will try to take a picture of them with their projects at home. You may also be able to get photos from their teacher - often teachers will create a slide show of pictures from the year and some will send this home at the end of the school year. I've also asked a few teachers if they could email the slideshow to me if they didn't send it home on a CD.   

So what should you save during the school year?

• concert programs or flyers
• notes from teachers
• certificates 
• drawings
• handwriting samples
• art
• poster projects
• special person projects

Anything that comes home that I think I might use goes right into a folder that I keep on my desk so that I don't lose or misplace anything throughout the year.

One of the best ways to scrapbook children's art is to take a picture of it! When any art comes home, take a picture of it right away, before it gets set aside, lost, crumpled, or hung on the fridge! This is especially great for things like clay or other 3D pieces, and any large scale projects they work on - poster boards, and things like science fair displays. At the end of the year you can print out the pictures, and create a collage of their artwork from the school year! 

When it comes to actually scrapbooking the pages, I usually scrapbook the school year twice - once after the first semester and then at the end of the school year. Waiting to do the whole school year at one will work too...it can be fun to go back over the year with your child and look through all of these things together!

My kids love to look back at their school year books and of all of the scrapbooking I've done, I'm most happy that I made these and have kept up with them though out the years. And, they are fun and relatively easy albums to make!

Capturing Details in Your Scrapbooks

These colorful rocks were the hallmark of a lake that were at.

I love to take photos of things that are often overlooked and put those in my scrapbooks. The little things, the small details that you may notice on your adventure but don't necessarily think to take a photo of or put in your book. Often we are so busy living in the moment and taking in the bigger picture of where we are, that we forget about the little details that make that place or activity so special. I used to get lost in taking so many photos of the scenery, my kids, family shots, and what everyone was doing that it was only once we were gone I realized how many details I had missed. Now I make sure to take an extra 10 minutes, walk around, and take in all of those small details.

We just loved the deep, grooved bark of this tree.
We had never seen anything like it.

The kind of details really depends on where you are and what you are scrapping. Since a lot of my scrapbook layouts are of outdoor areas that we travel to, I tend to use a lot of natural elements. There are tons of things in nature that can add interest and detail to your scrapbook, like rocks, trees, bark, branches, feathers, shells, nests, and driftwood.  

Other ideas that can be used for details are things like statues, architecture, sculpture, medallions, front doors, park benches, fences, an image stamped in concrete, footprints in the sand - anything at all that you see when you pause to look around at your environment.

You don't have to dedicate a big space to add these details on your layouts either. If it is a photo you love and you have the space for it, then by all means use a 4x6 photo or even larger!  But if you don't have a lot of space, a smaller, cut-down photo can be used, or even cutting out the detail from the photo and just using that will work too.

Here are a few other examples:

Journaling Versus Labeling Your Scrapbook Pages

I've never been much of a journaler.  For lots of reasons I guess - I thought I had bad handwriting, I was not sure what to write, and felt embarrassed that people would think what I wrote was stupid. But I considered myself a good labeler - I would always label my layouts - special occasions, dates, places, you know...just the facts. Nothing creative or which I would later be judged by. 

But a couple of years ago I decided I wanted to try to journal at least a little more, maybe a sentence or two on some layouts. It didn't have to be lot, but just something that added a more personal touch. I started out printing little labels from my computer, because I thought my handwriting ruined the look of the page. But over time I've grown to like journaling a little more, and do it more often. I still consider myself a good labeler, but I'm becoming an okay journaler as well. I have even learned to write stuff by hand and not hate it! There are many resources online for how to learn handwriting styles, and with a little practice anyone can do it! 

My new favorite scrapbook embellishment is journaling cards. With so many colors, styles, and shapes to choose from, journaling has become very quick and easy, and can be added to your layout in just a few minutes. While working on my last vacation album, the journaling became one of my favorite parts of the scrapbook! 

It was hard to step outside of my matter-of-fact comfort zone and add in personal stories and emotions. But I soon realized that I could blend the two - still providing all of those labeling facts that I love so much, while adding in a personal element as well. If you are unsure of what to write about, start out with these ideas:

• Start with the facts: where were you, when did you go, who was there
• Add what you did: what did you see, how long were you there, what was the best thing you saw?
• How did it make you feel? What did you love, what surprised you, what challenged you?

Whether you are a journaler or a labeler, any kind of handwriting on a scrapbook page adds a personal element that you don't get anywhere else. Are you a journaler or a labeler? What do you like or dislike about journaling?   

Friday Favorites: January 22, 2016

Each Friday I plan to share a favorite layout. Sometimes its hard to pick a favorite, I think all scrapbookers get attached to all of their layouts!  But we all have our favorites, and here is one of mine:

I made this Festival of the Lion King layout back in 2011 after our Disney vacation in 2010. I had so many great pictures from the show, it was so fun and colorful! With so many photos I knew I needed to create a collage page, and I only need a few scraps of colorful paper and a few stickers to finish out the page.

Happy Friday!

Scrapbooking Without Photos

Most people think that scrapbooking is all about the photos.  While this is mostly true, there are many ways to make great scrapbook pages with very few photos, or no photos at all!  I love to add other art and graphics to scrapbooks - it helps break up page after page of photos, and can be used to fill space if you don't have quite enough photos to do a 2-page layout but want to.

My favorite items to use for these types of pages are program or booklet covers, certificates, any art, brochures, maps and drawings.

In my son's school album I added one of his drawings from preschool.

In a vacation album, I added a drawing that my son made after we got home from the vacation.

My son's school participated in a reading program, these were a few of the things he brought home from school.

A sheet of patterned paper and a booklet cover is all you need!

You can also use an itinerary for a non-photo page.

Here is a certificate my son earned from school.

While this page does have a few small photos on it, the program cover could be used alone on a page.

So if you are short on photos or have items you want to use but no photos to go along with them - scrap them anyway!  Scrapbooks don't have to be just pictures - you can make an entire album of just your kid's art, or programs from shows or sporting events you've been to.  Pull out those old certificates from the box in the basement and put them in a book!

How to Use Personalized Mementos on Your Pages

There are so many things you can use for embellishments these days, and I tend to stick to a few. I use stickers, but I also use ribbon, brads, eyelets, tags, journaling cards, die cuts, and cutouts. But I also try to use things that are personal - mementos or things that came from the place we were or what we were doing. I tend to think of embellishments and mementos as almost the same thing - they both add decoration and interest to your layouts, and they not regular photographs. If I can use a personal memento in place of a store bought embellishment, I'd rather. There are lots of ways to add these personal mementos to your albums, and they add a lot of character and uniqueness to your layouts.

Here are my Top 10 Favorite Personal Mementos:

1. SIGNS. I love signs. Park signs, street signs, ride signs, highways signs, you name it. I started taking pictures of signs so that I would know when I edited my photos which pictures came from where. Then I started incorporating the photos of the signs in my layouts, and just loved the effect. Wherever you go there are signs - state park signs, national park signs, theme park signs, road signs on your road trip. Take photos of them and use them in place of another embellishment.







2. TICKETS. Ticket stubs are great, but sometimes you have to hand your ticket over and don't get to keep it. Take a picture of it! Once printed and trimmed - it looks just like the real ticket. I've done this with Disney FastPasses, game tickets, airline tickets, and many other tickets. Another easy, and personal memento.

3. STAMPS. Stamps can be a really cool embellishment. While I've never used actual passport stamps, I've taken photos of stamps for both Disney scrapbooks and national park scrapbooks. At Disney, my kids did the Epcot passport book and collected the signatures and stamps in each country, and at several different national parks they got the "Passport" stamps in the NPS Passport books. Once home, I took photos of all of the stamps, cropped them in Photoshop, and uploaded them into a Word document where I could re-size them and print them all on a sheet of paper. Cut them out and there is another embellishment that looks just like the real thing.

4. AUTOGRAPHS. Another Disney idea, but if you collect the character autographs while at Disney, take photos of them once you get home and you can use these in your scrapbook.  I wanted to keep the originals intact, so I just took photos and printed them, and once in your album they look just like the real autographs. If you collect autographs at sporting events or concerts, use those too!

5. PATCHES and BADGES. Perfect for national parks, trails, scouts, and many others, take photos of patches and use them in your books! Once you trim out the patch it looks just like the real thing. 












6. POSTCARDS. Pick up a couple of postcards while on your trip. If you forget to buy some, you can look for them online and and print out a few! I have found some really cool old vintage postcards this way that make great art for a scrapbook page.









7. BROCHURES/FLYERS. Brochures and flyers are great and given out almost everywhere. Grab two - one you can keep intact on your page and one you can cut apart if there is something on the inside you want to use. I've used brochures to cut out logos and small maps from places we've visited.










8. PROGRAMS.  If you're heading out to a show or your child school music program - be sure to grab the program! In fact, grab two. Just like with the brochures, you can keep one intact and if there is something you want to cut out (like your child's name, a list of songs, etc.) you can cut the other one up without feeling guilty.

9. MAPS. Maps are an easy one, again being handed out everywhere, and often in a brochure or flyer. But you can also take pictures of maps at parks or theme parks, or wherever you travel. They are great in a scrapbook to look back over the area you traveled and the path you took to get there.

10. ART/POSTERS. Again I've used this idea for Disney books and national parks, but it could be used anywhere. Posters, prints, and artwork make great additions to your scrapbooks. I've taken pictures of posters hanging on the walls of buildings and also printed off small thumbnail sized graphics to use in my books.  

Welcome to Adventure Scrapbooks!

My name is Karen and I've been scrapbooking for over 15 years.  I scrapbook all subject matter, but particularly love to scrapbook travel photos and create vacation albums.  From camping trips to family vacations, day trips to road trips, life is an adventure and should be scrapbooked!

I've started the Adventure Scrapbooks blog to showcase and share some fun and easy scrapbooking ideas that can be used to really make your scrapbooks personal and memorable.  

I hope you will be inspired to pull out those old vacation photos and start your own Adventure Scrapbook!
~Karen