Scrapbook Basics: The Middle - Part 1

Planning Your Layouts - Organizing Photos and Supplies

Layouts are the heart and soul of your scrapbook, and a lot of work goes into creating your layouts. The layouts tell your story, so the first thing to decide is how do you want your story to be told? For a lot of books, a chronological order will work. But sometimes you want to switch things up and group things more by their location or how they relate to one another.  

For vacation and trip albums, I tend to group layouts by how they relate to one another, then by a chronological order.  For example, in a vacation album that I just finished for our trip to Glacier National Park, I did all of our hotel pictures together (although they were taken on different days at different times and places), then did the photos of 2 different tours we took, which originated from the hotel, that were in that area.(One tour was on our first day there, the other was from our last day there.) I finished that album by adding some hiking pictures from trails we hiked around the hotel, even though we did that on a different day - it was still an activity around the hotel.  The second album I created for that vacation was more of a chronological approach - we drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road at Glacier in one day, so for those I did all of the stops and hikes in chronological order of what we did that day. For albums like Disney or other theme parks, I've done the regional approach - doing all of the photos for certain "lands" together, even if they were taken on different days. Once you know the order, organize them - I use a photo box with dividers and put each grouping together - each grouping will be it's own layout or multi-page layout.

Once you have your general order figured out, it's a good idea to write it down. Think of it as your outline. I almost always make an outline of how I want things to be for a multi-page layout or full album. It helps me order the photos, and also lets me jump around a little bit when I start making the pages, because I always know what will come before or after a certain page. (I don't always scrapbook in order, I scrapbook what I'm feeling in the moment!) Grab a sheet of notebook paper and write down your ideas! You may find that as you organize the layouts that you may change your mind and want to order them differently - that is okay! Better to do it now than when the layouts are done. Also write down any ideas you have of things you want to add - maps, brochures, ticket stubs and note those on the pages you want to put them on.

Now it's time to actually start the fun part! For me, each layout is like a recipe. I need all of my ingredients and I really need to be in the mood to cook. If I'm not in the mood, no amount of shuffling paper and photos around on the page is going to make a layout that I'm happy with. These days I've been using a lot of kits and paper stacks, that generally come with everything you need to create your pages. If you are new or a beginner, kits and stacks are the way to go - they are easy to coordinate and you will have a consistent look and feel to your multi-page layouts or albums. Many people "kit" together their own supplies and I've done this too, to use up supplies I already have.

Now it's time to grab all of your supplies. I tend to start with 5 things: 

1. Colored cardstock - I generally (but not always) use this for all my backgrounds.
2. Accent papers - try to pick at least 2 coordinating papers, but even 4 or more will work. Try to have a mix of bold patters and subtle patterns.
3. Embellishments - here are the stickers, ribbons, brads, tags, journaling cards.
4. Photos - get everything you think you might need printed, and if possible get photos printed in a matte finish (glossy photos show a lot of fingerprints after you handle them.)
5. Personal momentos - maps, ticket stubs, brochures - anything that you have that you want to add to your page.

Now that you have all of your supplies and photo ready, it's time to scrapbook!