Splitcoaststampers.com - the world's #1 papercrafting community
You're currently viewing Splitcoaststampers as a GUEST. We pride ourselves on being great hosts, but guests have limited access to some of our incredible artwork, our lively forums and other super cool features of the site! You can join our incredible papercrafting community at NO COST. So what are you waiting for?
I'm in a scrapbooking rut and looking for some motivation to get started again!
So...do you scrap all the pictures you take or only the very best? I'm struggling with wanting to get caught up and scrapping less pictures or using all the pictures that I like so I have the everyday moments to look back on. I also have issues with throwing away photos that I don't use so I tend to use as many as I can.lol I do have a digital camera but have issues with deleting photos also! I may want it for somthing sometime...I will get past it someday (I hope)
I've been seeing a lot of of pages lately that have only 1 or 2 photos on a page as opposed to filling them up. Which is more pleasing to look through?
These are my two main issues keeping me from getting caught up on my books. Oh, SCS doesn't help any either LOL! Thanks for reading! Please help!!!!
I struggle with this too, I am currently doing my DH's scrapbook and I feel I have to use ALL the pictures that were given to me. However, the people who took 3,000 pictures of my DH have taken about 6,000 of my kids. (I am exaggerating a bit)
So when I do my kids scrapbook I use only a few to highlight the occasion, since I prefer to have a few that I can really focus on. I think that highlights the moment/occasion.
Hope that helps!
__________________ Kristina Wife, Mommy, Stamper, Nurse Laura 6yo Jack 5yo, James 4/20/08 Megan arrived 3/16/09
I used to feel like I needed to scrapbook all of my pictures, but I'm totally over that now. For one, I rarely had inspiration for the mediocre pictures-- it's much easier to plan a page if you love the photos. So what I do is just scrapbook the nicest pics, or the ones that fit with the journaling that I want to include, and the rest I put in a regular photo album. This way, I can still look through the other photos if I want to, but I don't feel totally overwhelmed with thousands of pictures to scrapbook.
I do quite a bit of scrapbooking, and usually do 1 or 2 page layouts. I don't do too many pages with just 1 pic. You can usually fit 2-3 pics on 1 page, I do a lot of cropping. I take a lot of pics also, but you just can't get them all on. Take your best pics you want and use those, and just save your others if you want to keep them.
What helps me with pictures I have a lot of, and want to scrapbook (like reunions, weddings, etc) is theme scrapbooks. I use the 6x6 or 8x8 albums, and I'm able to use all the pics I want. I've made quite a few of these. I'm getting ready to make a christmas album, through the years.
I have started doing heavy journaling on the opening page or two explaining the upcoming layout and then putting the pictures in order of the journaling. With maybe a saying"Now come and join us on our trip to the zoo".
I scrapbook mainly to record moments for the children/grandchildren to have when they grow up so I want to detail everything just as it was when the picture was takes.
I do my albums with just enough embellishments to look good but flat enough to still go under page protectors.
Most of my second prints and negatives are in a safety deposit box.
__________________
"Lord,if you cain't forgive me all my sins,just don't remember them too good,no." "Thank you,Amen"
Sounds like you're wanting inspiration and ways to use lots of photos on your pages? Check out these Becky Higgins (she's an editor for Creating Keepsakes) sketches: http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/mag/sketches/
There are sketches with up to 10 or more photos.
If you like the sketches, her sketch book is great and has multiple examples of each sketch interpreted by other scrapbookers.
I use as many pictures as needed to tell the story. I usually use 7 or 8 photos on a two page (12x12) spread.
You can fit more photos if you don't mat every photo or mat multiple photos on one mat. You can fit three 4x6 photos on in a line a long the edge of a 12x12 page (or in the center - I attached a layout) if you crop a little off the top or bottom of each photo. Also, putting photos right to the edges of the pages is a great way to maximize the space.
I use anywhere from 3-15 pictures on each layout, depending on what I have and what I want to convey. I have a digital and I don't like deleting pics, but I don't want to afford to print or scrap them all (I take a lot of pics)-- so here's what I do.
1- when I first download my pics, I go through them and edit them for small things like badly centered pics or lighten them or whatever I need to make the pictures cleaned up. Then, I asses the pics and decide which ones I will want to scrap to tell the story, usually only about half of what I have taken. I upload them to winkflash.com in file for the particular month I took it.
2- Then, I take all the pics and sort them into files according to the event. I have a file for each month and within the month file, I have the events in separate files. I sort all the pics I took into these files. About every three months I burn these to a CD and label the CD according to the Dates they were taken. This way, I can go back and look at or use any pics I have taken in the past, but I don't have to print them if I am unready to use them.
3- When my pics come in the mail, I sort them into page protectors and slip a note into the protector with the pics that has some beginnings of journaling on them. This way I can remember the important facts when I get around to actually scrapping them.
4- I also use becky higgins sketches a lot. Sketches like this are very helpful to organize multiple pics on a layout.
5- One final note. I find that when I am particularly uninspired, I can get a lot done editing pics and deciding which ones are the most important to get scrapped and sorting them into my page protectors. Also, when I feel inspired to work on the scrapping, it is made easier by the fact that the pics are sorted and ready for me to work. I can count the pics, grab a higgins sketch, choose some colors, and jump right in. I've copied and reduced the sketches into very small drawings and put them into a word document sorted by the number of pics they ask for. Then I have printed them. I can pull this out and look at my pics and find a sketch that works best with my pics.
Good Luck. Scrapping is very rewarding, but until you get a system established that works for you, it can be intimidating.
__________________ Life is too short: eat chocolate and stamp up a storm. It will come out OK in the end.
Thanks so much for the great fedback ladies! I didn't think about putting the medicore pictures in a regular photo album, I may have to try that.
I'm only about a year behind on DD's book and a littlle more than that on DS's. I think I'm going to go through all the pics today and make sure I love them all! I too find little inspiration for the so-so photos. Which is why I'm in a rut...I just finished DD's 1st birthday and the next set is nice, just not great.
I'm lucky to work in a photo lab, so I try to print only the pictures that I love, right from the start. However, I was averaging about 2 rolls a week until I got my digital, and now it's more!
I have had Beck Higgins sketch book since it came out, I guess I'm a little bored with it. I did read last night that there is second edition coming later this year. Does anyone know of any other sketch books or sites?
Thanks again ladies, just talking about it gets me a little motivated to go get started. It looks like it's going to be another rainy day so I may have a chance...nevermind the sun came out while I was typing...shoot! I'll have to take the kids for a walk.
I go through my pictures and weed out the ones that are either very similar to others or are fuzzy, etc. (Yes, I throw them away, or offer them to whomever the pic is of if applicable). Then I scrap just about everything else. I do a LOT of cropping, but I fit quite a few pics on one page. I have one scrapbook page in my gallery, but it only has a few pics on it which is totally unlike me. I'll try to scan some of the pages with more pics soon. I personally like the pages with more pics if they are tastefully done. Just my .02!
I do *not* feel the need to scrap each and every photo I come across! Most of the time, it's because I don't feel that all photos are *scrap-worthy*!! When I attend crops, my nickname is "The Magazine Scrapper" because I tend to use either two 4x6" photos or one 5x7" photo on each page. The only time I really ever deviate from that format is when the photos themselves can be reduced to smaller sizes (e.g. wallet-sized photos) to be non-focal accents in-and-of themselves. I pick the *best* photos which also capture the mood of the day/event/place the best...then I use my title and journaling to capture the details. I personally don't find that photos capture the details the way that words do...but again, that's my own personal opinion. And lots of people don't like to journal the way I do!!
Beside that: I tend to be a "color-mood" scrapper. If I'm having a bad day, I avoid working with red tones - they'll just amplify a bad mood. If I'm mellow, I tend to work neutrals and earth tones. If I'm hyper, I tend to work in blues, yellow, and greens. If I want to scrap but can't decide on my photos, I leave them all behind and scrap "blind" -- that is, I just do random layouts and I'll try to fit the photos in to them later (which is easy because I tend to do a great deal of b/w & sepia photos.) When I get in a rut, I'll check out MamaKimberly's challenges to get layouts that force me to work in a different directions. And believe it or not: sometimes I'm just jonesing to work with pretty pinks and purples, so I'll scrap girl pages without photos and sell them off. That way, I get the need to be "girly" out of my system and someone else gets a near-finished layout.
Don't know if my post has been much help.... Just wanted to let you know that there really is not a right or wrong way, I think it just depends on
__________________ Hi...My Name is Kaylyn...I'm An Alphaholic.
[B]
What helps me with pictures I have a lot of, and want to scrapbook (like reunions, weddings, etc) is theme scrapbooks. I use the 6x6 or 8x8 albums, and I'm able to use all the pics I want. I've made quite a few of these. I'm getting ready to make a christmas album, through the years.
This is a great idea -- and one that is currently saving me time. I have been doing themed mini albums -- even if the theme is "2004", one page per month for pic and the facing page for journaling. Sometimes, I even work backwards, creating the album and then filling in with pics. I know this sounds strange, but it takes me a lot longer when I try to create a page for a particular picture (or pictures).
__________________
"Why do you want to have the stereo and the TV on at the same time? -Uhh, cuz i like to party" (Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Bobby)
I love the mini albums but have issues with putting pictures out of order! I know I need to get past this little problem. I could fill up an entire 6x6 book of just a birthday!
I just went through a good size stack of photos and got rid of quite a few. I'm taking a break and the I'll go through them one more time just to make sure I weeded out all the bad ones. Then maybe I can get scrappin'!!!!!
I keep all the photos I develop in photo sleeves in 3 ring binders, that way I can just take out the set I feel like scrapping. (Also, my kids love to look at the pix. in the albums so this makes it easy for them.) I never scrap in chronological order and end up putting layouts in an album for a particular year, then when I get enough layouts i put them in chronological order inside that album. I've also gone digital and I keep all my photos, even the mediocre ones on a photo disk. I keep the disks arranged chronologically in an album with the little cards that print out the thumbnails of every pic. on the disk. We just got a new Macintosh so I'm in the process of using iphoto to catalogue all my pix.
I am a completely non-linear scrapper. It is the only was I can keep myself inspired. Another thing that I love to do to get out of a rut is to find a piece of paper or embellishment that I really want to use on a layout and then turn my photos B&W. This helps me for some reason. I tend to put aside the "so so" photos for a time when I am not in a rut and won't mind scrapping them. But if I am afraid I will forget details important to the story, will journal on the computer and print it out to put with the pics.
__________________
"Celebrate we will, 'cause life is short but sweet for certain." DMB
Forgot to add that post-bound albums are the only kind I can use so that I can skip around but still put things in order later once all the pictures are scrapped.
__________________
"Celebrate we will, 'cause life is short but sweet for certain." DMB
How do you scrapbook?
