Scrapbooking, well if I can't do it I can at least write about it..... ;-D

Yes I love to scrapbook, good thing since we have 7 lovely children who most of the time like to have their picture taken, especially little miss number 7, the "C'I see, C'I see?" translation: Can I see the picture?. So as you can see I have great material to work with, and my fair share of scrapbooking paper, somewhere around 1,000 pages of colored 12x12 stock including all my themed print pages, with 7 kids though that is a fairly decent amount of paper to have on hand since I am working on getting everybody's individual albums completed from May of 2005 up to Dec of 2007!

I'll show you what I was doing for a workspace just prior to our move & explain how I was doing 150 pages in a 2 week period of time (while showing our home to sell it & packing to make it look more spacious, removing the "clutter look". Prior to that, the first time I tried this method I did 69 pages in about a 10 day period of time, while getting 7 kids ready for back to school no less! Yes dinner did still get on the table at 6pm, dishes were done, laundry was done (including all the new back to school clothes), and the house was very clean so no every moment was not spent scrapbooking! LOL First here is my scrapbooking workspace (which I cleared each day when I was finished scrapbooking for the day):

My Tools

My Scraps

Great Journaling blocks

Squares to mat & journal

Rectangles to mat & journal

Ovals & other specialty scraps

12" long scraps not 12x12

Punches from small scraps

Blocks in craft keeper

Color blocks in colorwheel order

Large Blocks for fast formulas.

My color wheel I use this tons!

My colored paper sorters they are sorted by the color wheel!

The colored paper sorters I found at Walmart for just under $5 each, I have black for my neutrals (white, cream, tans, browns, gray, and black), green for my 2 green sections, blue for my blue & purple pages, red for my reds and pinks, cranberrys too, and I had a clear sorter from way back when (I don't remember where I got it for sure) that houses my yellows and golds. One day (when I was out of the color I needed & funds to go buy more) I pulled out my color wheel that I had for years and decided to figure out how to use it, finally! LOL WOW! What a cool tool! I have put together color combinations that I would have never come up with otherwise & I LOVE them! I also have started using up colors that sat for a long time in my files (colors I didn't specifially pick out, they came in a basic set of 2-5 pages of each color packages). After awhile I decided to set up my colors exactly as my color wheel is set up, then I started filing my scraps by size & color, what a difference, I'm using up lots of scraps now when I make my journaling boxes & when I mat photos because I know exactly which color combinations I can use & am able to decide on my page colors much quicker now!

My cutting workspace

Cutting Space in Detail

Paper cutter, oval & circle cutters with mat & tray for misc odd scraps

Paper "return box"

My storage cabinet

Interior of cabinet
Yes it does all fit in there!

Now you can see the storage cabinet for all my goodies, although some will change to my desk shelves with the new desk my dh is building for me, YEAH!!! Essentially the items I use less often will go in my cabinet such as each childs box of photos, my sticker album, punches, etc. My scraps and paper cutters will defenitely be moving to my desk shelves as I use them often. Now the thing I love is doing an "Album in a month" a technique I learned on ScrappersChallenge which is a wonderful Yahoo group! I have tweaked a few things to work even better for me since I do individual albums for each child many things repeat for me from one album to the next, if you do annual albums the same things I have incorporated will work for you as well.

Here is the basic technique; First find a 2" or 3" binder (as in look around your house first, maybe recycle one you no longer use, or buy one if you need to), then dig out 31 plastic page protectors, or a number you are comfortable working with and number all but the last one with a permanent marker or whatever works well for you, lables maybe? The last page that is not numbered I wrote "Work in Progress Scraps" (WIP for short), this is where I put scraps as I'm working, especially if I am not scraping at my desk (if I'm there 90% or more go straight into the scrap trays you see above which makes cleanup a breeze & I'm way more productive this way). Now if you go to the ScrappersChallenge site you will find a great form in the files under Album in a Month, here is a link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ScrappersChallenge/files/ this is especially great for people who are big on making notes ahead of time, sketching out your pages, etc.

Next you get out your photos that you want to work with, for my first venture it was my 23 month old photos from May of 2007 to Dec of 2007, my 2nd project was DD8's photos from about May 2005 to Dec 2007 (150 pages in 2 weeks!). I found it easiest for me to put all like themed photos together so all of say turning 1yr old b-day photos, all of dd halloween photos, all of Christmas was broken down into church party, school program, Christmas Eve, Christmas morning (still in our PJ's), Christmas afternoon (dressed & with Grandparents), etc. So one page protector for each theme, if I have pictures from say the school Halloween party & also for our home party, & then some from trick-or-treat time then I would use 3 pages.

After getting all photos seperated into 1, 2, 4, etc. page layouts I would go back & select all the paper I want to use, background paper, printed pages (themed especially), matting pages (scraps if I have them easily accessible), paper to accent with (blocks, stripes, scrap pack pieces, etc.), for me these go in another paper sorter exactly like the ones that I use to seperate my colors. I just lay them in order with the background page behind my scraps & matting pages.

Next you add stickers & any other embellishments you feel you would like to use (any printed wording that may fit the occasion, etc.), any diecuts, etc. This is where I added my own twist to things. Instead of putting holiday accents into the same page protector as my photos & then putting my extras away each time before I pull my next album I pull a seperate page protector out & labled it for the occasion (i.e. Halloween, Christmas, Easter, Birthday, Baby, etc.) this way when I finish doing Christmas I place it behind the following Christmas photos I have pulled when working on multiple years, otherwise they go in another empty binder I have in my cabinet for when I pull my next photos (sometimes I pull photos before I finish an album because I have to go somewhere & sit like at the hairdressers, this way I can just take a binder with numbered pages in it and a photo box, easy to take with & work on & my time isn't wasted!). This saved me so much time when I went from my 2nd album to pulling the 3rd album! I might add a few things I used up in the last album or something specific to this childs photos, most of the embellishments are the same or similar because the events are often the same for each child.