My philosophy plus scrapbook album organization

After my last post, I received a few emails from friends letting me know that they would definitely be interested in learning more about scrapbooking, and more importantly, about creatively documenting their lives. There is a part of me that thinks "Why should anyone listen to what I have to say?" "What do I have to offer that hasn't been said a million different times in a million different ways?"

So I take a deep breath, push the negative self-talk aside and remember that we ALL have a unique voice, a unique perspective.....we all have something to offer.

Today, I'm going to focus on my system for Scrapbook Album Organization. First off, let me say that I am NOT a chronological scrapper. I don't feel the need to be "caught up" with my albums, and in fact, I don't even like thinking of scrapbooking in those terms. I scrapbook because I enjoy it....it is a creative outlet, a way to connect with other creative women, and a way to tell our family's story. So I scrapbook whatever inspires me at the moment. That may be Sienna's recent first day in pre-school or it may be her birthday party from 2 years ago. I don't go in order, and I am much more likely to scrapbook a story rather than an event. That means that along with the requisite Christmas, Birthday, Easter, Pumpkin Patch layouts, you will also find layouts about my feelings when I was pregnant with my second child, the relationship between my two kiddos at various stages in their lives, what I was thinking on the day of my wedding, what my kids are into these days (what their rooms look like, what they are wearing, what they are watching on tv) and lots of pages about the relationships that are important to us. These are the pages that I think will be the most important to my family 10, 20, 50 years down the road.

So because I don't scrapbook chronologically, it is much easier for me to use 3-ring albums rather than post-bound. That way, I can slip a completed layout in its album wherever and whenever I would like.

I view my scrapbooks as a way to tell a deeper, more meaningful, more complete story than I would be able to tell through photo albums. That means, that I like to journal a lot on my pages and I like to record my true feelings about certain events in our lives, rather than simply putting Christmas photos on a page with candy cane and Santa Claus stickers (not that there is anything wrong with that, it's just not my particular style).

My albums are organized like this:

Light Pink = Sienna: each time I complete a layout that is dedicated to Sienna, it goes in her own album....once one album is full, I move on to another light pink album

Green = Grant: same system as used for my daughter

Red = The People We Love: these albums are full of layouts that document the important relationships in our lives (layouts about our friends, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc..)

Black = Places We Go & Things We Do: these albums contain layouts that are about our Family as a whole as opposed to layouts that are geared more toward an individual child...this is where you will find the layouts about our trips to Seaside, Florida, our family's love of pizza, Easter celebrations, etc...

Hot Pink = All About Us: this is the album where I put layouts about the relationship between my husband and I as well as layouts about our childhoods

Here is a photo of our albums on the shelves in our living room.

So far, this system is working out pretty well for us (thanks for all the ideas Stacy). Please let me know if you have any questions or if there is a particular topic you might be interested in hearing about. And here are a few layouts:

This one goes in Sienna's light pink album.

This one goes in Grant's green album.