When my latest layouts arrived in the mail last week, I thought I’d share a look at my scrapbook albums.
It’s always fun to see your work in print. I look forward to getting my new layouts and stalk the post man every time I place an order. For years, I didn’t get my layouts printed. When I first started scrapbooking, it wasn’t as easy or as cheap to get your layouts printed- at least full size 12 by 12 or 8.5 by 11. Now, that’s not the case.
I get my layouts printed at Persnickety Prints. (I get my pictures printed at Mpix but their 12 by 12′s are just too expensive.) At Persnickety, I get their prepaid plans- it gives me a discount and makes it easier for me to get prints on a regular basis. With the layouts already paid for, I just wait until I have enough layouts that warrant the flat rate $5 shipping.
Here’s my lastest order:
It took just two days to get them in. Love that Persnickety is so fast!
Oh the joy!
I currently have four scrapbook albums in use. The nice thing about digital is that you can get a lot of pages in one album. I use the American Crafts D-Ring Cloth (Chestnut color) albums. I have three for my regular layouts- all are 12 by 12. Then, I have one that’s an 8.5 by 11 that holds my Week in the Life Projects for each year.
When I get my order in, it’s time to divide them up and figure out where they will go. My albums are divided into: Me & Him/ Family & Friends, Stories, and Passions. I have each of those sub-divided. You can see the sections that I have and even the layout in them here.
There’s a number of reasons that having my albums divided like this works great for me. I scrapbook what ever strikes my fancy. It means that I definitely don’t scrapbook in any chronological order- in fact, I’ve never cared for the idea that I need to scrapbook this and then this. I love to document the little moments and the ones that I feel like telling at the time that I want to scrapbook. It might be in part because I don’t often scrapbook in terms of events. I don’t know that I have any birthday layouts. I have very few Christmas layouts- and the ones I do have are stories and moments that occurred on that day. I love to do layouts that appreciate moments, our trips, the things we love to do, our relationship, Cody, myself, or bits about the people we love. So, putting layouts in those categories works really well for me. It also hides the gaps in terms of chronology or holidays (you don’t notice the sparseness of the Christmas layouts).
So, when I get my new layouts arrive in the mail, I’ll lay the layouts out and decide where they’ll go. There’s not always a clear choice- or often they’ll seem like they can fit in several places. I just choose the best place and know I can move them later. I know there are some stories too that over time will become more a part of who we are and that will get moved into my Legendary Stories section.
In this case, I also had a couple of 6 X 12 pages. I print those on 12 by 12′s and then cut them down.
That brings me to the other thing I wanted to add. . . I do layouts in various sizes- mostly 8.5 by 11, 6 X 12,.and 12 X 12. I mix and match them in my albums. It really doesn’t bother me that you get the sneak peaks of other layouts.
Here you can see a 12 by 12 and 8.5 by 11 on the left and a 6 X12 and 12 by 12 on the right (in this case, those match since they’re part of the same story- that’s normally not the case.) I just slip the layouts in where I have a blank page protector or add them to the back of the section.
The other thing that I thought would bother me that doesn’t- the gap between layouts that are two pages created by the three ring binder- like the one you see here.
Every once in a while, I think about doing a section or new album for my Newest Layouts. But, that’s more work- and if I’ve learned anything, it’s the value of not making more work for myself. I also like that I get to reminisce whenever I put my layouts away. But if you want to see my newest layouts including the ones in this post, you can check them all out here.
