my way of Scrapbooking

this weekend little miss thing got to spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa, what do I get to do with out our little miss thing while Daddy was at work..... (big smile)(this photo was when Chloe was at Grandma's house last weekend)

I got to go to a scrap booking get together by a friend that put this amazing thing for us gals in the area, she does it just because and it was totally an amazing thing that she calls: Camp Crop a lot (cropping as a word us scrappers use as a get together when we scrapbook together) It was at Pine Lake in Eldora and the camp site that we used was truly beautiful, if i wasn't running short on time I would have wanted to walk around the lake. The first two pictures were of Chloe when she was at the hospital the day after she was born, and then her 1 year pictures, I worked on her book when I was "cropping"

So as I finish Chloe's first year pictures I have learned a lot about my style of scrap booking. there is no thinking about it, if I like the picture and it works with the story I am trying to get across it goes in, if not then I don't include that picture.

so for my first step that I do is get all the pictures in order on how I want to scrap book them. then when I get a pile of them printed I have the pictures in a stack (group) of what I want on each page or event for examples I had a some pictures of chloe making a mess when she ate so all of those pictures go into a stack with a post it note attached to them explaining what I want to tell on the page. If it's a big event lets say Christmas day I then decide to do a two page layout.

After I have them all catogorized I go group by group. I pick out the paper for the page, then a secondary piece of paper that is usually a scrap piece that will work with the pictures and the pages. I then glue that down where I want that scrap piece at and then I put photo corners on the pictures and get it on to the page. So what you have is a lay out with just paper and pictures. the design part of knowing where you want your pictures should take less than 2 minutes, just do it and don't think about how it works... as long as your eye flows from picture to picture that is all that matters.

After I am done with my batch of group pictures for each page (usually I have about 20 groups of pictures to put on 20 pages, it saves time I then type and print my jornaling and past it on to the page

then I embellish the page with stickers, die cuts and stamps.

Then they finish pages go into the protectors and then into the album... supper easy right?

that is how I have been able to get her scrap book done from her first year, and have about 100 pages in her book! I know a little crazy but it works for me and then I don't have to use photo albums.

my rules to scrapbook are these
1. Dont spend more than 5 minutes on the lay out (sometimes that's the hardest) Lay out meaning how I want the pictures on the page with the paper.
2 Always use some sort of grid system to my lay out
3.if the pictures isn't helping tell the story then don't use it. (same goes if it's blury)
4. the pictures come first, every thing else is scondary including the paper and stickers don't fluff up the page to much and
5. make sure what you are putting in the book is photo safe and acid free and never glue pictures to anything, use photo corners!
6. If all else fails, I fall back to Keep it simple sweetie (kiss)

My next projects will be:
first one I will work on: 8.5x10 scrapbook of our family for this year, each year will be a book
Second one will be a heritage album to preserve the pictures of our ancestors.
Third project will be a series on a smaller album of the mommy, daddy, grandma grandpa book. where it's a book on just me, gar, and grandparents. what we love, what we do, who we are and so on... that one should be really fun!