Scrapbooking in Chronological Order

One of the main reason that I stopped using strap hinge style scrapbook albums is because of the way it forces you to scrap in chronological order the other was scrapbooking on 2 sides of one piece of paper, oh how that drove me bonkers, LOL! Any way, sure we like to have our scrapbooks arranged in that order but heck scrapping in order? To me, that just never made any sense at all. I'm all over the place when I scrapbook. One day I might be in the mood to do layouts based on our vacation to Hawaii, another day it could be about Christmas Ornaments or my daughter's birthday party. I'm all over the place when it comes to scrapbooking and I wouldn't change a thing about the way I scrap!

On the suggestion of a friend I tried having a separate Christmas album. One where you keep all of the Christmas layouts from years past. Well I would have only 1 or two layouts from Christmas and it made my family album seem off kilter or as most people would refer to as being off balance. So I put them back in. Now I could possibly see myself making a Christmas album, if we were vacationing somewhere over Christmas break and I had tons of layouts to go into said album. Other than that, I would just put those 2 or 4 pages into the album to round out the year.

Lets talk about the need for some of us to make a 2 page spread of everything, did you know that It's really not necessary to do that? Some scrappers think that it gives the book harmony to make these pages. The other thing is the 1 page spread..making one then making another page that faces opposite of it in the same or very similar colors because that is supposed to make the page flow. In case you're wondering, I did a lot of that when I used strap hinge albums but then I stopped. It was like one day I said to myself...why am I doing this? Then the next thing was...Why am I continuing to use these albums that make me feel so frustrated? A couple of my girlfriends back in Virginia tried to use the "Oh Sandie, all of your albums won't look the same on the shelf if you switch to using post bound top loading albums". Like somehow all that mattered was that the albums have some sort of uniform look to them while on the book shelf...that to me is just plain nuts! Since I switched over to using post bound albums back in 2001, I have had this sense of freedom in creating or should I say jumping around in creating layouts for my many albums.

I create from within from what I feel. If one page is muted tones of blues and greens, the next page could very well be bright pink and orange with a touch of yellow and lime green. No matter what pages goes next to what it's going to be beautiful. This is something that you are creating from your heart, for your families enjoyment, heck for that matter your own enjoyment!

The other day I worked on a layout of my daughter Hannah's birthday, by the way her birthday was back in July. Before that I did a layout on baby rabbits, those pictures were taken in June, then there's the layout with roses and that was from February. The pictures are going to be there waiting for you no matter what. When I first started scrapbooking back in 1999 I was very behind. I had been married 9 years, had 2 babies and have been through several moves across the USA. By June 2000 I had actually been caught up, I had quite a few albums done. Now by October 2000 I was living in yet another new state and was very much behind behind on all of the pictures we took over the summer months (and I only get more behind from there). What I am trying to say is, don't be in such a hurry to get caught up. Sometimes it's better to wait on scrapping some events. I've done that with our Hawaiian vacation pictures, I couldn't find the right papers or embellishments that I wanted to work with so I held off on scrapping some of those photos. But whatever your reasons are on waiting to scrap certain events do make sure to take notes and keep them with your pictures! That way you can come back to them and have the information you need for your journaling.

Whatever you do, enjoy the ride. Scrapbooking should be a fun and enjoyable hobby. Once it begins to feel like a chore it's time to put it away for while. Don't worry your pictures will still be there waiting for you once you're ready to work on them again.