Organizing Scrapbook Albums : An Update

Ali thanks for sharing. In my own personal style (with another baby girl on the way) I have come up with the following: My youngest daughter has her very own album that celebrates her first year, then after the first year everything that I document about her goes into our family album (this family album also contains some layouts of her from her first year but not nearly as many as 'her' album) now with the addition coming I am planning on doing the same thing, I will have a seperate album for baby's first year with some layouts in the 'family' album too, but after the first year all of her layouts will go into the family one. I figure once they are old enough to decide if they want other layouts, then @ that point I can just have them printed somewhere, no it's not quite the same but it'll give them the stories. I also have 3-4 seperate albums: one for travels, one for just my husband & I, and then two more envolving the rest of our family & friends. Now that's not to say this won't change in the years to come, but for now it works well for me & it's not totally overwhelming. Hope this helps some of your other readers.

I think this was really good advice! I don't have kids or anything, but I think that was a really good question and I'm glad she asked it! I think my mom kind of struggled with that a little when I was young but now I'm grown and lucky for her, I make my own albums! haha!

I have an album per year, and it all goes in there for now. With two children, and I'm hoping that when it comes time to "divide it up" we'll have a 12X12 scanner to help us out!

Great ideas Ali...thanks for sharing. Think it would be great if you did an album "The ABC's of Anna & Simon" so that Simon could read it to Anna to help her recognize her ABC's and Simon w'his reading. My kids were too darn old to read to each other by the time I started scrapbooking. Now I'm waiting on my grandbabies...will probably do an ABC album of my kids for the grandkids...someday soon I hope. Have a great weekend, fondly, Roberta

Thanks, I really like the idea of kids albums and a family album. Aside from first year albums,I have one album that I dump all printed pages into (I'm exclusively a digital scrapper) but it just wasn't working well. I just had a set of twins three months ago, bringing us to five kids and I was trying to decide what I was going to do. This is a great idea! Just one question, where do you purchase the brown albums?

I loved your series on album organization so much that I replaced all my 12x12 post bound albums with 12x12 D-ring albums from American Crafts. I have 4 children, so I had about 30 albums that I needed to replace. With the expense of replacing all of my old albums, I had to make a decision to keep the cost down. Instead of buying 30 new albums I bought about 12 and labeled all of them by year. So all of the pages from the old albums (sperated by person, event, etc.) ended up in 12 d-rings. The d-rings are so much bigger that I was able to fit them all in. I did keep some of the old post bound for each kid to have their own album where I put school related items.

Those are American Crafts D-Ring albums. I buy mine from either Scrapbook.com (http://store.scrapbook.com/ac-76027.html) or Two Peas (http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/shop/american-crafts/38685-cloth-album-12x12-3-ring-chestnut/?filters=albums%2Famerican-crafts).

Thanks, Ali, for the album ideas!
Right now, this is my biggest problem. I usually only work on one project at a time. I group my pictures together, for example, my Mom's visit last year or a trip to the zoo. I can't figure out a way to start and then I can't figure out a way to put it all into one album that flows together. Instead I have a bunch of separate albums, 12x12 and 8x8, that are just in random boxes. I also went through a phase last year working work chipboard albums and they don't fit into anything.
I'm not digital at all so I'm not hip on how to create all my pages on my Mac, which I know would be easy if I just sat down and tried to figure it out.
I think I have to get over my hang up of having everything perfect before I start. My next three month goal is to get organized and get creative no matter if the results turn out the way I pictured it in my head or not.
As always, THANK YOU the inspiration!

I am looking forward to putting out my last couple December Dailies this year :).

Great link to Danelle's albums - I love that idea too. I love it especially because it focuses so much on the photos.

I scrapbook for personal well-being, so all of my layouts go into albums in the order I scrapbook them. I do make a small 8x8 album featuring some of my sons big events by year. When he moves out he can take those with him. However I hope to leave a few truck loads of albums for my family to figure out what to do with when I die.
When my grandma died we went through all of her photo albums and remembered her life. We each took the photos we wanted, I hope to leave a lasting memory like that.

I don't stress about this. I make the pages and I'm just happy I made it. I have not put a single layout into an album this year. They are all in on big pile and at the end of the year I will go into the kids albums and add them. I have loosely made them an album for each year, but I do not scrap in order and therefore I cannot just add a layout as I finish it. I also do not worry about a layout that has both my kids in it. I kind of have in mind who's album it will go in and I figure they are brother and sister. They should look at each others albums. So it's all good with me. Hopefully one of them will be into recording the family history and they will be the keeper of the albums about me and my husband. My real worry is I need more pages in our albums so my kids have our story. These are the hardest pages for me to make.

I have 2 children, 6 years apart so my first child has lots of books with just her but when I had my son, every picture I took had both of them in it. I started to drive myself crazy with trying to figure it out. One day I was complaining to my mom about how I didn't know what to do and she said " Darlin' (we are from the south you know) you just go on and do what I plan...let ya'll duke it out after my funeral" I laugh everytime I think about that and that is my plan...let them duke it out after I am long gone. Have a good day!

This is a timely subject for me as well, as we just introduced baby #3 into our family this week (in fact, I am typing this while still in the hospital!). I basically do the same as Ali's system. I don't have time/energy to duplicate pages for each child. I have three sets of 3-ring American Crafts binders in different colors for each child, red, pink, and green. Then I have black 3-ring albums for our family pages and also for my "week in the life" and "month in review" layouts. More black albums for layouts of me and my husband's childhood and of layouts about us now. If the layout is about more than just one child, I decide which child is the main subject and put it in their album. If it is about them all equally, it goes in our family albums. Works for me! And I am a huge advocate of 3-ring binder albums just so you can slip layouts in where ever they go, rather than having to create layouts chronologically.

I have 3 daughters. I'm a fairly slow scrapper and it's also important to me to keep pretty current - before the stories & memories fade away. So I have one ongoing family album. There are pages of everything in there - family, pets, individual kids, kids together - whatever. I have started making mini or 8x8 albums of special events or vacations. I figure they can fight out who gets what later, or make copies! Thanks for the ideas - I always find inspiration here! May even attempt the December Daily this year!

Sorry! I posted earlier but as I was reading the other comments, I thought of something else...
when you use the 3-ring binder with a two page layout, how do you get it to fit together? With a post bound album, I think the layout are easier to look at, especially if I am splitting a picture or the title.
It seems with a 3-ring the page will have a big gap in it. Or is that something you don't worry so much about. Most two page layouts I have seen pictures of are taken out of the sleeve so it is very easy to see how they fit together. But when they get put into a binder, it's not as seamless.
I'm sorry that my question is a little off topic but I would love to use the 3-rings rather than post bound. The 3-rings are much easier to find in Japan and cheaper!

Hi Ali!
I first wanted to say that you are truly so inspiring! I have recently gotten two of your books and can't put them down! Besides such great scrapbooking inspiration they are helping me realize life is to short and to enjoy each moment with my wonderful husband and three little boys! (Today we are going park hopping and picnic lunch!) I was excited to that you lived "close"! I live just north of Seattle. I have family that live in Creswell and that is were my grandparents grew up and got married! I have been wanting to write and tell you that I LOVE your style and really thank you for hopefully helping me find my own! As for the question..all of my layouts are sitting in a pile on top of my shelf. They are getting ruined and I totally appreciate the push to get them in albums! Again, love all of you work and I think your photography is wonderful. I appreciate that you have pictures taken of you and the kids. I look at my photos and I have very few of the "moments" I wish I had on film. Have a wonderful weekend!!
Staci

Hi Angie -it's something I totally don't worry about :). You can see the full inside of one of my albums here: /2008/03/anatomy-of-an-a.html

Congrats Betsy!

I began making individual albums for each child and having duplicate (but personalized) pages for events that involved them all. However, now that I have five children (ages 10, 7, 6, 4 and almost 1) I can't keep up with that. So, I just make the pages I want to (kind of like how you mentioned the "love notes" to your kids) for each child and put them in their albums. If there are pages with our family or more than one child, and the journaling isn't directed to one particular child, the page goes in our family album.
I also have an album that is pages about me or special thoughts and memories that I have. Family history-type pages go into our family album right now. However, in the future (as I'm making more of these lately) I will designate a special album for those pages.
Thanks for all of your inspiration. I don't know how you keep up with all that you do. But I'm glad you do because it motivates me :)