10 Tips for Photo Album Scrapbooking

Stacy Julian has just put up a fantastic post with 10 Tips for Photo Album Scrapbooking. HERE.

This is fantastic. Just what I need. I have this Mardi Gras Album that I have been stalling on. I have the album (a great 2 up album with a cover that is striped in green and purple, with a little window -- some stamped letters in yellow paint and some beads and ribbon on the binding will make it very Mardi Gras!!). I have all my photos printed and my memorabilia together. I have lots of great papers and I even bought the Jolee's New Orleans stickers too -- I don't care if they are "out of style" either. (ooo I see there is a Mardi Gras specific Jolee's Boutique set as well!).

But I can't MOVE. I see now it is because I have been reluctant to cut the paper up and premake the 4 x 6 pages. I kind of thought that might be the way, but the "photo album" part of it made me want to treat this like I treat an actual Photo Album. That is, I put my pictures in order and go from start to finish, making sure that if there are 3-4 photos in the same "theme" I keep them grouped together in one spot. I want all the architecture pictures together, all the parade pictures together, all the different Krewes together and labelled.... this has bene making me crazy.

I have also been held up because I kind of want to create a regular 12 x 12 page or two so I have been debating which photos I will pull from the album for that use.

This post of Stacy's gets back to what she says and what I have said -- that scrapbooking is NOT just about actually cutting and pasting and decorating pictures. If it was, then using a photo album would be a completely different process. No, scrapbooking includes everything else too -- selecting the pictures and knowing what to keep out, cropping them (physically or digitally) which is also deciding what image to keep in or exclude, deciding the order of the pictures and their relationships, AND ALSO decorating and cutting and gluing.

So I think what I am going to do is take my materials file and spend a day at Archiver's in the workroom, making my 4 x 6 pages in advance and then deciding how to put them into the album.

I also really like that Stacy points out that not only CAN you fill an entire photo slot with just patterned paper, but you SHOULD, especially if the other slots are filled with uncropped 4 x 6 photos. It provides cohesion and gives the eye a place to rest. I love that and I can't believe it never occurred to me. That means I can have more freedom in deciding how to group photos and I love that.