How do you scrap? Do you tend to scrap just one page here or there, or plan them around a theme? There is not one good and one bad way to work in a scrapbook project. There are advantages and inconveniences for each. Like many other choices that you will make in this hobby, it will be a matter of personal preferences.
Scrapping randomly
Many scrappers will start this way. Maybe you are one of them? You found some interest in digital scrapping. Then you found some interesting photos you wanted to showcase and will do a page with them, one at the time. Why only one? Maybe you don’t have many photos on a single theme. On the other hand, you might just want to scrap photos as inspiration hits. One page at the time, you create new layouts. Once you have done some layouts, you can print them, and slide them into protective sleeves in an album. You can also store them so you can group them by year, event, or people. The main disadvantage of this type of scrapping is that you might not necessarily know when it is time to group them (if you want to print an album). As we saw, printing is never a necessity, just an option.
Scrapping chronologically
I think this is a great way to go, but unless you just have a few photos to use, it is not very practical. One version of this style of scrapping is when you want to document a timeline of events. Scrapping events like a pregnancy, the baby’s first year, the construction of your new house, is simple. Those are chronological documents, a bit like a diary. Since the event unfolds over several weeks or months, it is much easier to stay up-to-date. Beware that if you are taking LOTS of photos, you might not be able (or even want) to scrap them all. Once all you completed your pages for that particular time period, group your layouts. You can put them into an album to print, create a video montage or a slideshow.
Scrapping by theme
There are times when you plan a whole album around a particular event. It may be a life event like a wedding, a graduation with flashback through all the school years, or it can be a vacation trip. Some of those events will be associated with tons of photos and you might want to use as many as possible (if they are good enough quality). To create a whole album is a much bigger task and will probably require a bit more planning and definitely more time. Imagine creating 30 or 50 pages to display 100 photos. That is quite a task. It will require a lot of work and patience: although you will go about it one page at the time, you will still have a constant reminder that you still have 25 pages to go, or 87 photos to scrap. It can also be frustrating if you happen to run out of inspiration for a period of time. You see all those photos just waiting to be used, but you are drawing a blank. Don’t panic. If you keep your focus on the goal, you will be able to make it. Make sure you are not stressing yourself too much with tight deadlines either! The main advantage of scrapping by theme like this is that you will have a finite number of pages after which you can get the whole project printed.
Conclusion
The choice of scrapping randomly, chronologically or by theme will depend on your own style of work, if you tend to be the kind of person to have everything in order, or someone who goes a bit as you feel that particular day. It can also depend on the photos you are actually using and their number. If you have very few photos, it would be harder to scrap by theme, while if you have a lot of them, it would be easier. And remember that you can scrap in all three ways, depending on the day, the time, your mood and the photos. Are you mostly scrapping randomly? Chronologically? Or by theme? Tell us, and tell us why.
8 thoughts on “Planning your scrapbooking projects”
Happy birthday this week, Carole! I hope it’s a great one for you.
Well, if you keep tabs on how we purchase your fantastic scripts, you already know that I’m more random. I let the monthly challenges at Moo Two Designs guide my direction, and create kits there each month, generally as parts of collabs. My LOs take awhile as I also have a tendency to create new embellies and papers inspired by the photos I use. Eventually I need to get into my ‘digital closet’ and give it a really good ‘clean out’ and get those items into kits or giveaways on my blog.
As some of them were created before I really learned how to ‘tailor’ my embellies, a huge portion of them will be heading off to your scripts for fine-tuning. Your stray pixel finder, the edge smoother (I find I have to be a bit careful with that one or the edge color can backfire), the confetti maker, directional script, and zig zag scripts. The twill tape will also come into play more.
Darn it – I just love to take photos and create with them!
Thanks for the Birthday Wishes.
I am glad to see how you enjoy creating elements from your own photos. I guess you can be a random “designer” as well as a random “scrapper”!
Back when I was a paper scrapper I found I enjoyed scrapping the most when I worked randomly. From time to time I would do a theme mini or large album but not often. I do the same with digi. As a digi scrapper I even tend to work on theme projects bit by bit. I can always pull everything together by theme when I print even when I scrap randomly.
It seems that a lot of scrappers tend to go with the flow too!
I scrap around themes, always have, even in traditional scrap and card making
Interesting to see that you also did scrap like that in paper scrapping. I hope we will be able to see some of your creations.
My ideas for scrapping are mostly random, but there is some theme too like my baby nephew. He is the reason for my new interest in scrapping and I will likely have some albums of family events. I also want to make a page about my teardown of a RB2 guitar controller. But it’s mostly just groups of pictures that I think would look cool together. So maybe 80% random 20% theme in the end I think.
Great! I hope i get to see those pages!