My current scrapbooking projects

I thought I would share with you the current scrapbooking projects I am working on and my process/method for trying to stay up-to-date since you’ll be seeing photos on the blog.

1) Carina's First Year Book. I did this for Ellie also. In a nutshell I do two layouts for each month. The first has a calendar on the left side. That’s pretty much the format. Sometimes if I have a lot of pictures of a particular event (Christmas/Easter/starting solid foods etc.), I will dedicate ½ a layout to said theme. Apart from that, I try and hit the highlights of what happened in the month. Often they are not my most favorite pictures, but pictures that show something new happening. I keep a journal for Carina(and did for Ellie also) that talks about the different things she’s doing, what we’ve been up to, and that’s how I fill in the calendar. I know a lot of folks who just use a regular hanging calendar and write in what happened that day for the first year. You could absolutely cut out those sheets, mat them and use them in a scrapbook, or make a color copy at your local photocopy store – which would allow you to resize if you want.
2) Ellie's Baby Book. Instead of doing the traditional baby book, I have been scrapping one. This is, in part, because I just couldn’t find a book that I really liked and thought I would be able to fill in. There are lots out there, but I knew I’d do a pretty good job documenting the first year and a not so good job after that, and a lot of the info in those books spans many years. Plus, there were a lot of questions I didn’t really care for/see myself answering and I didn’t want to have a book with a bunch of blanks in it. I have a book that I use as the basis for Ellie's book, supplementing/deleting content as I wish. The only bad thing about this is that it takes much longer than just buying a book in the store.

My current process (although this seems to constantly be evolving) is to do things two months at a time. So, for example, at the end of May, I ordered pictures for April and May. While I’m waiting for the pictures to arrive, I fill in the calendars. Then I have about 6 weeks (depending on how quick I was to order and how long it took to ship) to do four layouts. I am usually done within 3-4 weeks depending on what else is going on in life. In the remaining time, I work on the Baby Book and other projects. So far, this has been working really well and even helps to get me re-focused. For example, if I have slacked off and I know I’ll be ordering pictures again soon, I am more likely to get moving on the prior two months so things don’t get stacked up.

This is good for now, but Carina is already 9 months old, so I’ll have to figure out what I want to scrapbook after this (family albums, or separate albums for each of the girls), but I really like the two month delay and whatever I decide to do, I think this process will work.