My Scrapbooking Rules

I want to share some of my personal scrapbooking rules. I think many of these ideas apply to journal writers (and bloggers) too.

1. Do not scrapbook every picture.
2. Do not scrapbook in order.
3. Do not allow yourself to feel pressure to catch up on the years you didn’t scrapbook.
4. Don’t change your layouts after they are finished.

Do not scrapbook every picture.
Are your family and friends really going to want to sit down and look at every picture you’ve ever taken? Do you really have the time to scrapbook every picture? I say choose a few of your favorite pictures from each event or photo shoot and scrapbook them. This will help you stay on top of your scrapbooking and will relieve the stress.

Do not scrapbook in order.
When you scrapbook in order, you often get stuck on a certain picture that you don’t know how to scrap. Some of you will totally relate to me when I say this can put you in a slump and stop you for scrapbooking for months if not years… literally. I say scrapbook your favorite pictures now. Don’t worry if you are spending more time on one child or one year. Eventually everything will even out and you’ll have a great representation of your life. By scrapping your favorite photos first you’ll be more excited to scrapbook and you’ll have a lot more completed pages to prove it.

Do not allow yourself to feel pressure to catch up on the years you didn’t scrapbook.
This is my most important personal rule. Although I have been scrapbooking or writing in my journal since I was 8, there are several years where I have no journal entries or scrapbook pages. The main reason I didn’t record my personal history those years is because I felt overwhelmed with the pressure to catch up. I have since learned that I should never feel the need to catch up. I get so much more recorded this way. If I miss several months, or even a year, I will no longer allow myself to catch up until I have recorded something recent I am excited about. After recording the events I am currently excited about, I will allow myself to catch up if I have the time. We don’t need huge albums to document each year of our life. Sure it would be nice but if you only had two scrapbook pages for each year of your life wouldn’t you be thrilled? Start with today. Make two pages about things you are currently excited about then go back and record older events and feelings if you have time. Most likely after you complete two pages you’ll be excited to do more!

Don’t change your layouts after they are finished.
Don’t! Spend your time making new pages. Once you are completely caught up (ha!) you can go back and change old layouts.

• The letter "stickers" above are from the Playground CD
• The cute circle image below (in the last post) with "I just can't get enough SUN" is from the In the Mood CD. I changed the size and color of the original image by turning it into a brush. Read how to do that here.