Photo Album Strategy

Years ago I aspired to make scrapbooks for each of my seven children. A noble goal that I never came close to reaching. Christina started scrapbooking at age 14 and took responsibility for her own albums.

The other six children's albums hadn't been touched in 10 years, other than to be carried to the basement during severe summer thunderstorms or tornado warnings.

Four years ago Christina encouraged me to work on her siblings photo albums. I started with Amy and Lani because they had the shortest lives. Once their albums got caught up, I planned to work on the others.

Amy and Lani are a package deal and do most everything together, so I made their pages almost identical. This worked well but no matter how much I plugged away, I was always two years behind.

And, I still hadn't touched the other kids' albums. A year ago I decided to make the four youngest girls books alike. Usually I come up with a layout and insert on each girls' page pictures that pertain to that child.

For example, here are pages from a hiking trip we took. See how they're the same but different. (My husband makes fun of me for using that phrase).

I made the 8 X 10 collages in Shutterfly Studio,
a free download from Shutterfly.

Then made the two page spreads.
(Click on pictures if you want to see them bigger)

So now instead of being two years behind on two girl's books, I'm three years behind on four girl's books. That's progress, I think. I hope.

I finally gave up on Erica's book as I knew there was no way I'd have it done by graduation. Last month I made her a digital scrapbook on Shutterfly which takes a lot less time and isn't nearly as messy.

Now if you're good at math, you'll notice I mentioned Christina does her own album and I've worked on the youngest four. That adds up to five and I have seven kids, which means I haven't touched Andrew and Kiah's albums in 15 years. Sigh!!!!

Back to the scrapbooking grindstone. I think I can, I think I can.