Old Magazines, New Inspiration

For two years I've been collecting scrapbooking magazines, looking through them when they arrive in my mailbox, and then putting them on a shelf, never to pick them up again. I know they all include information that I'd like to refer back to, but having them all just sit there made it difficult to know which magazine to pick up when I needed an idea. I wanted to find a system that would allow me to find what I was looking for quickly, but wasn't sure how to do it. There are many ways that people have approached "organizing" their magazines, and I had to decide which approach was best for me.

This past week, I finally tackled the task of going through all of my magazines and tearing out information that was useful to me and putting it into a binder where I could look through it easily. I'll let you know how I did it, and give you some other ideas for how other people have approached it as well. Maybe these ideas will give your imagination a kick-start and you'll come up with an even better way to do it yourself!

How I Did It

I took a pretty casual approach to my organization. I didn't want to spend days trying to organize every little thing from all of the magazines, so I chose 7 basic categories that I wanted to have ideas for:

Layout Design - any layouts I particularly liked, sketches for layout design

Design Tips - tips for choosing colors, how to balance a layout, etc.

Techniques - articles teaching techniques

Album Ideas - ideas for theme albums, gift albums, make your own album, etc.

Journaling Ideas - interesting journaling ideas, articles, layouts featuring journaling

Organization - ideas for supply storage, organizing scrap rooms, etc.

Photography - photography tips, photo pose ideas, etc.

Next, I started leafing through all of the magazines, tearing out articles and cutting out individual layouts that struck me as interesting, or as something I'd like to try. I sorted them by category and put them into piles.

I bought a large 3-ring binder and a few packages of 8 ½" x 11" page protectors. I put each of the article pages into page protectors, so that I could see both the front and back of the pages (when needed). To save space, I glued 2-3 layouts that had been cut out to a piece of white scratch paper, making sure to keep the artist and supply information with the layout.

I divided my binder into the 7 categories and put the magazine pages in the correct sections. While you can also organize the articles within each category, I chose not to, and didn't put the articles into any particular order. Once they were in the binder, I was done!

You can also take this system a step further, and create a "Table of Contents" for each section so that you can find particular articles more quickly. Make a list of the articles and ideas that are included in each section, in the order that they are included. Page numbers can be added with small white labels to the outside of the page protectors, or to the magazine pages themselves. As you add new pages to your idea book, just add another entry to your Table of Contents.

Other Ideas for Magazine Organization

Everyone has their own system and has their own needs when it comes to "idea files". Some of these ideas might work better for you:

• As you go through a magazine, draw sketches of layout ideas you see, or make other notes about journaling ideas, etc. in a notebook. With your sketches and notes, include a magazine name, issue and page number for easy reference.


• Instead of a notebook, you can also use index cards, and keep a "card catalog" of your scrapbook magazines, divided by theme, technique, or topic (or multiple categories). This allows you to keep your magazines fully intact, while still being able to find the information you want quickly. Dig out all that you learned in grade school about the card catalog to organize this way!


• If you're a theme-oriented scrapper, divide your favorite journaling articles and layout ideas by theme. For instance, include all summer articles and layouts together, Holiday layouts and articles in another section, and baby articles and ideas in another area.

Organizing your magazines is a big project initially, but once you've gotten it started, maintaining your system shouldn't take much time. After you read each magazine, commit to spending 10 - 15 minutes cutting out or indexing the articles and making notes of favorite layouts, etc. to put into your idea file.

You'll see that your file grows quickly and includes only the information you are interested in…so you don't have to spend extra time looking through pages that don't interest you. You'll also find that you refer back to those ideas much more often-because it's in a format that is quick and tailored to your scrapping style.