A Year in Review - Scrapping in the New Year!

Have you ever made a scrapbooking-related resolution for New Year's? Like making this the year you get caught up? I have had good intentions over the years but somehow life gets in the way and the backlog just gets bigger and bigger. This article will give you some strategies for dealing with your backlog and preventing it from happening again this year.

Organize pictures. One of the first steps to dealing with your backlog is to get a real understanding of what you're dealing with. If you don't already have your pictures printed and sorted that's a good place to start. A photo storage system is a must. This way you can organize your photos however you like: by event, by date, by family member -- whatever makes the most sense for your scrapbooking style.

How you address your backlog depends on how much it bothers you to have a backlog. If you're okay catching up whenever, then just organize your pictures and your notes (dates, people, places) so that when you get around to scrapbooking the pictures you will recall all the important details. If your backlog bothers you, there are some strategies that can help you move through it more quickly.

Use strategies to reduce backlog.  While I prefer to design all my pages from scratch, the truth is that I am a very slow scrapper. It takes me a long time to pick papers, a title and which pictures to use. With a full-time job and two children it's unlikely I'll ever catch up if I only use "from scratch" scrapbooking. But if I can get some of my backlog out of the way, I can go back to creating layouts from scratch without feeling rushed.

You also may have some events that you are more excited to scrapbook than others. Using some of these methods can get you through the more perfunctory pages faster, leaving more time to focus on ones that you're looking forward to scrapbooking.

Here are some strategies for getting ahead of your scrapbooking backlog:

1.       Sketches. Sketches are basically blueprints. These can be a great source of inspiration. Typically they are black-and-white drawings that provide a basis for the design. There are wonderful books of sketches available like this one. There are also websites and blogs that offer lots of sketches to look through for inspiration.

2.       Scraplift. Taking the idea of sketches one step further, consider scraplifting. The idea behind scraplifting is that you look at others' actual work in an online gallery like the one on scrapjazz.com. This provides inspiration not just in how you lay out the elements but may also give you ideas for specific embellishments or product lines. The goal isn't to make a carbon copy of what you see, but to use those design elements and ideas to make the creative process faster.

3.       Page Kits. There are some really nice page kits available by popular designers. Kits by BasicGrey are some of my favorites. They take some time to assemble but the results are worth it. I want to make a distinction here between page kits and collection packs. While certainly buying all the papers and embellishments from a line in a collection pack can improve your efficiency, page kits are actually pre-designed pages that are ready for you to assemble. Obviously you can change them around however you want and add additional embellishments. But the idea is that with the page kit, some adhesive and your photos, you can create completed layouts quickly. These are also great for travel as they are very portable. Throw in your favorite adhesive and you can scrapbook almost anywhere. While the price may seem high at about $18 for four completed layouts, it's easy to spend that much on a layout done from scratch. Here is an example of a page done using a BasicGrey Picadilly page kit. This layout was done using BasicGrey's Little Black Dress page kit.

4.       Album Kits. If you have a lot of photos from a single event or need an album that uses coordinating papers throughout an album kit may be a solution. These kits generally provide enough supplies to complete a 20-layout album. I am a fan of SEI's Album in a Box kits. These kits have all the papers pre-cut. You can ink edges or add Stickles, gems and Liquid Pearls to really dress them up. I can put a basic one together in less than two hours and they look great. These make great gifts. People who don't scrapbook have no idea you "cheated" and you don't have to worry about running out of the right paper and embellishments since everything you need is in the box. These are also very portable, making them nice for crops or other occasions when you'd like to do a smaller scale scrapping project. I used this Field Notes Album Kit by SEI to quickly scrapbook a large stack of pictures for an organization I'm a member of. Using the album kit saved me many hours and the results were very satisfying. The group loved the album and I still had my sanity!

5.       Digital. Another way to get though photos quickly is digital scrapbooking using some of the premade templates available online. Digital scrapbooking can also be very portable if you have a laptop to work from.

While we would all love to have unlimited time to scrapbook and the ability to create stunning designs quickly, the reality is sometimes we just need to get caught up. If your backlog is frustrating you, consider ones of these tricks to get more done in less time. You can always go back to traditional scrapbooking anytime you want.