5 Family Scrapbook Tips for the Frenzied Scrapper

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Simple tips and tricks can lend a hand to any scrapper that has a hectic life. Try fitting these family scrapbook ideas into your crazy life to make more of your scrapping time.

Author: Kathy Fesmire

If you are like me your life runs in full swing almost 24/7. Between housework, homework, baseball games, theater practices, dinner and family time I don’t often find large blocks of time to set aside for scrapbooking.  Following these 5 family scrapbook tips ahead of time help me make the most of the time I have when I do carve out those few precious minutes. Check out these ideas to help you get some or your hectic life actually into your family scrapbooks.

1. Organize photos ahead of time:
Scrapping is all about the photos, or at least it should be! Whether you organize them first digitally, or are backtracking and crafting your printed pictures, having your photos ready can really speed up your scrapping time.

• If you print your photos, organize them in a way that you’re ready to pick up and go when you find some time to craft!  Put similar photos together or if you prefer, organize them chronologically. Either way, you will be able to spend more time on each layout if you have your photos in order first.
• If you use digital photos, take some time to delete the bad ones and crop or adjust the ones you like. If you have completed this, go one step further and print any photos from an event you know you’ll want to craft. Once you have them printed, organize them like we suggested in the printed photos section and you’ll be one step closer to quick scrapbooking!

2. Keep your essentials handy:
If your basic products are where you can lay your hands on them quickly, you can sneak in a little scrapping when you just have a few minutes in between commitments. Try these ideas for quick scrapping:

• Keep a caddy or holder with all your essential scrapbook supplies together. Your trimmer, adhesive, scissors, glue, pen, rub-on tool, basic inks and small containers of buttons, brads and flowers that are easily accessed make putting pages together quickly much easier than hunting for all your supplies. Learn more about basic crafting tools here.
• Keep a paper holder of basic cardstock and favorite patterned papers, solid color sticker letters and rub-ons where it can be grabbed quickly
• Keep a container of “must use” stickers and embellishments. These are your favorite that you know you want to use soon.  This way you won’t be digging through all your supplies for the one you love!

3. Keep an idea journal:
For me, the inspiration and design can be the most time consuming part of scrapping. To tackle this, keep a small notebook handy in your purse, your kitchen or bedside table. (Or all three!) Find ways to pre-plan in the midst of a busy day such as these ideas below:

• Take advantage of car pool lanes, breaks in fixing dinner or even those last minutes in bed while you watch the news to put down your thoughts and ideas you want to scrapbook.
• Try sketching out ideas for pages that you have ahead of time. Look to magazine ads and billboards around you for inspiration on layout sketches.
• Write down funny or insightful things your kids say in your journal. These quotes can be the perfect starting point for the journaling on your pages!

4. Make it easy for yourself:
You can get a lot more pages completed if you keep things simple in your scrapbooks.  Once you find a technique or style that you love, why not repeat it with different colors, papers or embellishments?

• Scraplifting, or mimicking something done on another person’s scrapbook, is a sincere form of flattery. Someone loves your page enough to want to make it themselves! Maybe you like the orientation on how they put their pictures or you appreciate their color palette. You can use their layout as inspiration for your own personal creation. Check out the creative gallery here for tons of layouts worth scraplifting!
• Scraplift yourself! Once you find a nice, simple design that works, simply flip the design and change out the papers and elements and you will have a completely different looking page.
  
  This layout about my hectic life can be easily changed by flipping the photo orientation, swapping out the circles for a more traditional border, replacing the journaling circle with a tag and placing the title in a block.

5. Don’t feel like you have to finish:
Give yourself permission to do part of a page! Often we don’t sit down to scrap unless we know we have time to work it from start to finish. By doing so we are missing out on those valuable moments that will add up if we will utilize them.

• Do what your time allows. Pick your papers and crop and mat your photos. If that’s all you get done that’s fine! You will be ready to go the next time your life gets a break.
• Take things out one step at a time. If you drag everything out to complete the page and then you are interrupted or run out of time it can lead to frustration.
• Work the basics on several pages. Put the photos, title and journaling on them and set them aside. When you have time to pull out embellishments and stickers you can add the “fun stuff” to several layouts at once without pulling it all out several times.
• Keep a file of your partially finished layouts so that you have them handy and the pieces don’t get lost within your crazy life!

Life is hectic. We are busy. But we can’t let that stand in the way of preserving our wonderful family memories.

Next time you have a few minutes, try implementing one of the family scrapbook tips I’ve discussed, such as prepping your photos or writing in your art journal. The small things you accomplish in these precious few minutes all add up to constructive time to work on your craft! These simple ideas can help you make the most of the time you do have and hopefully bring a little peace to your scrapbooking time.