Helpful Advice of best way to start

Hi everyone..
I'm a newbie to forums & scrapbooking for that matter.. I have been collecting products for close to 2years as I think I'm a bit obsessive with wanting everything at my fingertips before I start, also needed to save for my Pazzle's Inspiration LOL

I'm wondering if anyone can share advice on starting? Do you do chronoligical scrapbooking or by theme? I'm thinking I might do both?
Say my little girl who's 2 in 10 days her albums and her soon to be baby brother or sister's albums would be chronologically in order but also thinking of doing things such as a zoo album, engagement, wedding, school awards & so forth for each baby (when they're older LOL)

Does anyone has suggestions, advice? More album ideas would also be greatly appreciated
Would love to hear how you scrap your albums too

Thanks so much in advance,
Jess

Jess, I do both kinds. Themed books when I have a big event and a lot of photos. I also keep a chronological scrapbook during the year that I keep the layouts with the smaller number of photos or events that just have 2 or 4 page layouts.

For instance, my Road Trip last year was 2 months long and I went to about 10 different places, each place got it's own themed album. Then for my chronological book, I did a 2-page collage layout with a map of the US as background, and a small photo that represented each location and a journaling comment about each. That way I sort of tied the two types together. I can point you to a link on my website if you are interested in looking at that.

You could do a chronological book for each child and include your themed album photos in a collage for each child which focuses on them for each themed event.

Diana

A good way to start, "warm up" if you will, would be to an album about a specific event. For example, a trip to the zoo.

Print your photos from the event, and edit out all the unflattering ones. Arrange them in a order that makes sense. Maybe make notes about how what pages you will want to do. For example:

-getting ready to go
-arriving at the zoo
-monkeys
-elephants
-lions
-having lunch
-hippos
-tigers
-heading home

Then, look at your photos and see what kind of colours would work best. Your own prefernces and style would influence your decision too. Do you want muted colours? Brights?

Now start shopping your stash. Do you have enough cardstock, patterned paper, and embellishments? Pull out everything that you think will work. Do you have enough to get started? If not, time to shop!

If you are going to an actual store, take your photos to help with colours.

Go shopping and get patterned paper, cardstock that coordinates, embellishmenst, and extras like ribbon/fibre. Look for zoo theme stuff that matches. Don't forget to get adhesive!

Next, either using sketches or your embellishments, start assembling!

I have several theme albums, wedding, trips ect. I also have a general album that I just put in layouts that I have done for me. I have an album for DD that is a bit of a hodge podge, but I am going to go back and do 1 layout for each month and milestone. Example, first food, crawling, walking, 1 month, 2 months, ect.

Everything I scrapbook is chronological. The wedding is in a book by itself but falls in chronological order. Same with our trips. One book is 46 day trip around South America but it lines up in chronological order. Same with our other trips. Most have their own books but they are on the shelf in order.

Then I have a book for each of my boys from when they were younger.

Their more recent stuff is in my chronological books.

Thank you all so much, I love the zoo album ideas, I'll be sure to take many pictures on our first trip with my daughter for her birthday next week

My next problem is, when baby number 2 arrives in 12weeks... As I want them each to have a baby album, and then I was thinking I could easily fill 1-2 albums of their first year, and then start doing one album every 2 years after that?

But what do I do when I have a photo of both of the them together? LOL
Do I do a layout of those photos for each of their albums,or do a I start a sibling scrapbook?
As I was already thinking of a family album but they will be photos that include all of us.
For instance my daughter's first hold, do I do 2 seperate LOs one for each of their albums? LOL
I know I'm procastinating but I use CM albums and they delete colours every so often so I need to know how many to buy LOL

And with professional photos I have done of my babies, I have about 3 different lots of my little girl done, and plan to do the same with each baby but do I scrapbook these in chronologically in their albums or start a "professionals" albums?

Okay.. question overload - will wait for those responses first

Thanks again ladies, you're being an awesome help & are all so nice!!

• Diana2050 Said:

if I had pictures with both in them, I duplicated the picture so they would both have it in their album but you can scrap them identical.

I have a lot of stuff on my site, check the Nav bar on the left or do a search in the right column search box.

the Road Trip Scrapbook starts here.
http://www.scrapbook-advice.com/Road-Trip-Scrapbook.html#axzz1QrKx4JwM
the page is quite long, but the last pair of layouts on the page are the collage layouts that went into my chronological scrapbook. I did these digitally so copying them was easy to add them to each individual themed book as well.

I have some ideas for laying out your scrapbook room at :
http://www.scrapbook-advice.com/Scrapbook-Supply-Storage.html#axzz1QrKx4JwM


As for the Quick Quotes, they have a show that I go to in Atlanta, GA and Charlotte, NC. But check this scrapbook.com site first to see if there are any Quick Quotes products listed for sale here. Otherwise I will need an email address for you to send you the link.

Diana
http://www.scrapbook-advice.com

One of the best pieces of advice that I was given when I started was to start working on layouts that are current. You are still excited and the memories are fresh. Once you have a good handle on how you will scrapbook and what your style is then work back to get yourself caught up.....further to that, you're never really caught up so don't get yourself discouraged.

I've heard that true - to start with the most recent.

I'm about 30 pages away from being caught up - that is my goal for July although a few more have already been added! However, at the end of the month I would like a clean slate!

I have 10-12 hours a day to scrapbook every day we are in town so that makes it possible. No kids, only a husband to distract me. My son is 34 but we built him a house on our property. Saw him this morning but he is at his house now. So he isn't a distraction.

I have a scrapbook representing each year, that way I can remember what all I did throughout the year. If there's a big event, vacation, wedding, etc. I will do an individual scrapbook. I went to doing the yearly ones just because I was taking up too much space in my house!

I scrap my favorite pictures of my kids first, both boys 4 and 17 months,and i keep those layouts in my "favorite"album.Then I start on other types of pictures that I like scrapping least,,like newborn baby pics because I don't really like the "baby theme" stuff

I scrapbook mostly my kids. I keep 1 box for each year, with 12 envelopes in it, 1 for every month of the year. Each month I print out my favorite phots and put them in one of the envelopes. Then I can just pull out a group of photos and I know when they were taken! I decided to make a book for each kid with just their 1 year photos and scrapped at least one layout per month (depending on how many things we did that month). Now all the layouts go in one book using the same concept. When that book is full I will just start a new one. PS - I found the D-Ring binders are the best...sometimes I have 30 layouts in 1 book and sometimes 10, I don't have to worry about adding those spacers in the binding! It hold everything!

When you are scrapbooking your kids, please journal. My kids look at thier old books where there was no journaling and anything. They have a million questions about where they were and what they were doing - who some people are.

They want to hear the stories of that babyhood and childhood and I made the mistake of not scrapping.

With my granddaughter, everything will be scrapped in detail so she will have all her stories!

Thank you again ladies!
Love reading all your responses.. I've decided each baby will have a baby album (including their birth story & pregnancy etc) & one for each year up until the age of 5 & then my annual family album (done in the project life way) will take over their accomplishments & their school albums will get the rest.
I stumbled across Ali Edwards website & Becky Higgins & have been totally inspired to do my family albums in project life format - I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE START OF 2010!!!

Does anyone know a way I could include a photo of my daughter's umbillical cord in her album? (it sounds yuk but it was incredibly wrong which then my mum told me so was mine when I was born so it has a good story) and I'd love to know when her first girl is born if she has the same length LOL

Oh & Henri Jean, I cannot agree more with the journalling - I missed out on photos of bring my daughter home & her first night at home due to utter exhaustion but I couldn't not have something to tell her this story so I making a page that won't have photos but will have the story
Journalling makes a scrapbook special IMO

Make up a scrapbook for yourself. Layouts which are special for each child can be photographed and printed in a photo book for the child.

Or if you are a keen scrapper you can make multiple layouts of the same event keeping each child's point of view in mind.

I'm making a mini album right now of DD's holiday in the snow so she can take it to school. Some photos I have printed off twice so DS can take a mini to his school as well.

I'm only doing it this way because the snow was in an area which does not get snow and it was a once in a lifetime event.