Organize your photos for scrapbooking

Ever feel like you’ve hit a wall when it comes to scrapbooking? The last few months, I have sat in my scrapbook room, looked at all of my supplies, flipped through magazines and the creative juices are just not flowing. I even felt so lost in my room, I started knitting a scarf.  I got pretty far with the scarf too, but  I really wanted to scrap, I just needed some motivation!

Then I remembered why I scrapbook in the first place - pictures!  I love pictures. Taking them, organizing them, showing them to people and ultimately - scrapping them.  As I thought about my scrapbooking block - one thought came to mind. My photos were in disarray.  I hadn’t printed pictures for a while, the ones that were printed were a mess, and a lot of pics were still on my digital camera card.  The thought - ORGANIZE PHOTOS FOR SCRAPBOOKING - flashed through my head.  It was time. This was just what I needed to help my lack of motivation.

Once your photos are organized, it gives you the motivation to make that first page, then another, and another.  Going through a stack of photos also may remind you of some pictures you didn’t know you had.  Sometimes I will see a picture that I took months ago and it will remind me of something else that I wanted to scrap.  I also have been known to snap shots of my son with a scrapbook page already in mind. You might say I am taking the picture to fit the page or layout I have already planned - guilty!  The problem is, if I don’t write these great ideas down when I think of them - they are almost always forgotten until I come across the photo, sometimes months later.

There are many ways to get your photographs organized - you could organize by date, by event, by person, by album, etc. It really depends on what is the best for you.  I tend to sort photos into groups that could or would be in a layout together. They don’t all have to end up in the same layout. Often times I use the same group of photos for my son’s album and our family album - two different layouts for two different albums, similar, if not the same, pics.  I keep a notebook that is comprised of lists of page ideas organized by which album they will go in. I often times journal along with the page ideas because it seems like sometimes the story gets lost or diluted after weeks, months or years of the picture sitting in a box or on a computer.

Once I started going through the stacks of photos, I came up with some great ideas for layouts and was sure to write them down in my scrapping journal.  I can’t wait to get started on my next page, I now have many more ideas and pictures to choose from!