I learned from my mom, and tend to do things how she did...she has about two dozen albums from 25years and 9 kids...
I buy BIG FAT binders. I do keep a little baby book for eah child for about their first year, but otherwise everything is in the big family books. Occasionally we get a special binder for a special trip (such as going to Europe for amonth when i was in college). My mom has started keepign a separate book for the weddings (two of us are married) but otherwise, everything is in the big books. Each binder tends to hold a couple of years of photos (on average...)
When I scrapbook, my goal is to display our photos and other memorabelia in an accessible manner--but my books are about the photos. I usually have 3-5 photos per page, sometimes more. Every once in a while (maybe one of every 50 pages?) there is a photo taht deserves to be by itself...but that is just so so so rare for me. I almsot never do it. SO, I'm always looking for ways to get lots of photos on the page.
I use only certain types of embellishments: stickers, die-cuts, and borders. Plus pens and scissors of course. I don't do anything 3-D (no eyelets, ribbons, buttons, etc). I just decided I had to draw a line somewhere, and IMO using the bulky stuff takes away from the photos. So I keep it strictly FLAT. I think bulky things kinda destroy the whole page-protector concept anyway.
Occasinoally I browse throgh a scrapbookign magazine or something to get ideas, but I rarely end up liking anything from them. They are just too over the top for me.
I always try to save things that go with the pictures--for example, I saved the hospital bracelets when ds was born, and they are in the book by the pictures. i save ticket stubs, so next to the picture of me on the eiffel tower is the ticket stub... Those other thigns are not acid-free, so I just make sure they do not touch the actual photos.
Like a pp said, I love adding journaling with the pages.
At the end of each year, I take all the photos people sent with their christmas cards (plus wedding/baby announcements form the year, etc) and make a couple pages of "friends and family". I like to keep the photos, and that was how I decided to do it. If I get an announcement to a wedding that I'm not able to attend, for example,t hen it doesn't really fit in with the sequence of photos during the year...but if I have a designated place at the end of the year for all that stuff, I just think it flows better...
I also like scrapbooking with others, or looking at other's books. It helps inspire me. I find that when I do a whole bunch of pages all together, they tend to look the same...so I like to see what others are doing, and/or skip around (do a couple pages for teh baby book, then a couple from a vacation, etc) to keep things broken up. Otherwise I'll be goingthrough a book and think "wow, I was really into circles when I made that" or something. kwim? It's not as visually appealing or interesting.
My biggest tip would be to cut less rather than more... Trim photos, sure...but don't cut them WAY down very often. Every now and ten it's nice to cut out the person, but much of the time that ends up looking choppy imo...so i tend to use ovals and circles and nice straight edges about 98% of the time. I do use the fancy scissors on photos now and then, but mostly I use them for borders and things like that.
Hey, can we have a thread for sharing favorite scrapbook pages we've done? Share the inspiration?! That would be AWESOME!!!
Here's the problem:
I am scared it will just be alot of $ wasted.
: ) should I do a separate album for that or (try) to include it in baby book?
