Ali Edwards blogged today about her current project, transitioning layouts from 28 albums into a new format. The photos of her stacks of layouts are amazing. Since she started scrapbooking she has always scrapped in a random order and then put her layouts in her albums in the order that she designed them. They were a hodge podge of topics and time periods. She is now in the process of arranging her layouts into a more sensible order: chronologically by topic.
My Album Topics
Reading Ali’s post reminded me that I wanted to share my album topics with you after releasing the Video, Inside The Album. Ali and I are using a similar system, which Stacy Julian inspired. I have multiple albums that fit into a series of topics. Here they are:
This is Us
1. One for each member of our family. (For example, “This is Trinity”).
2. This is Us, Together. (Layouts about more than just one of us).
3. Israel and I. (Anything about the two of us together, including our travels, gets its own special place).
People We Love
1. Grandpa Jerry and Nana Debbie
2. Grandma and Grandpa Buckland
3. The Hyman’s (Layouts featuring extended family on my husband’s side. Currently this goes in the same album with his parents. I will separate them if the album gets too full).
4. The Buckland’s (Layouts featuring extended family from my side).
5. Our friends
6. Keim ‘N’ Hyman (The Keims are our closest friends of almost 11 years…we have lots of pictures with them so they need their own album).
This is home-Layouts about our home.
Places We Go/Things We Do
1. Around town.
2. Vacations
3. Adventures In Geocaching-Geocaching is one of our favorite family activities. I bought a smaller 8×8 album for it. I could mix this topic into one of the other albums, but we have so many pictures of this activity alone, I think it deserves its own book.
4. School
5. Extra-curricular Activities
Holidays
1. Christmas
2. Halloween
3. Darwin Day-This will be a smaller album.
4. Random Holiday Memories-I am still unsure about this one, but I think it will hold layouts of all the other holidays not listed above. I will eventually separate Easter if there are enough layouts).
Allow For Flexibility
I need to go back through my first albums and reorganize them, just like Ali. But there are a few years in the middle of my scrapbooking life when I used Creative Memories albums and I can’t switch those to my new system.
In my opinion, Creative Memories has the highest quality albums in the industry, but I regret having used them. They are inflexible when it comes to switching the order or location of your layouts because you work directly on their pages, back to back. I would like to separate those layouts into my separate album topics, but because the pages are back to back with random topics, I can’t do it.
And that is why I have learned to look for flexibility in the albums I use. By using 3-ring binders with page protectors, you can easily rearrange your albums if you ever change how you want to arrange them. It’s a wonderful quality to be able to get a new perspective and change your mind. So even if you are sure you will always do things the way you are doing them now, remember that I was sure, too. I’ve changed my system three times now.
I hope it was helpful to see how I arrange my layouts. Do you have album topics that are different from mine? If so, please leave a comment and share with us!
Update: I added a couple topics that I had forgotten but remembered when Kari Daverson left her comment. I will probably separate the Places We Go and the Things We Do albums when they get full enough. Kari mentioned a topic she has that I really like. She said, “My favorite section is the Home Time section in the Things We Do albums. That covers everything from game nights, family movie nights, laundry day etc. My kids love those layouts most of all it seems.” What a great idea!
