Scrapbook Organization

From LoveToKnow Scrapbooking

Scrapbook organization remains a challenging task for many crafters. When it’s so much fun to design new layouts, who has time to think about how to organize them? If you want to be able to find a particular page in the future, however, you’ll need to come up with some sort of method for organizing your scrapbook album.

Organizing photos by subject is a good choice if you are scrapbooking for several children.

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What’s the Right Choice for Me?

Choosing a method of scrapbook organization is entirely a matter of personal preference. Just as some scrapbookers prefer simple layouts and others enjoy a collage effect, organizational tactics can vary. As long as you can find your layouts when you want to look at them, the exact system you choose is irrelevant.

If you’re having trouble choosing one particular method of organizing your scrapbook layouts, it may be helpful to invest in an album with a 3-ring binding closure. This will make it easier to rearrange your pages as the mood strikes. Eventually, you’ll find a method that works best for your unique style.

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Methods of Scrapbook Organization

Scrapbooks can be organized chronologically, by subject, or by theme. Each method of organization has its own unique set of advantages and disadvantages.

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Chronologically

For many people, organizing a scrapbook chronologically seems to be the most logical choice. In most cases, you can just allow for one completed scrapbook album per year.

While it’s true that chronological organization is a fairly simple system, it should be noted that this method can be difficult to maintain if you’re working on a project that contains several old photos that you have no exact dates for. Chronological scrapbook organization may also be a problematic choice if you like to work on your photos as the mood strikes. For example, if you buy new embellishments for a Christmas layout, you may feel like working on those photos before you tackle your Thanksgiving pages. Additionally, some scrapbookers feel that the chronological approach creates unnecessary stress when you constantly seem to be “behind” on your scrapbooking projects.

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By Subject

If the chronological approach to scrapbook organization is too linear for your tastes, you may wish to try organizing your albums by subject. With this approach, for example, you can create one album devoted to family vacations throughout the years, a separate album devoted to holiday celebrations, and an album for each member of your family.

Obviously, organizing your scrapbook by subject can be a good option if you have children at home and plan to someday allow them to take layouts from their childhood. However, if you have photos that feature several different people, you’ll need to come up with a good system for determining how to file each layout in order to avoid the tedious job of scrapping the same picture for more than one album.

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By Theme

One newer trend in the world of scrapbooking involves organizing your scrapbook albums into themes. For example, love, friendship, and family history are popular themes for scrapbookers of all ages.

Scrapbook organization by theme works especially well if you tend to create layouts that mix photos from different times and places together with journaling that acts as a link between the images. For example, a family history layout that pairs photos of your mother, you, and your daughter playing with the same special teddy bear would be very difficult to classify under a chronological or subject oriented system.

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A Hybrid Approach

If strictly chronological, subject, or themed albums don’t seem to fit your needs, you may want to consider a hybrid approach to scrapbook organization. For example, you could create an album for each member of your family and organize layouts within the album in chronological order with a special section of thematic family history pages at the very end. Scrapbooking is all about expressing your creativity, so don’t feel as if you need to be confined to one particular organizational system.

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