A week or so ago I purchased from a fellow scrapper a copy of Stacy Julians "Photo Freedom" book. I tohught it would be interesting to read although I wasn't convinced it would be relevant to ME.
Well at the weekend I started to read it and on Monday, feeling poorly I had a lazy day and mooched around and read the rest of this book cover to cover. Then I made notes.
I was a little bit surprised to find that not only did I think it was relevant to me I actually was giving serious consideration to giving her Library of Memories \ Photo Freedom system a try.
As many scrappers will know there is often that dreaded feeling of not being "caught up" I thought i was pretty easy going with that problem so there wasn't a need for me to address that one. However, what I do have is a HUGE problem of two separate albums (well series of albums) one for each of my children. That is where my big problem lay. I started scrapping the year before I had Isabelle and I took a LOT of photos of her in her first year. Of course I took a lot of Olivia and many were better quality photos but with a toddler and a baby in terms of scrapping I was way less productive in terms of scrapping Olivias albums. I was shocked to see that when Olivia was one I had less than a quarter of the number of layouts of her first year than i had from Isabelles. Of course I then made a concerted effort to even things up but it is my big concern.
Sooooo, Stacys book has made me think about why I am scrapping (to preserve memories, to enjoy the therapy of crafting and for others to enjoy) I have often had the thought in my head of who will end up with the albums and this is where the separate albums problem comes in - I am going to make a concerted effort not to be so preoccupied with who ends up with the layouts (they may end up in a skip when I am gone!) but try to focus on the three reasons I listed above.
So I am thinking of keeping a "first year album for each of the girls (already completed and filed) and then rehoming everything beyond that and from now on in the Library of Memories style, it may work, it may not but it is totally reversible if I hate it!
To embrace Stacys method I have made a massive effort to organise my photos into storage binders (except I used Tesco slip in photo albums!) and I have set up my Category Drawers (except I used index card boxes) The principle of this is that I will approach the scrapping differently by using the category drawers I will make links and connections that wouldn't have been obvious if I was scrapping chronologically. The theory sounds great - I will let you know how it goes!
If you have a particular approach to scrapping and organising, or if you have tried (or not) the Library of Memories system and have any comments on it do leave a comment here, or post about it on your blog and link to your post in the comments box. I would love to hear what you think.