My brother in law is visiting from the States and one of the perks of having him come is that he can bring us a bunch of stuff that we have been missing! Parmesan cheese, fruit snacks, good English books. Oh the bliss! One of the first things on my list when I found out he was coming was LAYOUTS! Scrapbook Pictures has been running a sale on 8×8′s for just 99 cents (though I now see that they have officially changed their 8×8 price from $1.99 to $1.49, which isn’t bad!) My brother in law brought me about 150 layouts. Yippee! Now the hard part comes — organizing them and putting them into albums. It would be a MUCH easier process if I scrapped in order, but I don’t, and I never plan on starting. I know some scrappers do scrap in order, and that’s great. But here are my reasons for NOT scrapping in order (though I do put them in albums chronologically).
- If I don’t scrap in order, I never feel “behind.“ I take SO MANY pictures every month, and I always have. I didn’t start scrapping until 2004 — if I had gone back to the beginning I don’t think I would have ever been “caught up.” In my trying to catch up, I would miss the stories of the here and now.
- I think I would get bored. My attention span isn’t long and if I were scrapping the same time period all the time, I know I would lose interest. By scrapping whatever inspires me at the time, I stay motivated to scrap.
- I get to scrap photos when I am truly inspired and not just because they are “next in line.” Sometimes a photo speaks deeply to me — but I am not ready to scrap it. Sometimes I have a series of photos that I want to scrap but I haven’t found the perfect kit. Often, something I see in a magazine or online strikes me and I can then go back to a photo and scrap it. My favorite pages are the ones I am inspired to scrap, not the ones I “have” to scrap.
- By not scrapping in order, I get to relive memories whenever I want or need to. Lately, I have been having some pretty bad “India days” (days I miss India) and it has been very therapeutic for me to go back and scrap some of my India photos. It has met a real need in my heart and I love that.
- Sometimes, the best stories are told past tense. If we ever get “caught up” and then spend all our time scrapping “the here and now” we might miss some of the story. For example, on September 11th of this year I finally scrapped a layout about what September 11, 2001 meant to me. For me, the story was better told with eyes looking behind. All but the real story has fallen away, allowing me to tell the story as is in my heart right now.
- I make better use of my kits. Because I don’t scrap in order, I can take one kit and use it multiple times. Because the pages won’t fall anywhere near each other in my albums, it doesn’t matter if they use similar items or colors schemes. Be sure to come back on Wednesday when I will share a lot more on using kits multiple times!
So what about you? Do you scrap in order? Why or why not?
P.S. A BIG congrats to Tamara who was randomly selected to win a 5 pack of $10 coupons to sponsoring designer stores for her MORE WITH FOUR layout! Tamara, if you can email me using the contact button above, I will get your your coupons!
[...] You don’t need to scrap in order [...]
I don’t scrap in order either – I totally follow Cathy Zielske’s philosophy that photo albums are there for a reason, and scrapbooking is for really telling stories that speak to you. I do try and stay (relatively) current, but every so often I stumble upon an older photo and what it means to me just has to be put down on paper. I also blog regularly, so I know those stories are preserved and I won’t forget and can scrap them later. This art should be a form of therapy, not stress!
Scrap in chronological order? I can’t believe the idea! How would I catch up all the years that I have missed. My children are teenagers, and I have so many historic photos.. I mean a whole suitcase full of family albums that date back to the 1800s. I have enough to scrap for my whole life now, even if I didn’t download 1000 photos off my camera yesterday. (that’s cause I like that multi shot mode) But you made me think of something interesting. I always worry about reusing stuff in the next page I do, and that is because I am thinking about the wrong thing when i am scrapping. I am thinking about the gallery not the album.. which of course brings me back to printing. Haven’t printed a page in so long, but they opened a costco near us and I am hoping once they get it set up (i had to go in and ask for square formats – they told me that scrapbooking isn’t big in Australia so they hadn’t bothered)… so once they get it set up I must take in some pages to print. I plan on going this weekend, so maybe it is time to print for some albums! Cool idea. thanks
I don’t scrap in order for all of the reasons that you listed. I would have given up this hobby years ago if I had to do everything in order. I like the change of pace from scrapping photos of my son from two weeks ago to Christmas in 1978. It all works out in the end. Right?
where can we see all 150 of your pages?? LOL… are they in a gallery somewhere? I’d LOOOOVE to see them!!
And no, I don’t scrapbook in order… for the exact reasons you mentioned… thank you Stacy Julian for freeing me from that rut!
I totally agree!!
It has been so fun to read everyone’s responses. It is so neat to hear how everyone approaches scrapping. I will say that I am totally impressed with those of you who can not only not scrap in order, but not put them in your albums in order! I commend you for not caring — it would drive me batty! My biggest reason for putting them in my albums in order is because I don’t think I would ever be able to find a specific layout! I almost never just hand my albums to a a person to look through but often when we have people over a conversation gets started and I can say, “Oh, I have a picture of that” and I know right where to go.
Like Julia I prefer to scrap in, short, albums/events/single story. For the most part when I find a kit or graphic theme that’s right for a photo, it’s right for all the ones taken in the same moment or place. Albums are almost the only digitals that I print, aside from the cards.
But I never scrap chronologically. My mind’s all about my moods, so I scrap whatever I “feel” to relive or remember or taste again, and I don’t perform very well following a schedule. Besides I have tons of vintage and old photos to scan, so chronological order is out of question.
It’s so great to hear how other people scrapbook and their philosophy behind it all! I still do some paper pages, so I feel like I’m good about printing pictures. I download my camera monthly (at least) and then sort through, upload and order prints quarterly.
I totally agree! Sometimes hindsight really is 20/20 and you might have a different story to tell because of that.
So I may be one of the only digital scrapbookers who scrap in order!
No, all joking aside, I would say I kind of scrap in chronological order. When I made the switch from paper scrapping to digital scrapping I just felt that I still needed to work from then on. Now that is not to say that I don’t go to older pictures sometimes and scrap them (in retrospect), but mostly I work with what is in my picture folder. I am quite organized and I have a method to how I do it. I put the photos on my computer and then I just scrap with what is in those folders. About every 6 months I save photos to disks, so I try to have all my earlier stuff scrapped first. Now I still do sometimes scrap a picture right away, but the thing is, since I only print off pages a few times a year it works out if I do a LO of todays pictures before a LO of say a picture from 2 months ago. So when I say I am chronological it does not mean that I have to finish one “event”/photo folder before moving on to the next! I don’t view scrapbooking as something I HAVE to do at all – it is such a joy to me and it is such a memory thing to me! I personally don’t feel burdened at all by scrapping somewhat chronologically, but I can totally see why it would be burdensome to some! If I feel inspired by a kit or a challenge then I obviously go back to past pictures! I have about 300 pages that are waiting to be put in a book right now, just waiting for some new albums and I put them in relatively chronological order! (as chronological as you can get at least!) Very fun to hear how everyone does it!
I don’t scrap chronologically for the same reasons that you’ve already mentioned. Plus, that’s tyranny! Scrapbooking is a hobby and not something I HAVE TO do. I don’t scrap all my photos either. ::gasp::
Great post and thanks for sharing your perspective. I came to a similar conclusion. Prior to taking Stacy Julian’s Library of Memories class through Big Picture Scrapbooking, I was very tied to scrapping chronologically. Upon reading her philosophy, it hit me with the force of a locomotive that I was relating to scrapbooking as something I “had” to do, rather than as an art form or pleasurable hobby, and I spent more time feeling badly about it than enjoying it! So I did a complete 180 and set up my albums to be more thematic in nature, rather than chronological. (My one exception is that I do a Year in Review album each year to capture the higlights of each month. I found that satisfies my need for being able to see at a glance what happened when.) Now, the idea of getting “caught up” makes me incredibly uncomfortable. If I have nothing new to document, what does that say about the life I am living? I hope I always have memories and adventures to reflect on and, when I am ready, capture in some meaningful way through a page, album, etc.
I am so like you! I never scrap in order. Sometimes I have a kit I just have to scrap with and go looking for the pictures. Other times I have a picture I really want to scrap and go rummaging through my stash for the perfect scrap supplies.
For the most part I do scrapbook chronologically and I do feel like I’m always behind. I want to let go of that and everybody’s reasons for doing so make total sense.
But I get stuck because I do print my layouts and put them in albums. So if I don’t scrap in order, I find myself having to constantly rearrange. For my 2008 book I didn’t go in order all the time so I put all the pages in whatever order I did them and then when I had finished the entire year I took them all out and rearranged them just once. That was better, but if I wanted to show it to anybody it was in no kind of order. I guess I just need to stop caring about that!!!
I also don’t have kids yet so I feel like I can and SHOULD keep up chronologically. LOL
I wish somebody would just slap some sense into me already and get me to stop caring and just enjoy the scrapping!
I still feel bad that I haven’t finished my Greece/Turkey album from my trip 2 1/2 years ago, let along my wedding and honeymoon trip from earlier this year!!
I used to scrapbook in order chronologically. It worked for that time in my life. Each kid has their own albums and then we have family ones as well. Back when I only had 2 children, it was quite easy to “keep up” with their albums. I started scrapbooking in 1995 when my 2nd child was born and I had to go back and redo baby #1′s and my wedding pictures cause they were all in magnetic albums. I felt I was going at a good pace, but then when baby #3 came along, it was chaos! I don’t know why, seemed funny that all of a sudden I didn’t have enough time and was super busy, etc. So then I just scrapbooked when and what I wanted to, and I also started taking pics of daily things and not just events like I used to which added alot more pics to the stash. It worked and as more kids were added, it was the system I needed. Scrapping chronologically just didn’t make much sense anymore. I really enjoy scrapping “out of order” now and feel much more at ease and calm about it and like you, it takes some time to put all the layouts in order, but I prefer it much more that way. And, baby #1 does not have completed albums, she is in high school now and I still have some childhood, sports, friends, and jr. high layouts to do for her, but it’s ok, I am not worried and when the urge strikes to do those pics, I will be ready and it will be nice to go back in time and remember the little girl that she was.
I love the way I scrap – definitely NOT chronologically! I place my pages in albums according to the order in which they were scrapped. If I ever get totally caught up with my scrapping, I might decide to organize them into chronological albums or reprint layouts and place them into gift albums. However, I always say that people can’t doze off when viewing my albums because just when they view a layout of my daughter at 2, WHAM! now she’s 15 and then BAM! now she’s 7!
I also realize in retrospect, when browsing through photo folders, that I want to do a page about something from years ago that didn’t strike me as significant at the time.
I don’t scrap in order . . . and I like the variety that adds to my albums. I go through phases where I do pages very similar to each other, and if I only worked chronologically it would be soooo obvious.
I also will use the same layout for multiple events or albums – but when they’re spaced out in different years, you don’t notice. 
I meant chronology is not a cool way to scrapbook. Oy!
When I read Stacy Julian’s Photo Freedom, I knew that chronology was a cool way to scrapbook.
LOL! I actually scrapbook in albums. I tell a large story all at once. I actually don’t do many single page layouts. I come up with an idea for an album, (like Birthdays, or I pick a person (my kids, my husband, myself, my parents) or vacation, or summer, or everyday life) and tell the story in multiple layouts, photos, pages and put it in a book/album. I like things organized and coordinated and I like the stories to have a flow, so I scrap in albums/book style.
So, my photos may be from 1980, 2009, 2002, 2005 but my story and layouts and kit is all organized and it flows for me. Sometimes it takes me a year to finish an album, sometimes several years, sometimes I can finish in one sitting. But that’s me, and it’s how my scrapping reflects a part of who I am.
I took a beginning scrapbooking class from a gal who thoroughly believed in chronological scrapbooking. She dedicated a lot of her time in the class to teaching us how to organize our photos and how to put them in books. Those were the days though of the Creative Memories strap hinge albums when you couldn’t move your pages around. It kind of made sense in those days to do it chronologically.
Now though, with newer albums that allow easily moveable pages and even better with digital pages, you don’t have to be tied into chronological order and it’s absolutely FREEING. I do still believe that your photos should be organized and stored safely and all of that but as far as scrapping goes? I love that the “rule” of chronological scrapping is a very old school rule.
Sometimes I think that it would make organization sooo much easier if I scrapped chronologically, but it makes so much more sense for me not to (for many of the same reasons you mentioned!)
I agree that I stay more motivated and feel less pressure to stay “caught up” when I scrap whatever I feel like scrapping vs. what’s next on the list.
I gave up chronological scrapping years ago. Despite good intentions, I rarely get time or take time to scrap so when I do, I want to work with photos I love not just the next ones in line.