I was looking around at some of my favorite sites this morning..and saw an interesting post on a blog from a MM magazine editor. She talked about scrapping when you don't have pictures. Well, that's not a new idea...basically, scrapping your memorabilia, journaling, etc. I've done this many times, but it's always nice to be reminded that scrapbooking is about many things; pictures being only one of them.
But this also got me thinking about something that I've been doing for years - in September it will be 12 years to be exact! What happens when you are caught up with your scrapbooking? Or just have a great idea for some awesome new paper, but no pictures to put on it? My answer: Pre-make your layouts! I even go one step further...I have been in a page exchange group for almost 12 years now. I started with a few ladies that lived on my street just after my third son was born. We were all relatively "green" to the NEW way of scrapbooking, but we really wanted to do it. We were all very busy moms with small children and not alot of time to devote to scrapbooking, but we knew that it was important to preserve our family's memories. We had all been involved in other "exchanges" (ie: recipe, family home evening kits, cards, etc) so we put that same idea to scrapbooking. The five of us met once a month to exchange our pages and to crop. It worked out great! And once word got out about what we were doing - our little group of 5 expanded into, at one time, a group of 30! Since that time, our group has dwindled into a smaller managible size...some ladies have come and some have gone, and then only to return again...now our group hovers around 12 to 15 ladies at any given time!
I make the same layout 15 times and then send it to my friend in Utah (where my exchange originated) and every month, she sends me 14 layouts (+ I keep one of my own) - that I didn't have to come up with - that are, by the way, AWESOME! It is amazing to get this package every month - it's like a Christmas present in my mailbox once a month! The themes and styles differ depending on the month and the person. It's so awesome to be able to develop pictures and then sit down and pop them on pages, journal and put them in the album! And when I don't have pictures for the pages right away, I have this pre-made page bin that I store my pages in by theme, until I do have pictures for them! FYI - I took over 50 pictures of my son's 8th grade graduation & dinner last Thursday, and those pictures are already on pages, ready to go into his book!
Here's the bin I store my pages in, until I use them.
Samples of some pre-made pages I haven't used yet!
If you don't want to go as far as doing a page exchange, but you have some great ideas for that new Elsie paper that just came out (just an example!) - then scrap it and save it! And if you're worried you'll never have pictures for a particular theme, then stick to themes you know you will have pictures for! Everyone has a birthday - there's six in my household every year - Christmas, Easter, Halloween, 4th of July, Summer, Water Fun, Thanksgiving...the list is endless! So don't let the fact that you don't have pictures, stop you from scrappin'!
Happy Scrappin'!
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