We are now on Part 5, the last segment of this series on becoming a guilt-free scrapbooker.
If you are just joining us now you’ll want to start at the beginning of this journey with Part 1.
In this post I’ll share PRACTICAL tips on how you can use the steps we’ve completed and implement some new ideas for scrapbooking without guilt.
Organizing Your Scrapbooks
Are you a chronological scrapbooker? Do you sort the pages you create into yearly scrapbooks, putting labels on the front like 2011, 2012, 2013? Are you ALREADY behind with this year’s scrapbook?
When I started scrapbooking I tried, and failed miserably, to scrapbook chronologically. I thought that was the ONLY way! I felt guilty ALL of the time! I never got enough done, and I didn’t know how I would EVER catch up!
I didn’t know how to live our life and capture our precious moments in the scrapbooks, WITHOUT GUILT! There were just so many things I wasn’t getting done! I didn’t scrapbook Christmas. I didn’t get around to scrapbooking my son’s birthday. I developed fantastic photos from our family vacation, but I COULN’T even start on those, because I NEVER finished the last trip from two years ago.
Thankfully I was introduced to a new way of thinking. I was introduced to a way to scrapbook the memories I wanted to, WHEN I wanted to. I was introduced to GUILT-FREE SCRAPBOOKING!
Here’s the secret. It’s so simple you’ll kick yourself for not thinking of it sooner. 😉
Don’t scrapbook chronologically.
I know that right now you’re thinking, “Yeah, right.” with a disgusted, sarcastic tone in your voice. Or, you are thinking, “How will my scrapbooks make any sense if they aren’t in order?”
It’s so easy!
There’s a way to organize your scrapbooks, that is not chronological! Try sorting them by category.
- Family
- Friends
- Travel
- Christmas
- One book for each of the kids
- My childhood
As soon as I sorted my scrapbooks like this, the guilt disappeared! Now, I wasn’t on a timeline. I wasn’t on a schedule, and I was NEVER behind! I can scrapbook whatever I want, whenever I want and I know that I can capture the special moments of our family and it WILL BE ENOUGH!
I know that I will ALWAYS have more memories to scrapbook. I also know that by not feeling guilty about what I haven’t done, I am allowing myself to appreciate the stuff I have accomplished.
I have the freedom to scrapbook my most current photos, the ones that inspire me right now. I have the freedom to scrapbook photos from 5, 10 or 20 years ago if that is the story I’d like to tell right now. I know that no matter what I choose to scrapbook it will have a home in an album where it makes sense.
You might be wondering how I came up with this GENIUS way of organizing my scrapbooks, and I will tell you this: I DIDN’T! I met an amazing lady named Stacy Julian who changed the way I scrapbook. I don’t use all of Stacy’s tips for scrapbooking, but her advice helped me find my own way of scrapbooking, to find a way that works for me. I adapt new ideas to make them fit my life. If you’d like to learn more of Stacy’s method for organizing albums AND sorting your photos you should read her book or take her workshop!
Find the Fun!
Now we will talk tips on getting that list done, without the stress and guilt!
In Part 2 we talked about your scrapbooking personality. Are you a speedy White Rabbit, an artistic Cheshire Cat, a distracted Mad Hatter, or a perfectionist Queen of Hearts? Perhaps you have a combination of these personalities. Here’s some things to try that will help you step out of your ‘normal’ way of scrapbooking. Challenge yourself to try something new.
Tips to challenge your inner White Rabbit.
For the White Rabbit scrapper completing a page quickly isn’t your problem. Is your guilt coming from not telling the stories you want to share? Don’t let completing the page be the sole focus of your layouts, be sure that you are sharing your story. Try letting the journaling be the focus of your page, instead of the photo. Use a journaling prompt as the starting point your page, rather than a photo. You can get more info about this in my post about making connections in journaling HERE. You might also want to read Your Story Matters. This eBook gives you meaningful prompts to help you share your story in your scrapbook.
Click here to find out more about Your Story Matters.
Tips to challenge your inner Cheshire Cat.
The Cheshire Cat provides Alice with insight into the way Wonderland works. He sees things differently and challenges perception. I think of an artist as someone who sees things differently. As an artist it is easy to get caught up in making your scrapbooks beautiful and creative, often at the expense of plenty of time! If you’d like to speed up your creative process you might want to pick up a few techniques from the speediest scrapper I know, Lain Ehmann. Lain’s class, “Scrap Like the Wind!” teaches you 12 steps to faster pages.
To learn how to Scrap Like the Wind click here!
Tips to challenge your inner Mad Hatter.
Distraction and a lack of focus prevent the Mad Hatter from finishing his cup of tea. If you are a distracted scrapbooker there might be a few things holding you back. Is your scrap space disorganized? Do you find yourself cleaning and sorting instead of scrapping? Do you know that you purchased the perfect embellishment, but it will take you 2 hours just to find it? It’s time to break out from the chaos of your inner Mad Hatter and get that scrap space organized! You can find organizational ideas under the Organization tab at the top of the page. New tips are being posted regularly!
Tips to challenge your inner Queen of Hearts.
People might look at the Queen of Hearts in a negative way, they think of her as bossy and unkind. (She wants to chop off everyone’s head!) However, she is actually just a perfectionist gone wild. She wants everything to be PERFECT. The roses must be red. You must follow her rules when playing croquet, even if she changes her mind as to what those rules may be. I’m not suggesting that you are like that at all, but if your perfectionism holds you back from completing a layout I have some suggestions for you.
- Watch this video with Stacy Julian.
- Make a mini-album in an hour in the One and Done class by Laura Denison. If you MUST stick to a time limit (set a timer) you’ll force yourself to work through those perfectionist traits! Click here to Register for One and Done.
Guilt-Free Scrapbooking: Hooray!!
Over the last five days we have gone through many important steps on the way to becoming a guilt-free scrapper. Here’s a quick recap:
- Defining your reason for scrapbooking
- Figuring out your scrapbooker personality
- Embracing your scrapbooking personality
- Your scrapbooking goals
- How to deal with so many photos
- Reality check
- Re-examine your expectations
- Finding more time to scrapbook
- Organizing your scrapbooks
- Tips for challenging White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts scrapbookers.
I hope that some of the ideas have made you think about how you scrapbook and why you have felt guilty. I hope you will try to embrace some new ways of thinking and perhaps gain a few tips from acknowledging your scrapbooking personality. I hope you’ll find ways to adapt some of this information to make it useful in your life. Remember to use your personality as a guide not to restrict you, but so that you can reach out and try new things, ideas and styles. Most of all, I hope the information I have shared has helped you to feel less guilt on your scrapbooking adventure!
Go forward, WITHOUT GUILT, and share your memories creatively in your scrapbooks!
P.S. Don’t forget to check back next week for time-saving scrapbooking ideas!
P.P.S. Don’t forget to subscribe to my email list. I don’t spam, but I will share more useful scrapbooking tips like you found here today! (Enter your email in the pink and blue box on the top right of the page!)
P.P.P.S. Leave me a comment telling me the best tip you’ve received for becoming a guilt-free scrapbooker.
Comments on this entry are closed.
What a woderful series. I am a Mad Hatter in my scrapbooking. This is a great resource. Gotta bookmark this.
If you are a Mad Hatter you probably have a fair bit of Cheshire Cat too! I know you like to get pretty artistic and creative! Do you have an organized scrap space? I know that when my space is clean I’m a lot less distracted!
Mad Hatter here too. Finally organized my scrap space and was feeling overwhelmed about where to start. Chronological or not. I love your idea of the Themes. (I kicked myself 😉). This was great advice. Thank you.
Yay! I’m so glad to hear! It’s still working for me after scrapping like this for many years, so I hope you’ll see the same success Michelle!
Tons of great advice in your series of Guilt Free Scrapbooking that really can help ! And I love all the resources you shared…thanks so much for that as well. My aha moment was to NOT force myself to scrapbook chronologically…took the pressure right off, I have more fun when I do get a few moments to work on scrapbook pages.
Thanks for sharing your AHA moment with us! I think by not scrapbooking chronologically I can make more meaningful scrapbook pages.
This is a great series Alice! This last one is chock full of good tips and resources. I find that I am a mixture of the styles depending on what else is going on in my life!
I love how you related that back to what is going on in your life, that definitely has an impact!
Thanks for such a wonderful series. My husband and I have had to shift hoouses several times in the last 6 years. I have received constant critisim by family, and to a certain extent my husband, for all my craft stuff. Along with all the other stuff I have. Thanks for helping me to see that I don’t have to feel guilty about wanting to scrapbook and have lots of stuff to do it with. I have also been told numerous times that I don’t need a room or a place to scrapbook as it is a luxury, give it up they say, a larger house is too expensive. I have decided to ignore them now because scrapbooking unleashes my creativity and a special room gives me my space to create, have time out and relax.
Maureen, you made my day! I’m so glad I could help you feel less guilty about scrapbooking! I wish you all the best in setting up your new space. I’ll be unleashing a tour of my workshop soon, and I’ll be sharing my organizing tips. Thanks for visiting and leaving me a comment! I hope you’ll subscribe to my newsletter to keep up with all of the scrappy advice and tips that are coming up!
Hi Alice, what a great series, love how you’ve described the different personalities! I am something of a Queen of Hearts with a Chessire Cat inner. I have tons of idea but I always worry about not being able to execute them perfectly and therefor I have trouble starting anything!
What works for me are immovable deadlines. I make three layouts a month at least because I have given empty calendars to my parents, my MIL and ourselves. I send everyone a layout to stick on the calendat before the month starts. It helps me just finish it. And I have started to respect the importance of practice in order to become (yes, I’d still like to be) perfect! I am slowly accepting that I have to make something/anything in order to learn.
LOAD has really helped to let go of the desire to scrap chronologically and I really like it. But the daily deadline is not something I want to keep up after this months is over, there is not a lot of time left for anyting else and that’s not quite the life I am looking for.
I agree that deadlines are great for achieving my scrapbooking goals. Providing monthly layouts for a calendar is a good idea. I like to take classes to keep me motivated too. When I learn new things I get excited about scrapbooking and scrapbook more.
I found that LOAD was an amazing learning experience! I loved knowing that it is possible to scrapbook every day, at least for a month. I would not be able to keep up that pace every day forever, and many sacrifices had to be made to make it work for the month. I appreciate the lessons I took away from LOAD and the big beautiful pile of layouts was a huge bonus!
Thanks for your comment. Don’t let your Queen of Hearts be too much of a dictator!
Alice.
Reading this post was extremely timely for me right now. I have been feeling very guilty over the lack of time to scrapbook lately. I have had time to shop for scrapbooking supplies but no time to use them. I have even stopped taking pictures because the thought of having more to scrapbook seemed way too overwhelming. I needed to hear this today, thank you. I will work on not feeling guilty about this and getting more done.
Julie I’m so glad you found your way here! I’m thrilled to hear that this will help you relieve some of that guilt. I hate hearing that scrapbookers feel guilty. Scrapbooking your memories should be something to be enjoyed. I hope I can help you find the fun in scrapbooking! 🙂
Thanks Alice, I think as wives, mothers, etc. we always feel guilty about most things! Scrapbooking is one of my greatest joys in life but yet it also causes me a lot of ‘pain’ I am truly so far behind! I am definitely a chronological scrapper, just the way my mind works. I have started scrapping differently but need help with that! Really enjoy your ‘wisdom’ and LOVE your website layout, clean and simple. Quick reading. Thanks.
Hi Alice, Kelly from Urban here. I finally had time to visit and I thought your series was awesome. I’m the Cheshire Cat. I can spend two days on one layout or do it in 6 hours, depending on how late I am to get it to the store, ha! Will come back again, you’re so cute! Cheers
Lol! I know exactly how that goes Kelly! I’m so glad you enjoyed this. I try to infuse as much fun as I can into my scrapbooking as I aim to inspire, but don’t take myself too seriously. 😉
Thanks Alice I’m so glad I found this site you helped me get to understand that I don’t have to chronalogize my pages (I was in a nightmare on this) I have sooooooo many pictures I need to declutter too. Thanks