Year End Scrapbooking

For over 15 years, I have been an avid scrapbooker.  I was constantly working on getting my albums finished and up-to-date.  I was even a consultant for 11 years, until the second bankruptcy of the company I was with.  Digital has really made my scrapbooking different and hard to stay consistent in.  I don't get my photos printed very often, and don't really want to print everything, to cut them up and paste them into books when digital versions are so much easier. 

So, some of my photos make it into digital albums and for the last three years, my photos from my walls, Christmas cards and other miscellaneous printed photos have been laying around my house, waiting for me to do something with them!  I decided to organize and get all of these pictures put into my album before I completely pack away my Christmas things this years.

 I save all of the pictures from Christmas cards, as well as the Christmas letters.  Here, my picture on the left is a random picture we had printed for the 4-H fair a couple of years ago, so I've decided to preserve it by putting it into my album. I had saved up three  years of Christmas cards, so this didn't turn out to be as quick as I thought it would.

 I put my yearly pictures of my kids from my living room wall in between each year.  I'm trying to decide if I should change out my wall pictures so I can get just get them done for this year, or enjoy the pictures one more year.  As you can see, I kept the layouts really simple, and didn't really even write captions, as most cards and letters were self explanatory.  I may go back with some sticker letters later and just put in some captions, but hey, if I don't get around to it, I'm just happy they are in albums!

I wanted to share how I put the letters in, too.  I trim the letters down as much as possible, so they don't weigh as much in the album, then line them all up down either the inside or outside edge of the album. Then I tape just on one edge, so the letters can be lifted up and read as I'd like.  When I put the page protectors on it, I put the letters on top of the protectors so they can still be lifted (that's why I place them on the outside edge.) 

 

I have noticed two things the last two years: 1. Not as many people are doing the yearly letters anymore.  It kind of makes me sad, because I don't keep just cards, only pictures and letters and 2. People have started to make their picture cards double sided, so it's hard to keep these and be able to see all the pictures!  The company that is doing this is Tiny Prints.  I put this card with the letters, you can see it's the red one on the right.  It's really stiff though, but I'm not sure it will be easy to read the back. 

 

This is not my only organization project going on this week.  Do you need bins for getting your closets organized this month?  They are on such a great deal this month, please consider cleaning out all your closets using these great bins for the month of January only: January Special.