Monday 7 May 2012

Cover to Cover homework

Today is the start of Shimelle's new course "Cover to Cover". Having been at work all day I rushed home to check my emails to see what lay in store! But, oh no! What's this? Shimelle has set us home work! So being the studious, conscientious girl that I am I have cracked on with mine already!!




1. If you have a system for your photos, pages and albums, how would you describe it? What does and
doesn’t work as well as you would like?

I guess my main dilemma is the "does it go in his, hers or ours?" dilemma. Having one boy and one girl I decided early on they could have an album each where I scrap photos of just them or events that were peraonal to them but then what do I do with the photos where I'm in there too, or Tony is or all four of us? So the rest go in our "family" album. Now I'm thinking about this I'm not sure it's right. Am I going to pack each child off with their personal scrapbook when they leave home and keep the family one? I doubt it. Maybe the layouts should be in yearly albums as per the system Shimelle uses. And then there are my pages, personal thoughts and whimsical quotes, where do they go? And what if I've scrapped a photo from a couple of months back of Alex with a quote or story that's just happened? Where does that go? Hmmm...This homework is making my head hurt lol!

2. If you don’t have a system, consider my system as a rough draft. What things do you already think
you would not want in your own system? What elements seem perfectly sensible for you?

I really like Shimelle's system and can see it working for me.  I definitely need to get my pages in chronological order.  Whilst they are divided into albums (although maybe not the right ones now I've started to really consider it!) they are in them in a very hap hazard fashion.  As for upgrading to another album for a specific event in that year, that makes total sense to me.  So far I have only done this for our holiday to Florida, which was one where we took 100's of photos, but I can see that working for other events.

3.Take a photo that helps describe your current status with scrapbooking. You might have dozens and
dozens of albums. You might have two. You might be completely happy with your albums. You
might have a big stack and no books or ideas on where things should go. Share your photo (and
more details if you would like) with us either by posting on the forum or writing a blog post. Of
course, you can keep your answer to yourself if you prefer! But I promise we’re a nice group that
shares well with others.

Below is a photo of my American Craft albums. I also have some post bound ones with older lay outs in and will move pages out of these as I buy more albums. (If anyone knows of any bargain AC albums for sale anywhere please comment below lol!)  I've started to buy the albums that can be altered recently as these are great value for money and can be decorated to your hearts desire!  That reminds me of one more question.  What do you put in the windows on the fronts of these albums?  I have left my blank so far but would love some ideas from others - do you put a title? A favourite photo?  Some pretty paper and embellishments? Oh, the possibilities!





I hope some of these questions will be answered over the next few weeks doing this class.  If you're taking it too I'd love to hear from you (and I hope you've done your homework!)

Thanks for stopping by.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

great post! i have similar thoughts as you and have just photographed my albums to post over on the forum :)

Lynn said...

Just dropping in from the forum. Like you I had separate albums for my girls but also a family album too but decided it didn't flow. Tonight I pulled out all my layouts (not that many as only been scrapping a few years) and decided to put them in year and month order. I'm really pleased as it now all makes much more sense and shows me the gaps! I currently moving all mine into AC albums but this will take a while due to cost. Hope you find a way that works for you.

Candace said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Candace said...

Just came over from Shimelle. Loved having a read of your blog.

Candace x

Nynaboo said...

Hi, I came over from the class, you have some good questions as follow up. I have an idea for one of them. When I have a story to tell and find a "close enough" photo to go with it, I file it by when the story happened. Chances are the kids look pretty much the same in a few months time, but the story is what I want to remember most.
Great thoughts, thanks for sharing!

Crystal said...

Just popped in from the forum. Thanks for sharing--I struggle with that cover window as well.

Alison said...

Popped over from class...I have that problem with the window too! You have answered the questions much more thoroughly than me
Alison xx

KraftyKaren said...

Looks like this is going to be a fun class - I didn't sign up for this one as I already have pretty clear themes to all my albums - wedding, Christmas, holidays, Marillion, Family, Us, Nieces and nephews. But the one thing that links every album is that they are all organised in chronological order - I can't bear for my layouts to be all over the place timewise. It means I am always moving layouts around but now that I am only using d ring albums that should be a lot easier than it has been in the past.

Only a couple of my albums have the little windows - my Marillion one obviously has a picture of the band in it. The others I am going to wait until the album is full and then put a small photo of one of my fave layouts from the album in.

Looking forward to seeing what you do for this class and if you come up with any great ideas for a durable way of covering the bare d ring albums then please do share.

I tend to get my d ring albums from Sarah's Cards and use my kit subscriber 10% off - don't think I have ever seen d ring albums in sales.

Karen x

Sharis said...

My only dilemna is I scrap so randomly that I am not even sure what years some of my LO/pictures are! So putting things chronological order could be a challenge.

Denise said...

Hello, just popped over from class. i've just sort of posted a bit about my albums- ahem- think this class will be good for me!

Carin McDonough said...

I started off with chronological albums but found it too hard to scrap chronologically so I eventually changed to themed albums. Good luck with sorting your albums out how you want them!:)

Malin/malwa said...

Hi there "class mate"! :) This week has been jam packed with things happening in our "everyday life", so I've only had short checks in the forum and no time to look at the prompts!

But now I've managed to check the first prompt and is checking out all the ladies' answers to it. :)

I don't have the albums with a little window, but maybe you could add a photo that represents the content of the album? A family photo from the actual year or a school photo of the child (if in school, of course ;) ).

Teresa said...

Hi! I came over from the forum and really enjoyed your post.

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