How Do You Organize Your Photobooks/scrapbooks?

I do annual photo books.
Organized by year.
Everyone in it.

Online, via Costco or Kodak www.kodakgallery.com

I make 2 copies, one for my daughter and one for my son.
For when they get older to have it.

I add text to each photo and the date/occasion.
Again, via online venues like Costco or Kodak.
And order their photo books.

I'm an avid scrapbooker, and I learned a method of scrapbooking from a friend of mine that really works for me. Like you, I don't have a ton of time to devote to it, but I do enjoy putting our memories down on paper so my K. can enjoy looking at the scrapbooks one day.

The friend who taught me this is a Creative Memories consultant; you may want to look one up near you, as these ladies are incredibly helpful in teaching you how to do this!

For digital scrapbooking, there's a free program from Creative Memories called "Memory Maker" or something - anyway, I know a bunch of people who use it, and they do like it. You can also send your book to be printed through CM also.

For paper scrapbooking, I use a "power layout" system from Creative Memories. Basically it is a box containing plastic pages that you lay out (as if they were scrapbook pages). From there, you set the pictures you want to use on each page (BTW, crop the pictures first - just cut off any parts of the picture that aren't interesting), onto the page (this takes about an hour for a full length scrapbook), then go through and set whatever paper you'll use for each page, onto the page (takes about 20 minutes), then decide if you'll want to use any stickers, photo mounting paper, or whatever "extras" - and if so, throw those down onto the plastic pages as well. Then, stack 'em back into the box, last page on the bottom, first page on top. Okay! So in less than 2 hours, you laid out your scrapbook, and everything is loosely organized. Then, take the stuff you laid out for page 1, and actually stick it to the real scrapbook page in your scrapbook. Mount the photos to the paper, add the "extra" embellishments (leave room to write something about the pictures), and move on to the next page. In about 4 hours, you can have an entire scrapbook completely laid out and put together. Then, at your leisure, go back and journal the pages - write funny stories in there, or narrate what was happening in the different pictures. That will take some extra time, but no longer than digital scrapbooking to be sure. And THAT'S IT! Scrapbooking can be super easy, fun, and fast if you have the ability to get it organized. I scrapbooked for 5 years before my friend asked why I didn't use Power Layouts, and I'm telling you, now that I know how to do it, I'll never go back.

Anyway, I hope that helps you out, and if I can help, let me know! I know it can seem really overwhelming at first.

I am a huge paper scrapbooker and have also been thinking about going digital! I appreciate the question and all the answers...sounds like we aren't alone. The questions that go through my head are : how many pages per year/how big should each book be? are my K. REALLY gonna want to look through 18 books by the time they are 18 years old? Likely not, which is why I struggle! So I have decided to just cut back...like fit 2 years into 1 book. Its tough to "throw out" cute pics, but in the end the book looks good and you never know that pic wasnt there.

I have #2 on the way and also work full time and can't imagine how little time I will have, HA! But I do like the other paper-people's ideas to get ORGANIZED!!! Thats the key to being creative and succesful at this. I too, cutt ALL the pics out, organize into piles of "pages," (by event, by theme etc in plastic sandwhich bags which i write on), then I assign a baclground color/degsign and then "frame" blank color pages to match, then I throw on an embellishment for each page. That way all I have to do when I have an hour or so to "play" is get out each page and slap it together. They are all piled and ready for me, no getting ALL the stuff out each time.

Keep it up and good luck! You wont be sorry you kept at it : - )

I feel the same as you. I did the first few years in scrapbook, and hated every minute! I only have one child, so I can't tell you what to do as far as that goes. However, it seems like it would be hard to separate pics, as I imagine they are in pics together a lot. Probably better to do 6 months to a year at a time, depending on how many pics you have.

I was overwhelmed by photos, and decided to do one book per year. My daughter was born in 2007, so I did 2007, 2008, and 2009 at once, and recently finished 2010. I used Picaboo, so I finished the book and then waited for a good coupon code! ($10 off + free shipping). They change their codes every few weeks. Sometimes its buy one book, get a copy free, which is good if you want to have a book for each child in the future.

Picaboo is the only service I've used. I liked it and was easy to use. Lots of backgrounds and layouts. My favorite feature is that you can use one of your photos as a background. For example, I used a snowy picture of our new house as a background along with snapshots of my daughter with her snowman one one page.

Good Luck, and try not to get overwhelmed!

i am doing a regular scrap book for my daughter and i am only doing one, and i figure i am going to be doing it until she graduates high school or college if she does college sports, but i get my pics done at shutterfly and i am sure you can choose to have them automaticly have them pick the pics and organize for you

I started a book for the oldest when he was born... when the second came along, I started one for her. Once her first year was complete, the books merged and now I just do one for the family... I have many volumes, but in essence just one book... I figure they can fight over it when I'm dead and gone.
LBC

What a great question. I can totally relate. I'd like to keep up with paper scrapbooking, but with work and actually raising a child, I don't have time to document it. Its enough time just to try to take lots of pictures, and then try to upload them from the camera chip to the computer every few weeks (or months! :-( thank goodness for large memory camera chips that can hold months of photos :-)

Anyhow, what works for me now is the shutterfly photobook. You drag and drop a bunch of pictures to shutterfly, then tell it to make an auto photobook, and it will sort (by date, automatically!) and group your photos for you onto any theme of book you select. Then you just go through to fine tune your book (move pictures around, delete or add, different page design) and add captions. It can still take a couple of hours to document a whole year, but then its done and you can make books for yourself and all the grandparents. The minuses is that the text fields don't allow for copius journaling, but its plenty for who, what, where, when, and some other thoughts. Shutterfly occaisionaly offers free pages, or free shipping, or BOGO half off, so there are ways to save on the cost of the book when you order it.

Now that Costco offers photobooks, too, I'm going to see if they can do the same actions (sorting the photos in order, smart grouping, etc.), but at a cheaper price than Shutterfly.

I use shutterfly and love it. You can do a basic layout (put these 3 pictures on this page, these next 5 on the next page, etc) and it will choose cute layouts for you. Then you can change the "theme" to get different designs and add captions, then you're done! I make each kid a book of the year, starting with their birthday, then give it to them for Christmas.

I want to be crafty, but it just doesn't come naturally to me. We have a family photo/scrapbook, one for my son... will start a 2nd w/ the kid that's about to come out. I REALLY don't like the pre-made ones, so I do go to Jo-Ann's and get all the scrapbook-y stuff (themed pages, etc.). But that's as far as I go w/ it. All books have pics and some typed entries if a picture has a particularly funny memory, labling places, names, etc.
The family one is chronological.
My son's is by event... i.e. birth has the first section, all vacations are together, he gets a whole section for the trouble he's caused ;o), Haloween has its section, pics w/ counsins, etc.
its fun to flip through and see the changes over the years in each category.

I'm another big Shutterfly user. I make a book each year and that makes up that year's album. The site is super easy to use, has really cute "pages" to choose from -- or they just added a new feature a little while back where you press a button and poof! they make it for you. They also email me with great sales on photobooks all the time.

I love Studio J (go to wenonah.myctmh.com/studioJ) - it is FREE to set up an account and play with it and create pages. You then order the pages to be professionally printed. Every thing (stickers, buttons, brads, etc) can be resized and the colors changed - which is nice because 1) you don't have to buy the package to get the specific size/color button/whatever you need & you have no leftovers to store somewhere (ask me, I have a room ful!)
2- you DONT have to buy the elements or the page kits or whatever, everything is free and included!
3- (this is for me and those who have paper and still want to mix digital and paper - I love my scraptherapy, but digital is the only way I can ever catch up!) All the digital papers match the actual papers Close To My Heart sells.
4- With a year's membership, you get free perks like jpegs and online members only "papers," free shipping each month, and the price drops to $3.25 per page or so. (Which I think winds up being cheaper than all the papers and photo printing and glue I use.. not to mention TIME!!)

Message me if you have any questions. There is NO charge or pressure to set up an account just to play with it and see if this would work for you. Just telling you what I personally find to work for me, and since I love it, I am also a consultant for CTMH so I can share it with whoever else also likes this!

Since your K. are little, I wouldn't worry about it too much. My mom had 5 K. and when we were in high school she spent many hours separating pictures and making albums for each of us. I'm forever grateful. I took my books when I moved out at 21 and I live far from all my siblings. I love having them to reflect back!
I always think, when I fall behind with scapbooking for my 3 year old son, that I'll have lots of free time later. I work full time as well. I love the paper scrapbooking! I try to do a page spread every weekend when my son is sleeping or occupied. However, I am a year behind. I have gone months without doing anything. I figure, I have all the pictures, so I can make other albums for myself later on.
Digital is the new thing, of course. I might get into that at some point. I have only seen the ones people have made from Shutterfly and they all say it's so easy.
Keep taking pics!!! My sister's MIL used to take them even when she didn't have $ to develop them. She'd put them in her fridge and then pull out a roll of film when she had $ and be surprised by what was on it.
Lucky for us, it's a little easier with the digital. When you decide, please let me know what site you find is your fav.! Maybe I'll jump on the bandwagon.

I just do photo albums. I take a ton of pictures and just print the ones that I really like. I get the photo albums that you can write in. I put everything in order as they were taken and put them in the books. Then I write the events on the inside cover of the book. This way if we are looking for a event we don't have to go through all of the books. Each book can hold up to 200 photos, some have 500. With my 3 yr old daughter I have 6 books so far. I put everything in one album. I do not seperate, her, and other family. Everything goes in order. Like my daughters firsts, holidays etc. I have my neices bday pics in there also. I just go in the order of the event. I don't need to go all fancy with the scrapbooking. No time. I also put all of the pictures that I take on disc. I make 2 copies. One for me and one I put in a firesafe. God forbid we have a fire and I will loose all of my pics. This way they are safe. I also get photobooks done at CVS or Riteaid. They come out really nice. But with them you are limited to the amount of pics that can be put in. If you add more it can cost a small fortune. So I just stick to my photo albums.