I have come to the realization that Scrapbooking and Stamping is overwhelming to me and there are several reasons for this.
1. Too many pictures.
2. Unorganized/cluttered area.
3. Lack of space for completed albums.
4. Lack of creativity.
5. Lack of confidence when it comes to embellishing, titling and journaling pages.
6. Too easily sidetracked by the lovely computer/internet/facebook.
7. Too many choices (ie stamps, papers, embellishments, tools, etc)
ok....now I'm starting to depress myself. :(
When I started scrapbooking I felt like I needed to scrap every single picture because I had paid for the film and processing of these photos and I had also taken the time to make these photos. Now with digital photography it's even worse. I take so many more pictures which means there are even more photos to be scrapped and narrowing down those choices is sometimes overwhelming.
It's almost Christmas 2010 and I still haven't finished scrappin' the picture from Christmas '09. Believe me I've tried, but when the photos are of the same people sitting in the same places every single year with the same decorations, etc and the only things that changes is the wrapping paper, clothes everyone is wearing and the gift itself, you kinda get tired of looking at them after a while. So much so, that I'm contemplating not even taking pictures this year. <gasp> I know.....can you even believe that I would think of doing such a thing?? It's just I don't know what/how to do it.
I guess what I'm looking for is ideas, thoughts, suggestions on how you guys handle your HUGE collection of photos. How do you decide which photos get scrapped?? What about your backlog of photos? (don't look at me like that....I know you have a backlog of photos....we all do!!! :) Where do you go for inspiration/ideas? How do you translate those ideas and inspiration into creating pages?
You know Lis I stopped scrapbooking for awhile. But one thing I have learned from my upline is that you only do layouts of the most important highlights of the event. So instead of doing an album full of photos of the same things over and over again take one big highlight from that years event and make it the memory you put down. She also taught me that creating paper bag albums to put out for display are much easier than the big albums that we've all come to run out of space for. In each pocket you mat a photo on a card stock tag and on the back of the tag or on the front of the pocket you can use that space for journaling. They take up a lot less space and you can put them into a basket on a table or something that people can still comfortable about pulling out, without having to feel like they're carrying around a 25 pound bag of flour.
ReplyDeleteI don't scrapbook as often also because I rarely print photos out anymore. Sad right? This is why when we take photos now we choose specific things we want to remember. This way when I do finally get around to printing and scrapping them I will only have the most important parts and none of the extras. We really try not to go overboard and take a million poses. I'm so about the natural non posed photos these days.
As far as inspiration is concerned I get mine from just about everywhere I go. I love to go through the home sections of Walmart or Target or wherever else I happen to be. I also have found inspirations in restaurants, in furniture pieces. I was just inspired today by my old bosses christmas trees. They had a very clean look to them, many of her ornaments were hand made and they were just beautiful. I even find inspiration in clothing. I'll see a pattern and ir inspires me.
Don't be so hard on yourself. You want to make sure that you enjoy what you're doing and not feel like it's work. It's supposed to be fun, not agonizing.
Good luck to you.