Monday, February 6, 2012

Giving up Scrapbooking

For a hobby that I don't like, scarpbooking even one page per month per kid takes too much time, energy and money. So, I am dumping in as of the end of 2012. ( I still haven't done antyhing for Capri and for the big kids I just have to do Oct-Dec 2011). So what should I do? Nothing? I blog to capture the story and events of our life, but I would like a hardcopy of our story to share. The kids like to look at their books every now and then. If I did nothing, I would feel very bad for Capri who will only have a 1 year book (yes, I am totally committed to doing a normal book for her first year, just like I did for the other kids). So, what are my options?

I could go digital, but I think I would spend ALOT of time working on layouts etc, because I like to fiddle around with that kids of thing. That would not be time well spent. Also, since I would only do 1 page per month, 1 book could cover 3 years. That is good space and money wise but not so good for having something to show and look at that is somewhat current. My friend Angie says she uses a shutterfly and they have great deals every now and then so books only cost $10-$20.

I am leaning towards Becky Higgin's Project life. http://www.beckyhiggins.com/ You buy a binder, core kit (which has journal cards and card stock) and plastic sheets that 4x6 pictures fit into perfectly. No cutting, tape, etc. and in theory, I write the journal cards as things happen (as I blog) and then at the end of the month I order 7 pictures to represent the month. Seems easy, but it is definitely bulkier than a digital scrapbook. The cost for 48 layouts (4 years for me!) would be approx. $72 plus the cost of ordering prints.

I could use some suggestions (keep in mind I like the idea of doing seperate books for each of my kids).

2 comments:

  1. I've been doing the digital thing so far. I like it, but haven't had to do it for kids yet. That might change my opinion.

    I like it cause it's fast and you could use the same page layout for each kid if you wanted to. For our upcoming baby, I've pre-made a page for each month for the first year using the same layout, then I can just insert text and pictures later. But that's just for the first year - not sure how I'll go after that.

    But I don't get very fancy at all - simple backgrounds, just the fonts that I have in PhotoShop Elements, simple graphics.

    I do a book a year (so far) as a family and I order them through winkflash which has a special about once a year where you can get up to 100 pages for the price of 25 pages (about $20 depending on the size of the book you order).

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  2. Oh yeah - I just used other people's designs as a way of pre-making my pages. I'm not above imitating myself what I like!

    Some ones I really liked:
    http://blog.hannamac.com/2011/10/18/mia-month-8/
    http://blog.hannamac.com/2011/02/01/mama-mias-maternity-book-2/
    http://tiffkeetch.blogspot.com/2011/07/operation-baby-book.html (This is the one I ended up doing for the 'baby book'.)

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