Scrapbooking Quickly

We’re having a big China reunion party at my mom’s house on Sunday, so we can look at photos, and drink, and laugh at all the fun we had. I have been preparing a scrapbook for the event. Now, if you know how to scrapbook, you realize that the average page takes anywhere from 4 hours to 4 days to put together. How did I accomplish a whole 20 page album in a week? Here are my techniques:

Use only solid cardstock as a background, and usually no more than one piece of patterned paper per two page layout.

Use mostly all 4x6 photos; they fit together in good groupings on a 12x12 piece of paper. This means a lot less cropping.

Only frame the most important picture of the page. If it’s really good, make it a 5x7 or 8x10.

Do not, under any circumstances, use “cutsy” titles.

Print all headlines and journaling on the computer. Use the page set-up to change margins to fit your page. Use consistent fonts throughout to give a feeling of unity. Use 1.5 spacing for easier readablity. If necessary, break large blocks of writing into columns.

You can print titles directly on a 12x12 paper if you cut the paper to 8x12, print it landscape, and then tape it back together. Use patterned paper or photos to cover up the line.

This time I was lucky, ‘cause I had all my blogging done. I just copied and pasted it. In general, it’s best to take notes during, or immediately after an event, or you’ll forget the good stuff.

Do not fill up your pages with silly embellishments. If you buy them, they cost a fortune and they distract the viewer from your pictures. If you make them, they take tons of time and no one notices. I use strips of colored paper to ground the photos and add visual excitement. Sometimes you can find and crop a small part of a picture to use as a relevant embellishment.

I love corner rounding. It brings pictures together and makes them seem complete somehow. I didn’t have a lot of time to do it for this album.

I actually like the technique of inking all the edges of the papers too. It looks real cool when you’re bringing an album together. And it would be very appropriate with this theme, but I didn’t have time for that either. Maybe I’ll go back and add it another time, but that means disassembling the whole album. Is it worth it?

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PS The scrapbook pages are straight; it's the photo/cropping that's crooked.