Before you go on a scrapbooking night with the girls or sit down on a quiet evening to make one scrapbook page make sure your photos are organized. The last thing you want to do is organize your photos on scrapbook night. I made the mistake of bringing a huge pile of photos to a scrapbook night and spent the whole evening organizing photos and never got a page done. It would also be a shame if you left out some great pictures because you simply could not find them. Take a day to devote to organizing your photos whether you have prints or store them on your computer.
Organizing Photos on Your Computer
However you store your digital photos either online or saved on your computer you will need to put them in categories. The logical way is to sort by year first, then theme, or by person in photo. For instance you can have a category called 2009 Christmas or 2009 Emily to help find photos quickly. If you have a theme in mind that includes multiple years such as a page devoted to baby photos of all your kids or bath photos of all your kids at a certain age then name category appropriately. Online image hosting sites make organizing your photos easy so consider Photobucket or Flickr.
Organizing your Prints
First go through your prints and get rid of bad shots. If you cannot bear to part with a picture even though a head is cut out or its blurry then have a separate box for photos to scrapbook with and photos that will not be used in scrapbooking.
Once you sort through your prints and find those you want to use for scrapbooking purposes then begin your organization process. You can use photo boxes, albums or binders with page protectors to store and organize your photos before scrapbooking.
Regardless of your scrapbook style organizing by year will help you quickly find the photos you want to use on your page. Simply name one photo box or album 2009 and within that box you can have subcategories like: Christmas, Easter, baby shower, apple orchard or by using names of people. You can also divide your photo box or chosen way to house photos under the year and within use the months of the year as subcategories. If you are looking for Christmas photos you simply go to 2009, section December. If you scrapbook by theme then organize by year then by theme such as Christmas, birthdays, bath pictures, apple orchard, etc.
Once you take the time to organize your photos you will find more time to have fun and express yourself through scrapbooking.
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