The Big Picture By Stacy Julian
I love it when a book really gets you thinking about something, even days after reading it. A few days ago I finished reading Stacy Julian’s Book, The Big Picture Scrapbook Your Life and a Whole Lot More. This was so much more than an idea book that I have become used to reading. It is causing me to rethink the whole way that I organize my pages, photos and thoughts on scrapbooking.
Stacy has such a fresh approach to scrapbooking, one that I haven’t seen taught by anyone else. She encourages us to not worry about chronological scrapbooking because it causes us to pressure ourselves to become “caught up.” For most of us, being caught up with every photo in our house on a scrapbook page is never going to be a reality. This book offers a great solution for getting away from the guilt.
I love all of the example layouts Stacy shares in this book. Next to each layout, the author shares why she created the layout, where it goes in her album filing system and also what she likes about the layout.
The most interesting part of this book is the filing system that Stacy uses for her scrapbook pages. She does not scrapbook chronologically. She simply creates a layout when she finds a picture she likes or wants to share a specific story on a page. Her pages are filed by subject in albums that are titled: Places We Go, People We Love, All About Us and The Things We Do. She has tabs in each of the albums to help categorize such as tabs for cousins, grandparents and aunts in the People We Love Album.
Stacy said that she does create 5 layouts for each child for each school year. These are albums that they will get to take with them when they leave home. I think this is a great idea because I don’t want to part with all of my albums when my kids leave home.
This book is writen with a very conversational, friendly tone and really encourages the reader to embrace this new way of organizing albums.
I recommend this book to all scrapbookers at all levels. It is definitely an asset to any scrapbook library.