Episode 33: 3 Tips to Finally Scrapbook the Layouts You Keep Putting Off or Never Create

Welcome to the ScrapHappier Podcast where we share quick tips, tricks, and techniques to help you create scrapbooks you love and be happier while doing it. I’m your host, Alice Boll.

I was so glad you’ve joined me for episode number 33. You can find the show notes for this episode at scraphappy.org/episode33. Today, we’re going to talk about the types of projects that you actually create and the ones that we keep putting off. I’m not just talking about procrastination. I think most of us take a trip on the procrastination train once in a while, but I’m actually going to talk more about the things that we’re putting off for other reasons. If procrastination is a big problem for you, I encourage you to go back and listen to episode number 12, where we had the procrastination coach, Dr. Christine Li on the podcast to share some of her expertise to help us tame that procrastination monster.

There are some layouts and some stories and some photos that I gravitate to because I know they’re going to be really easy to scrapbook. And then there are some layouts, some photos, and some stories that have been on my to-do list for a very long time. Some layouts are just so much harder to tackle. The photos seem too precious or too important, the story is way too special. I have to get it just right. Maybe I don’t actually know what I want to say yet. And it can be hard. I might not have all the pieces that I think that I need to fully create this layout in the way it needs to be told. One startling example from my own scrapbooks are my son’s birthday layouts. I’ve either done an amazing job scrapbooking their birthdays, or they have nothing at all. When you flip through their baby books, you literally see a sticky note on a blank page that says Joe’s second birthday, Joe’s third birthday, Joe’s fourth birthday.

Yeah, it’s pretty bad and Ryan’s book isn’t much better. It turns out as time passes, it doesn’t get any easier to create these layouts. So you might be wondering, “Alice, why haven’t you just scrapbooked those birthdays? What’s the big deal for you?” I really loved hosting my kids’ birthday parties. It was such a special event. I would make them piñatas. We would have fancy themed cakes and decorations and have the friends over and the family over. It was a really big deal and of course, part of that was trying to get the perfect photos that captured all of the fun and excitement of the event. When I got those photos back, now I was paralyzed. I had to try to capture all of that fun and excitement on a layout. So I tucked those pictures aside thinking, of course, I would figure this out later and later just never came.

Then the next birthday came and went and the next one came and went and I had this gaps in my scrapbooks. I was making other layouts. I just wasn’t making those ones. When I looked through my books, there’s a trend. Whenever I am too emotionally attached to photos or a situation or an event, I have a really hard time scrapbooking them. My fear of not doing those photos and those stories justice kicks in and then I do nothing. So I just avoid it. It’s not like I stopped scrapbooking. I just do other things and I skipped those events completely. If you’re shaking your head thinking, “What on earth are you doing? You are way overthinking this,” trust me. I totally know. I get it now. I had the same hangup over Christmas photos and holiday photos and travel photos. Anytime there is something big and exciting going on, somehow those were the stories that never made it into my scrapbooks.

The worst part of that is those were the ones I really wanted to have done. They were the ones I was really excited about. I’m not going to say that those are our most important stories, because I really think that having a snapshot of our whole life is a lot more important than looking at one birthday or one holiday. Recently, when I was talking with my friend, Amy Myers, I said, “Are we scrapbooking the important stories?” And she said to me, “We may not know right now which stories are the most important,” and boy did she hit the nail on the head. It’s only through time and other experiences that we have the perspective to know which stories really were the most important.

Years ago, I scrapbooked a layout where I was making hot cross buns using my aunt’s recipe and that page was nice and it was great to include this family heritage recipe although I don’t know how far back the heritage went, I think right to my aunt, but I was making that recipe because of her and when I lost my aunt, that page became so much more valuable to me. It was no longer a page about hot cross buttons. It was a page about me connecting with my aunt. It’s that time and the experience that has happened that make that page important. So I guess you can ask yourself the question whose interpretation of important are you using anyways? And what seems important today might not be important at all tomorrow and something that seems very insignificant today can have so much more significance tomorrow. I’m happy to say that we can change over time. I seemed to have finally gotten over my problem with the birthday pages and I actually create them now.

I’m also pretty good at scrapbooking my travel and holidays. So you might be wondering, “Hey Alice, what did you do? How did you figure this out? And what is different that helps you get these things done now? How did you go from being the person that consistently put off those projects to having birthdays and travel scrapbooked?”

Tip number one, own it. Identify the problem. Once you figure out what the problem is, what kind of pages are you putting off consistently? Once you know what the problem is, it’s easier to step up to the plate to make a difference.

The second tip that helped me was to be a more consistent scrapbooker. One of the ways I get most of my pages done is through completing the LOAD challenges, the layout a day challenges hosted by our ScrapHappy family. Turns out you can make a lot of stuff if you’re scrapbooking every day for a month, and you’re doing this three times a year. If you haven’t tried a LOAD challenge, we do them three times a year. We do them in February, May and one exclusive to members in October. They always have a really fun theme, but the goal of LOAD is to create a layout of day. It’s not necessarily to follow the theme. Using the daily prompts as inspiration actually helps me tell a lot of my stories for my travel pages or the ones from my holidays. Challenges are a great motivation and usually it means that you’re participating with other people, which means you’re scrapbooking with friends and that’s always more fun.

Okay, I’ll confess. In person, when I go to a crop, I am not the most productive, but when I go home from that crop, I am so excited and I dive into my scrapbooking and that’s when I get a lot of scrapbooking done. Finally, for tip number three, I want to go back to the very beginning when I was talking about the reasons that we put off certain kinds of layouts. One of those reasons might be that you don’t have all of the stuff that you think that you need. Maybe you don’t have all the photos that you wanted. Maybe you don’t have the story written down. Maybe you don’t have all the memorabilia organized. Maybe you don’t have the pretty papers and stuff that you want. Well, let me tell you, a little bit of organization in this department can go a long way. Thankfully, most of my photos now are digital so they get organized by date and I know when we traveled. That makes the photo part a lot easier. I print at home. I print on demand. I use an EcoTank printer from Epson called an ET-2750.

It has great big storage for ink so I almost never have to replace the ink in this printer. It’s amazing and it has saved me a ton of money. By printing on demand, I can print exactly the photos that I want when I want them in the sizes that I want them to be. I love it. As for my scrapbooking supplies and my memorabilia from our trips, I have a really easy solution for this. Every time I come home from a trip, I put all of the memorabilia from that holiday into an IRIS case. Then if I buy any special types of papers or embellishments that go with that trip, I put those into the IRIS case. Now I can print my photos and find everything I need in that one IRIS case. If you’re not familiar with what an IRIS case is, it’s just a plastic box.

Then when I sit down to scrapbook, especially during one of the LOAD challenges, I pull out that box and I have all of the things that I need at my fingertips and I don’t even have to forget about using my memorabilia because it’s right there too. Once I feel like I’ve scrapbook that trip as much as I’m going to, I take the rest of that memorabilia and I throw it out, file it under G, file 13, the round file, whatever you want to call it, I throw out the rest of the memorabilia and then I’m done with it and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Anything that was important, I’ve already included in my scrapbooks and I pretty much handle birthdays the same way. I have an IRIS box with all of my birthday papers and embellishments and when I sit down to make a birthday page, I just get it done.

So for your prompt today, I want you to think about what kind of pages do you put off on a regular basis? Which ones do you keep putting off? It’s time to own up to it, be more consistent, maybe incorporate a little bit of organization and scrapbook a page like that today. If you loved this topic, you might want to check out episode 23, 3 Simple Steps to Set Scrapbook Goals That You Will Achieve and episode number 27, Why You Need a Scrapbooking Bucket List. If you scrapbook a page inspired by this episode, I would love to hear about it. Please tag me on social media. Use the hashtag #ScrapHappierPodcast. I totally see them.

ScrapHappy is hosting a lot of fun things in the next little while. Some of them are free for everyone to join where you don’t even have to be a member so please pop over and get on my email list. That’s the best way to stay in touch with me and I am not a spammer. I literally don’t have time for that. So you can get on the list by going to scraphappy.org/subscribe, or just go to the show notes. It’s at scraphappy.org/episode33. You’ll find everything there. If you’ve jumped onto the Clubhouse bandwagon with the rest of us, then come and join Club Scrapbook on Clubhouse. If you check the club description, you’ll see the dates and times of all of our meets and chats. And of course, you’ll find more details in the show notes. I hope episode 33 has helped you examine which layouts you actually create and the ones you keep putting up and hopefully, you won’t keep doing that anymore. My goal is to help you create layouts that you love and have fun while doing it. Happy scrapping.

I completely forgot to say, my friend, Amy, is going to be doing a Scrap Smarter free session for us in April so make sure you get on that email list where you subscribe because that is how you will get the invite to attend our free session. You can go and check out her Instagram at One Mommy Scrapping. You’ll know you’re in the right place when you see some Nuvo Drops, she’s kind of obsessed and I get it.