My motto has always been and will always be that you don’t need five hours to complete a scrapbook page. I also always state that organization is key. I want to teach people how to scrapbook quickly and easily so that they can preserve their memories and share them with their family.

The first step for scrapbooking and the most crucial step is……drumroll please!!!!

ORGANIZATION

Organizing your photos ahead of time is key if you want to be able to quickly scrapbook your photos. Know what you are going to scrap and in what order you would like the photos to be in your album. This way you can take your stack of photos and adhere them to your paper without agonizing over each photo while you are trying to scrapbook.

I handle this by organizing my photos when I print them. Sometimes I just sit in front of the TV with two pieces of card stock in front of me and lay the photos out. Once I am done doing that I place them in my creative memories sort box and each set of photos is divided either with the dividers that you can get from creative memories or with little post it note flags,  by sticking the post it note flag to the last photo in each set on the back of the photo.

Sometimes when I am organizing my photos I will come across a set of photos and I know exactly what paper I will want to use, if that happens I write that information on a larger post it note and stick it the last photo in that set of photos on the back of the photo. I never place a post it note on the front of my photos. If you have the creative memories dividers you can write on those as well.

I absolutely love the creative memories sort box because it truly does help me keep my photos organized and definitely makes my life a lot easier when I am going to scrapbook.  You would think I was a consultant for creative memories with the way I promote them but I’m not. I have just found that the majority of their products make my life a whole lot easier.

When I sit down to scrapbook the goal is for me to get my pictures into an album but I also want to enjoy it. I feel in order to do that your photos have to be organized so that you know what photos are worthy of being in album. Since the switch to digital has happened many people including me take  more photos than they could ever do anything with. For this reason it is important to have your photos organized from the moment you load them from your memory card and on to the computer.

I also use the creative memories, memory manager software to edit, crop, organize and rate my photos for printing. This makes my life a whole lot easier when I am ready to upload my photos for printing. Organization is key whether you are scrapbooking traditionally (meaning paper scrapbooking) or digitally scrapbooking. I will be posting part 2 within the next few days as you may have read I have entered the ultimate blog challenge so a post every day for the month of October is what you are going to get from me, or at least I am going to keep trying to post every day!

Related posts:

1. Organization is Key
2. How to Scrap Quickly and Easily Part 2
3. How to Scrap Quickly and Easily Part 3