Scrapbooking Freedom

Stacy Julian had a great blog post today (well, she always has great blog posts) about obtaining the rights to her 2 FABULOUSLY wonderful books. Loved them, love her. These books and her Library of Memories class is what changed my entire thinking about scrapbooking. My advice and philosophy is:


Let it go! Relax! It's a hobby! Enjoy yourself! No stress!

As Stacy said in her post, 12,000 pictures are not valuable. This is true. We cherish the few pictures we have of our past and while we do wish we had more so that we could see the whole picture I think that if we did have more we wouldn't treasure them. If you have tens of thousands of pictures and your kids start taking tens of thousands of pictures (they may start in childhood which means they may have 100,000 pictures one day) who's going to want all these?? Who's going to keep, value or enjoy these?? NO ONE!

I don't obsessively back up my photos. Why? Probably because I don't see each and every one of them as valuable. I also figure that if my computer crashes or my house burns down, and my computer and scrapbooks, photo albums are gone there will still be plenty of pictures out there for me to retrieve. I have pictures (and layouts) on

• Facebook
• Flickr
• Costco.ca
• very few on Shutterfly
• extra prints of mine and originals of their own at Grandma's, Auntie's and other family/friends
• my Blog
• BPS class galleries
• negatives (old)
• cd's (old)
• flash drives (new)

So I just feel that if something did happen to my photos that there would be enough out there that I could start over or recover them. Currently I don't need, want or print all tens of thousands of photos so why if something happened would I want to recover all of them. II don't need (nor do I backup) every single photo. I love photography and taking pictures of flowers, trees, sky, fruit, etc. If I want I want I print some and enjoy them. But do I really need a back up of them? Why? Same with pictures of my girls. If they spend the afternoon slip'n sliding and I take 100 photos, of course I delete most of them. But I will keep 20 or so on my computer. Then I"ll print (by uploading to Costco, which archives also) a few to scrapbook. I will leave all 20 on my computer, but I will only back up the few (as in 2-6) that I printed. Plus one day f my computer does crash, I won't have to upload all 20 backed up slip'n slide photos, just a few.

I guess that is part of my carefree attitude.

I don't expect my girls to take dozens of 12x12 albums, mini books and other picture related things that I have made. I do expect themm to go through them and keep their favourites and treasure them. My Baba crochets and knits. I have some afaghans and doilies that she's made for me. So does everyone else in the family. So when she passes I'm sure we won't keep every single thing that she has in her home that she has made. This was her hobby, she enjoyed, we've taken the small part of it that we want. But no one wants to, or can, keep it all. Just as scrapbooking is my hobby and I don't expect anyone to keep everything I've made.

I think you just need to scrap the pictures and the stories that you have time for. Enjoy the process and don't worry about what isn't done. Scrapbooking chronologically quite often means that you scrapbook summer vacation, back to school, Halloween, Christmas, Easter. Usually the pictures are the same each year with wonderful "we opened presents" kind of stories. I love that now I am saving some of these photos for years and will one day make a layout of my girls' Halloween costumes spanning 6 years. This to me is far more exciting than 6 separate layouts of what costume they wore this year.

I don't worry about if I have scrapped Christmas 2001, 02, 03.....I just find the stories I want to tell. And use the pictures that I love. Then I add some embellishments as icing on the cake.