One of the problems with scrapbooking is that it’s something you often mean to get around to doing, but it ends up being left until you have time. Then more photos pile up and you realize that it will take even more time to catch up, so the whole thing gets left longer and longer. It’s not surprising that many families are finding that their children are half-grown and they still haven’t completed even the baby book!

To combat this very common problem, digital scrapbooking is a great solution. You don’t need to haul everything out to work on, you can just get it done right now, as soon as you upload those new photos of your little ones from the camera.

Digital scrapbooking is quick and easy.

This fall page was created entirely with JenLin kits.

Here are the steps that I use to ensure my kids’ albums are always up to date.

Collect Scrapbooking Kits

There are literally hundreds of digital scrapbooking kits online. If you have to go hunting for a new one each time you want to do an album page, it’s going to be very time consuming. So, a far easier method is to just collect a variety of kits in one go. There are a few advantages to this.

  • Limited edition kits sell out fast, so if you get them now, you’ll have them for when you really need them.
  • Grab bag sales are an excellent way to get several kits at once and often one website will be selling several, so you can gather them all at once.
  • You might not remember where you saw that perfect little boy kit for your newborn son, so get it now and you’ll have those items to work with later, as he grows and you get more and more boyish shots.

You’ll save a lot of time and when you’re ready to do a scrapbook page, just check your existing files for papers and objects to use. Having several kits also lets you mix and match, something that I do a lot if one kit doesn’t have everything I want in it.

Pick Out Favorite Photos Immediately

When you upload your photos to your computer, you’ll be taking a look at them anyway, what parent doesn’t want to sigh over their amazing shots of their babies? Since you’re already looking at the pictures, choose the ones that you want to use in an album and then put them into a separate folder (marked “Album”) if you aren’t going to be able to work with them immediately. If you have the time however, move on to the next step . . .

Scrapbook Now

It doesn’t have to take a lot of time to put together a page or two. If you’ve followed the other two steps, then you simply need to choose the papers for backgrounds and framing, crop your photos and you have a basic page.

I personally like to do my journaling as quickly as possible after the event, since memories fade quickly and if your little one was saying or doing something particularly adorable at the moment you snapped the shot, it could slip away if you don’t write it down.

Simple journaled page

Simple journaled page

This example was done using the primitive papers from DigiScrap Kits.

Next, you need to embellish, though this doesn’t have to be done at that precise moment. While most people prefer to finish everything up at once, some find that it works best to do a simple scrapbook page and then, when they are ready to print, they just embellish all the waiting pages at once. The choice is yours, whatever works best for you.

There’s no reason to let photos languish in a cardboard box. If you are working digitally, you can literally whip out a scrapbook page in minutes and it will be there, ready to print, right away. If you have a backlog of photos, just start on the most recent ones for now and when you have some time, start working your way backwards. You can finish that special childhood album with digital scrapbooking, it’s just a matter of getting started!

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