One of my side projects I hope to at least make a dent in this year is to get shoe boxes full of photos (from pre-digital days) into photo albums and to redo my old photo albums which are those old sticky kinds that are supposed to be bad for your pictures. Whenever I make any efforts in this direction, questions come up about the best ways to do it, so I thought I’d share those questions with you all and get some advice.

1. Do you arrange your photo albums chronologically or by event or some combination? Do you do separate albums for vacations or other topics?
2. When you make a baby album for a child, how for do you go in it? Do you just cover the first year or so? I struggle with what photos to put there and what to put in the regular family album.
3.  What do you do with photos like the ones of animals in the zoo from 20 years ago that no one is that interested in any more or the extra photos of an event that you’re not sure whether to throw away? Do you end up still keeping some photos in a box?
4. When you use a scrapbook, do you mat every single picture?
5. Do you use those little corner holders, or do you use glue and page protectors? Don’t the corner holders poke into photos on the opposite page?
6. What kind of glue do you use?
7. When you do digital scrapbooking, do you print it out or does it stay digital? How do other people see it?
8. What are your favorite tools?

I think that’s all for now.

For the record, I’ve made one photo album for each child up to maybe 1 1/2 to 2 years of age and then chronological albums (not one per year, but each one covers maybe 3-4 years). I’ve thought of making a “Friends and Family” album of those school and professional photos people have sent over the years. I’ve only made a couple of scrapbooks: one for Jason’s high school graduation of highlights of his life and one for Jesse’s graduation just of school and class pictures through the years. My scrapbooks are more about the pictures than the decorations – so far I haven’t gotten too decorative, both because of the time factor (both were made under a deadline) and also because I prefer to emphasize the photos rather than the layouts. But now that I’m doing this on my own timetable, I might try to be more creative with them.

I appreciate your feedback!