Last weekend I attended a 48 hour Creative Memories scrapbook retreat.  I did some planning prior to the event, mainly sorting photos among my 3 children and then picking out background papers for the theme.  My husband had a meeting that day and didn't get home till around 3:15, and I didn't get left till 3:45, which is okay because I was still packing for it.

It was a 2 hour drive from home and was held at a church camp, with dorm rooms.  I arrived about 5:30 p.m., it started at 3:00 p.m., so by the time I got settled and ate my meal, it was about 7:00 when I got started scrapping.  I slept about 5 hours each night, but that was enough for me to keep going.  Got to bed around 2:00 a.m. each night.  It wound up at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.

I am so pleased!  I completed 85 pages (minus journalling).  I have never gotten so much done as that.  I guess when you make most of the decisions before putting it together, it actually goes much faster.

I did purchase a neat product there called Memory Manager.  It helps you organize your digital photos and you can even journal in the program and then send the photos and the journalling to either Creative Memories Photo or another photo printer.  All you have to do is pop them in your album when they come back.

I  just installed the program tonight and spent some time just learning my way around it.  One thing I did was to set up sort boxes and folders within those boxes.  My hope is to sort amongst my kids for each year, then print the photos from those albums and I'll be half way to getting my pages made.

If anyone else is using Memory Manager, I would love to hear your comments and how you are using it.  I am not a CM consultant, but I do love their tools!  Happy Scrapping!!!

Kristi67

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1. Make an appointment with yourself and keep it –  I know many of you schedule the important things in your life:  quiet time with the Lord, time with your spouse, time for schooling and time for completing the many tasks required to run a homeschooling household.  If you’ve been lamenting the fact, there is never time to scrapbook, then make it a priority by setting aside time to work on your project.   When my children were very small, they all took two hour naps in the afternoon.  Rather than try to catch up on housework (never-ending), I devoted those two hours to working on our scrapbooks.  If I got interrupted, that was okay, but I had an appointment with myself and worked on them at least 4 days per week.  This allowed me to complete baby books for my twins and their sister (who is just 23 months younger); by the time they were two years old.
2. Attend a crop, weekend retreat, overnight crop or other workshop -  Simply the act of registering and paying to attend one of these events motivates you to get organized and complete some pages.  Many times these are the only times I get a significant amount of pages completed.  I went to a 24 hour crop and completed 33 pages.  In the last two weeks, I attended two 6 hour workshops and completed 11 pages and 12 pages, respectively. 
3. Get together with a friend -  It is always more fun to crop with someone else, so if you don’t like to pay to crop, then call a friend, your sister, your mother, or your neighbor and crop while your kids play together in another part of the house.  Earlier this year, my three sisters and I completed a 150 page (two album) scrapbook for our parents’ 40^th wedding anniversary celebration.  We all worked on our respective pages, but we completed approximately 75 pages during the last 17 hours when we were all together.  You garner creative ideas and techniques and it didn’t cost you anything. 
4. Set up a scrapbooking space in your home -  It may be a spare bedroom, a dedicated scrapbook/hobby area, an under-used closet or storage area, or a small corner of your bedroom, or alcove underneath the stairs.  By thinking creatively, you can create simple, effective storage solutions to hold all your supplies and provide you with a workspace that you can use when you find snippets of time.   I scrapped while my children napped in an unfinished bedroom.  I kept it off-limits to the children, so I was able to keep my supplies and work in progress out where I could work on them when time permitted.  You can sort pictures while you watch your favorite television show.  Another idea is to do your journaling while you are waiting for your children to complete an assignment.  You can crop photos when you have 10 minutes before you leave for an outside activity.  There are pockets of time throughout your day, just be aware of them and use them to your benefit.
5. Plan a whole album -  There are many names for this, but the basic technique is the same.  Lay out at least a dozen pieces of plain cardstock.  Sort your pictures onto these by topic or page theme.  Next crop the photos into basic shapes (rectangles, squares, circles or ovals).  Next sort any memorabilia that goes with the pictures onto the cardstock/photo piles.  If  you decide to mat photos, choose the colors that coordinate with your photos and lay the matting paper/cardstock on the piles.  Next you stack the pages on top of one another and store in a storage box (an album box works great for this).  When you are ready, you have made most of the decisions and can quickly assemble the pages and add any embellishments you desire.  I know of people who regularly complete entire albums in a weekend doing this.  What a great way to get caught up!
6. Assemble page kits – This involves a technique similar to the album technique listed in #5.  Sort your photos and coordinating cardstock, then add stickers, die cuts and other items (brads, fibers, etc).  Store in individual bags or other storage container.  You can grab a couple to complete when you have an extra half-hour, or grab several as you head out the door to a crop.  Again, you have made most of the decisions, so the page will come together much quicker for you and you don’t have to agonize, wasting precious time (that you paid for) trying to decide what color of background paper you want to use.
7. Make borders -  Utilize some of your abundant stash of stickers and put together borders on strips of cardstock.  They will be coordinating with the cardstock, thereby making your choices for colors.  There is nothing faster than adding a premade border to you page, cropping your photos and affixing them to the page.  All you have left is to complete your journaling.  Along the same lines, use border strips to do your titles.  These really free up a lot of time for you to assemble the page.  Several of my friends do this and makes their time really productive.  I have not done it on the same scale as them, but what I have done has helped me complete more pages in less time and I am all for that.  After all, I have 4 ½ years worth of pictures to catch up for 3 kids and myself.

I hope that you will glean something from this article and perhaps would like to share other ideas you have along these lines

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I have been scrapbooking 10 years now and have tried a number of techniques over the years.  One of my favorite techniques is paper piecing, although it is time consuming, so I tend to not do very much of it.  I have done some from patterns, but for the most part, I make my own.  The first one I made was of an older style tractor.  It turned out really well.  The tractor belonged to my husband's grandfather and was sold.  The fellow restored it and put it in a number of shows.  As of 6 weeks ago, we purchased the tractor back from him and now my husband and son will work on restoring it.  My husband restored it with his grandfather in 1976 for the bicentennial, so this will be a neat project for my husband and son.  And of course I will be scrapbooking the process.

I love using chalks and use them whenever I can to embellish a page.  One of my favorite techniuqes for a quick page, is to make a border strip.  It sure does stretch the scrapbooking dollar and can also be used for titles.  By using some of my stickers on the border and the rest on the pages, I can get 2-3 pages from a sticker sheet and that really helps. 

I just purchased an eyelet setter while on vacation and am looking forward to using it.  My sister borrowed her neighbor's to try the technique and really liked it, so i thought I would jump in too.  As I am about 5 years behind in pictures, I figure that I will be able to use many techniques and nothing will be wasted. 

I am also trying to incorporate more ribbon into my pages.  I think the look is awesome and I have lots of ribbon left over from crafting projects that I can incorporate.  My three sisters and I recently  (almost) completed a 150 page, 2 volume scrapbook for my parent's 40th wedding anniversary.   One of my sisters completed their wedding pages with white ribbon over turquoise paper (their wedding color) and their black and white photos.  They turned out so awesome!  I can't wait to do mine.

I guess these would be my favorite techniques, but I am sure something new will come along that I like even more and I will add that to my collection of  things to use in my scrapbooking.

That's all for now.  I need to get my house back together so I can get back to scrapping!

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