feeling overwhelmed... give me some help! Fast scrapping time!

I am in love with Liz's Daily Life Templates... https://the-lilypad.com/store/Daily-Life-Template-Bundle.html

I scrap by event and have a spreadsheet that I track things on (thanks to @gonewiththewind for the inspiration). That way I know what has been scrapped and what still needs to scrap.

My process is to pick the photos I want to scrap for the event and open them all in Paint Shop Pro. Once I know how many photos I have I look through my templates and find a template that will fit the orientation and number of photos I have. Photos get placed into the templates. Then I look for a kit to use for all pages. I've already scrapped 3 pages at one time. I do minimal elements as well. I like Liz's templates because of the paper blocks, circles or triangles as background under the photos in her daily life series along with a couple others she has designed.

Since October 7th I've done 95 layouts with a large majority of them being the daily life templates. I also used these template sets from Liz:

https://the-lilypad.com/store/Clean-and-Simple-Digital-Scrapbook-Templates.html
https://the-lilypad.com/store/Month-In-Review-2017-Template-Bundle.html

2017 is finished and I'm well on my way in 2018. Granted still need to do some stuff from years before but I stopped scrapping in late 2016 and had been mostly up to date when I stopped.

That is what has helped me get back on track and not feel so overwhelmed anymore

 

Lynn Grieveson's templates let you show off a lot of photos. And you don't have to worry about too many elements/papers, which means you can scrap quickly. Here are just a few of my faves:

 

I'm right there with you - totally overwhelmed some days! I have so many photos to scrap.
I have numerous trip albums to create and have finally decided to use template albums, along with a maximum of three kits which work well with travel photos, along with some travel word art and that's it!!! If I can get those out of the way, I will probably feel so much better about the rest of my pictures.

 

I have done many trips and yearly books and have always used templates, often using Lynn Grieveson's templates like these below and many others. You can take a 'simple' one for one side and balance it with an artsy one on the other. I really limit my digi extras if I want to get it done quickly.



I have also made pages where ⅔ of the page is images and a few cute things and then had a column - say 3, 4 or 6 by 10 to write a long bit of journaling.


Pick just a few templates, a few coordinating papers and limit your extras. You really can get a lot done By repeating an element or two you get a coordinated look too. Once you feel semi-caught up you can go back to making pages which are product centered if that's what you really love. Good luck - and btw we're never caught up unless you stop taking photos!

 

@Frumpje Remember that you are the only one policing yourself and you are putting this stress on you. Make a goal of a number of pages per week and stick to that. The girls have given you tons of good templates to follow and if you need more just holler! You've got this!

 

oh yep, it can feel like your drowning in photos and haven't got the time to tackle them all - do you pocket scrapbook at all?
i find that's sometimes faster and uses more photos per page and some people make their photobooks/albums up with one 'normal/freestyle' scarpbook page on one half and the other half of the spread is a pocket page so they can mix in freestyle pages and still have a flow to the album.
I think SirScrapalot used to have a method to 'speed scrap' albums by making individual folders (just in windows) that contained the photos, a template and a kit for each page he wanted to scrap from a trip; so next time he sat down he was ready to clip all his photos into templates during one session (say 10 different layouts, all the folders, one at a time but just photos in this step); then the next session, he'd add papers to everything; the next session was journalling and then elements or titles - i don't know if that's faster for everyone but it might help?

 

Also, Scrapping Liz's Weekly templates can be bought just one week at a time you don't need to get the big bundle. https://the-lilypad.com/store/Weekly-Life-13-Digital-Scrapbook-Templates.html

 

Yeah, being a kit scrapper definitely helps to scrap faster since once you find a kit, you just use what is in it. Since I like pages with lots of paper behind my photos one of my basic things to look for in a kit is lots of papers. And, there has to be solids as well as patterns. I prefer solids as my backgrounds as I find it hard to read journaling done on even muted patterned papers.

Have fun scrapping today!

 

LOL about the kit use. I used to love finding things here and there in my stash to make my own kit of sorts. Too Much Time for me! Now I often just use one kit and call it done. And more gets done!

 

I made my brother a wedding album in a weekend with the photos I took. It was about 30 pages. Here was my process:

1. I went through all the photos and looked at it by mini events/days. For example the rehearsal dinner. Then I decided what photos I liked that really told the story. I did any edits (in Lightroom) and exported them to a 'project' folder. So, all the photos I liked that I wanted to scrap were in the project folder.
2. I made the photos small thumbnails so I could get a feel for kit colors that would go well. I realized that I needed about 3 kits because of the colors and time frame.
3. I zoomed in and got an idea of about how many photos per page, and their directions (horizontal/vertical). This lead me to scrapping with Liz's DMC bundle. There were lots of options for 4-6 photos per page and that's what I had for most pages.
4. I decided on 3 kits to make up the main pages, 1 kit for the dancing,and another for the stag and doe (st. Patrick's theme). I then created a shortcut folder on my project folder to the template set and the kits.
In my project folder I created two other folders: pages and done. I saved all my pages here and moved used photos into the done folder after scrapping them. I do this because I like to check on how the pages are looking next to each other and see if they are telling the story I want them to tell. Plus, it helps me see my progress! Without getting distracted by other pages I've done. (I get distracted easily!)
5. I started scrapping. I laid out each 2 page spread as I started, but I didn't pre place photos. I wanted the freedom to highlight a photo without worrying about making x other photos fit. Because the kits were there and ready to go I could search them for an element, but I wasn't distracted by other kits.
After I finished, I moved the pages to my normal storage place, and deleted the project folder. Since everything was a duplicate or shortcut, I didn't have to keep any of it. The only new things were the actual pages.
For this album, the process worked. By about the 4th spread I had an idea what elements were on the kits so it was easy to choose. If I had a cluster I made on one page that I really liked, sometimes I would copy it onto the next spread.

I don't power scrap like this all the time because I like to be more choosy and use more kits. But, it's my plan to get our summer trip scrapped by Christmas. And after the success of this book, I'm going to use the process for a few other trips I want to scrap.

 

I did something a lot like you @bestcee when I did my cruise album many years ago. I use Picasa and all my photos are downloaded to my computer by date so I just left them as is. Picasa has a feature called "Album" so I created one for the cruise. I chose to limit myself to about 5 or 6 kits for the larger portions of the trips, those things that would have more than 2 layouts. I then looked through my kits and chose the ones I wanted to use and added them to the album. I don't remember but putting template folders into that album would be very beneficial as well.

Each port day had its own kit. Belize ended up with 8 layouts. Cozumel ended up with 10. Grand Cayman had 9. By using 1 kit for each port, the layouts flow nicely in the album and you can see the differentiation between days. I did have other layouts for small things that took place during the week but all are 1 or 2 layouts... except the scanned postcard photos of the ship. That took 4.

I did the same thing when I scrapped my Disney photos from 2013. Chose a couple of kits, assigned them to an album and scrapped from that instead of constantly searching through Picasa for what I wanted.

 

This is such good advice. It applies to many life issues too!

 

@Frumpje @AJK

Sometimes we just don't see it.

btw. Used to have impromptus speed scraps with my friends Trista. She is not scrapping anymore and I miss her tons but we would actually go to the CHAT area and give each other instructions, which means by the end of the 1 hr, we would have a page each. It was so much fun!

 

fortunately both my girls are scrappers (they are junior members here - the Toucanettes) so I have the luxury of saying - if I don't get it done, never mind, they'll do it one day instead.
There are a lot of good albums in the store - templates with some elements in them that you can easily use with different papers for different looks if you use them in different years. Monthly review style pages are good for those miscellaneous photos taken during everyday life - it's quicker to put them all in a monthly review page than to create single pages for each memory.
Summary style 2-page layouts are also really good for grouping photos and events that have similar themes - it cuts down on scrapping time without taking away the details you want to document. Here's an example that covers 7 school performances that happened during 1 month.

 

what a cool idea!