To my 'non chronological' scrapping tribe . . .

I don't scrap chronologically, but that's not a problem for me as hubby won't let me print albums anyway. He want's everything to say digital. Stuff gets backed up though.
I have my pages in folders by year. I have a file naming convention of yymm_title

for example a page about a woodland walk that happened in October 2017 would be 1710_WoodlandWalk and be stored in a photo in the 2017 Scrapbookpages folder.

 

I do not scrap chronologically and only scrap photos that go with a kit or something I want to work on. The only scrapping that I print is my trip books, so unfortunately, I am not a good person to ask! (I keep my pages/kits and photos on my EHD and now I am worried)

 

I honestly print how I scrap if that makes sense.. I start with Winter for January and go through the Holidays as kits are released and keep going until December. That's as chronologically as I get

 

That is exactly how I scrap. But, I'm way behind in my printing. I bought a wire binder and tank printer hoping if I could print as I go, I would keep up with it, but that hasn't happened. Maybe this year! When I have printed in the past I've done photobooks and arranged the pages of that book in a rough chronological order.

Looking forward to hearing how others do it.

 

I scrap as I feel like it... then when the page is done, I add it to a year folder. Then when I have enough, I print. I do go through and see what might be missing from that year, then may make a few specific pages. I also sort them by month before printing. I don't print often so it works, layouts build up. I do have an interim album of all my pages, and need to sort that to years. lol!

I used to separate trips and such, but found I'm better at highlights, lol! I take too many pictures, and half I don't need, but still take and keep.

 

I don't scrap chronologically, but i do print chronologically... so I live and die by my scrapping spreadsheet. I just keep a running list of things I want to scrap in rough order by date. Then when I create a page, I mark it done. When I have somewhere around 111 pages in order (Shutterfly's page limit) that are done, I print a shutterfly book. So my books just start and stop wherever they are on the spreadsheet, and not by complete years.

If I make a page later on that would have fit into a book, sometimes I'll throw it into the next book randomly just for fun, but most of the time, I'm okay with those "extras" just living in my digital collection of finished pages.

Here's a link to a sample spreadsheet like what I use if anyone is interested. Or here's a screenshot:


I added the grey/white column so I could also visualize which two pages would be facing each other in the book, although I do not even try to get them to match if they are unrelated... this is mostly so I can have two page spreads that were made together (my monthly misc pages) stay together.

 

I'm not a chronological scrapper. I either choose a photo to go with the kit I want to work with or I find a kit to go with a specific photo. But I don't print either, I just look at the digital files. I'm not sure a printed book would do anything other than gather dust. I upload the full res layouts to Flickr as a backup. But now I am thinking of adding a second backup.

 

I'm not a chronological scrapper and my books that I print are all the pages that I created that particular year. It's fun to discover older photos (especially of the "littles") in books when they are teens and even older.

 

I started out scrapping non-chronological and sometimes still do just scrap a page for the heck of it. It worked for me because I didn't do albums by year. I organize by theme so I could just put the layouts in the CM album they belonged in.

Lately though I'm more of a chronological scrapper. I've been scrapping photos for my cousin's family and have been putting them in Shutterfly books chronologically when I get to at least 100 pages. So they show the grandkids growing up and they love them. I keep a list on a spreadsheet of their photos and how many layouts for each event. One thing I prefer to do is have a double page layout for an event side by side in the book so once in awhile a single page layout will be out of place but not by a lot.

I also went back and scrapped a lot of my old photos and because I use CM albums I am able to put the layouts where they belong chronologically.

 

Back when I was creating both paper and digital layouts, I would just print the digital layouts at 12x12 from a place like Persnickety Prints. Then I would add them to the same slip in sleeves in the binders that held my paper layouts. Since those were ring binders, I could re-arrange the pages as needed. So that's an option, even as a temporary measure although the printing can get expensive.

I really prefer printing in photobooks now because it takes up so much less room and is easier to look through. So I'm in the same boat as you a little bit in that I rarely ever finish a year to be able to print it. I'm trying to go back and fill in some years that are mostly done, like 2019 to get them printed..

 

I currently scrap very minimalist, but when I get the urge to do a more traditional type page, I pick whatever I want to scrap and just scrap it. I've been working my way through my backlog of photos this way. Since I have not actually completed years to print as photo books, whenever I amass enough pages and there's a free extra pages sale at Shutterfly, I print what I've titled a "Remember This" book. Everything I've scrapped goes in there. I put it in the best chronological order that I can and just print.

I have a reel on instagram with a flip through of my books. You can find it here. One of the books is pretty much entirely made up of my earliest attempts at digital scrapbooking (2004-2006ish?) that I found on an old EHD. It's pretty cringy but it's still fun having them printed and out into the world!

 

I love to print! And I try to print often. I also scrap out of order.

I have a few options, depending on what it is.
Project Life: I print 12x12 pages from Persnickety prints and store in page protectors. This project takes a lot of my energy when I do it, so I make sure to print at least quarterly to keep my motivation strong.

Trips: I don't print until it's ready. For example, after I had done a bunch of random pages in my cruise 2023 book, I wanted to get it printed. I sat down and checked each day, pulling out things I wanted scrapped. I pulled the photos out, and started scrapping there first. Once I filled in the gaps, I printed the first half of the trip. It's chronological. I have the rest of the days ready to go, and I plan to finish part 2 in time for the next free pages from Shutterfly.

Everyday life: My books are called things like "A peek at 2013" or "life vol xx".
For these books, when there's a free pages offer, or a great photobook offer, I go into my scrapped pages and pull out what I've scrapped this year. Inside that book, I arrange things chronologically. So, that book may have a page with my kid at 5 and a page a little later with him at 8. He loves to look at the books, and he loves to see how much he's changed, so he doesn't mind that it's not a complete chronological book. It can also be fun if there are 3 Halloweens, or 4 different Christmases in the same book. The difference in costumes, and presents, even the tree is neat to see that close together. I have a few books where I was really into scrapping that particular year, so there might be enough for that year to be its own book, even if it's not complete (a peek at year).

I can put together a video look through if you are more visible and would like to see one of my random ones.

Someday, I may go back and pull everything into a true chronological album and reprint by true year. I store all my layouts in a folder by year that it occurred, so it would be easy to do. It's also organized so my family could easily print when I'm gone. My husband says he doesn't mind if we reprint later, since we may want to have a copy and let the kid take a copy at some point.

 

You put it way more eloquently than I did!

 

I don't scrap chronologically at all... whatever photo works with current kit/template will do... hence having used the same photo a few times! I do make lots of lists and spreadsheets of what I scrap and file everything in date order so I file by year. Once I have a full year done I have printed photobooks... and yet I have gone back and rescrapped photos in those books just for fun. One day I plan to redo all my paper layouts into digi ones too (only about 16 years worth!)

 

I am definitely not a chronological scrapbooker. I use way too many heritage photos to even consider that. Depending on what the designer is offering, I will look through my organized photo stash & select something that I think would work with the product. Plus my living situation is different than yours. I do not have littles around with the intent to make them photo books.

But I do add keywords to EVERY layout I create so that if I need to curate layouts for a certain event, I can just enter in the tag/tags and find them.

Recently, a first cousin was bemoaning that he couldn't find the digital files of heritage layouts I had done for that side of the family. So with my trusty keywords, I was able to locate all of my pages for the family & put them into a Blurb magazine for him. He was SO happy with it. Another example, when my dog died, I looked for layouts tagged with Jack and put together a memory book.

Every year, whenever Blurb is running a sale on their magazines, I will create magazines (8.5x11) with the layouts I've done for the prior year. It is a mix of designers and challenges and whatever, but at least they are in print format and I can look at them. The chances of me picking up a magazine to view layouts are much higher than just keeping them digital. Also, for every MOC that I participated in, since 2016, I've created a magazine specifically for that event. So if I'm counting right, I've got nine of them printed.

For my recent family trip, I took over 1300 photos. I put together a Blurb 13x11" landscape photo book. It contained about 550 of those photos, 150 pages in length. There are no layouts, just photos on a page. I took advantage of full-page spreads, small pics, etc. I varied it so that the viewer wouldn't get too bored. I ordered 3 copies and am gifting my two brothers with a copy of the book for Christmas. If I waited to create layouts with these vacation pics, it would not get done in my lifetime.

You definitely need a backup system. I use Backblaze. It automatically backs up my laptop as well as the external hard drives I've instructed Backblaze to monitor for me.

 

My covers have the year, small cropped photos of the kids and current pets, and a different colour/flourish per year. So the covers all look alike. I started this in 2008 and kept going with the same design, just different colours/photos/flourishes. The spine matches and so does the back cover.