I love to Organize and I love to Scrapbook. Today’s post is about a neat opportunity I had to combine them.

          I was able to participate in a function where a woman’s friends and family worked on completing her children’s scrapbooks. I thought it was such a wonderful idea that I’m sharing the organizing tips.

If you want a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and to have unspoiled soup…you need to make preparations beforehand:

          I received the photos separated out by child. Then it was necessary to sort them further into chronological order focusing on events that had at least 2-3 photos. Each of these events was put into a baggie (the scrapbooking party was being held soon so a baggie wouldn’t harm them) with a notecard: Different color notecard for each child,  on each notecard was the child’s initial, the date, the event, and the number of photos.  As you are dividing out the events, keep a master list of the chronological order of events in each year by kid so that you are able to put them back in order when you assemble the pages into a book.  

  For help sorting photos, check out this post: http://organizeme-jasmine.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-organize-photos.html

 

     We had a lot of donations from family and friends so we took the time (well worth it!) to sort the paper and embellishments into categories: baby, girl, boy, birthday, Halloween, Christmas, school, sports, winter etc. We put them in oversized bags with labels on the front.

 

        With the paper and embellishments sorted, we were able to make up “kits”….paper and embellishments that would fit a certain event. We made sure to put enough card stock in the kits for the number of pages we would need (most pages will hold 2-4 pictures). Then we put the kits into a page protector along with the baggie of pictures. This way, those who didn’t have much experience scrapbooking could still participate. We left the rest of the cardstock, embellishments, and page protectors out on a table (with the rest of the baggies) and encouraged seasoned scrapbookers to come up with their own designs.

    We asked our scrapbookers to put their finished pages into one page protector with the notecard that was in the baggie. All of the finished pages went into a bin. After they were all finished, we used the master list to assemble the books in order.

   It was such a neat experience to see a large group of loved ones working together on a gift of love. The event was a success, and I think it’s such a great service opportunity that is certainly original and unique!

Thanks to Pink Daffodil Photography for the photos of the event.