THURSDAY: The Big Picture

While I have been a negligent scrapbooker for the last year or two, this remains one of the best books I have read about scrapbooking. Stacy Julian is the guru of "simple" scrapbooking. She stands firm against the idea of "getting caught up," believing instead that you should scrapbook the things that matter most and forget about chronology and putting every picture you take into an album! Where were these ideas when my son was first born and I was making a scrapbook page for every little thing he did?

This book goes along with a class that Stacy teaches at her website, Big Picture Scrapbooking called Library of Memories. In its simplest form, the idea is to (a) not print every digital picture you take - just use the best ones or the ones that communicate something important, (b) put your pictures somewhere where you can see them and be inspired by them, (c) and fight the urge to work chronologically. Look for ways to use your pictures to communicate ideas - personality qualities about a person, for example - rather than 16 pages of pictures of each soccer game from the season.

This is a great resource and encouragement for overwhelmed scrapbookers or for people just getting started who want a system that can stay simple.