first up, let’s pick a winner! this time i thought i’d use the random number generator to choose 2 numbers. and yes, you heard right … 2 numbers. there were so many nice comments that i can’t do just one! so here’s what it came up with:

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:

14  37 
Timestamp: 2008-03-28 17:27:56 UTC

#14 – I love your lo’s. Pure talent. I enjoy reading your blog too. I like your happy humor. Posted by: Renee

#37 – Hi Laura. Love your blog – I check daily! You always have super-inspiring projects, love the detail shots. Your photography is awesome – wish I had some skills in that area! Always fun to see your stuff on the Making Memories blog too. Posted by: Dana

congrats girls! email me your addresses and i’ll get your making memories goodies on there way to you. and thanks everyone for playing along!

so, now a little on my album re-organizing.

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see these 5 albums all stacked up? those contain all the layouts i’ve done about the daycare kids and some other kids we know … from the past 6 years or so. i also have 2 9×9 albums … but these are my 12×12 albums. that’s a ton of layouts. and i started going through them … and realized that i just had too many. it’d be different i guess if they were my own kids … i wouldn’t just toss those. lol! but the reality is … i don’t need all these. there are lots of layouts in there too from years ago … that were just plain layouts … no journaling, no special meaning, no special stories.

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so i purged the albums. several times to be honest. i went through and picked out some layouts to give back to the parents. i think they’ll enjoy them …  after all, it’s their kids. then i had to re-do the albums … darn post bound albums get me every time. lol! take them apart, adjust the pages, re-arrange the page protectors, condense the albums, put the albums back together. i got it down to 4 albums. then a few days later … i went back through them. and tore them all apart … completely apart … every single page out of the protectors and everything. i decided to arrange them by child. each child that i’ve watched has their own section … or if i had siblings, then they’re together. i really narrowed these down … so most of the kids have 3-5 layouts about them. of course, the kids that are still here and still big parts of our lives do have more layouts. but that way, if we want to see layouts about our good friends alison and michaela … we just flip to their section and can view layouts from over the past 6 years and not have to go through all the other pages. i plan on making simple divider pages that show their names … and probably some tabs on the sides of the albums.

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so now i have it back up to 5 albums. lol! but they’re not full … so i can add to them. i have 1 album for random daycare layouts. where there are several kids together … or the daycare kids with my girls … group shots. then i have 1 album for random friends (although i need a better name for it … random doesn’t sound right!) … this would be layouts about school friends, family friends, etc. then i have 3 albums that are for the individual daycare kids … each child that has been here having their own section … and pretty much put in order that they’ve been here. and for the kids that are still here … or still in our lives … i left a few empty page protectors so that it’d be easier to add in some new layouts here and there.  i pretty much know which kids might possible show up on a new layout … so i knew where to put the extra pages.

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like the metal rimmed tags added on with the binder clips? genious idea that i got from stacey julian’s new book, photo freedom. i loved that idea as soon as i saw it. i just quickly wrote the album contents on the tag .. someday i’ll write it a little prettier. and i want to tie a little ribbon on them too … will get to that later. but for now … i love knowing what’s in the album … without having to take the album out! that always bugged me … having this huge row of albums that all looked the same and not knowing what was in what album.

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these are the albums that i’ve completly gone through. the ones on the left side are more themed albums. i have school/sports (black), birthdays (yellow), spring holidays (pink), fall holidays (linen), and christmas (red). i have summer albums too … but i have to go through those still. these albums are seperated by year … and i have added in divider pages that i’ll add the year too … easier to seperate them since they all start to look the same when together in one album. i’ve moved these albums to my ikea shelves … and i love them there. i like how the cubes sort of divide them up.

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these are the albums that have been spread out on my island all week. i started over the weekend …. when my computer was locked up. lol! the green ones are the summer albums … swimming, vacations, things like that. then the brown ones are family albums. i have 2 albums for alyssa, 2 albums for sarah … so any layout about just them goes in there. and then 2 albums that are for family … any layouts of us all together, or the girls together. i’m debating these … making a few changes. and i have actually gone through and thrown layouts away. shocked? you shouldn’t be. i realized how many layouts i had in there with the same photos over and over. some of them were class layouts that i did when i taught at the lss … i would just toss some favorite photos on when i taught it. some were samples for different design team work … or display samples for the lss. and many of them had no journaling … nothing special about them. so i threw them out … tore off the photos on some … took off the good embellishments that i could still use.

one thing i’m debating is switching some of my albums to the american crafts albums … the 3 ring binder type. i’m not a chronological scrapper … but i like to have my layouts in chronological order. and the post bound albums don’t make that easy. lol! i have a few AC albums already laying around … and i tried them out and love them. but i’m still thinking about it … i like to have everything match, so i want a system that flows.

but i thought i’d toss this idea out there to you, my cyber friends … just in case someone was looking for albums and was interested. i have a ton of THESE 12×12 albums from MM … in brown with the label holder on the front … and tons of page protectors for them. i have about 12 albums total. some of them are still packaged … and some are being used, but are in great condition. i don’t necessarily have to get rid of them … but if anyone is actually interested in any, please email me and i’m sure we can make a good deal. if not … they’ll get used, trust me!

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17 responses to “album organizing and a winner . . .”

  1. karine Avatar

    I love the way you organize everything in your scraproom. I would like to be so! I do not have a lot of space (just a little corner in my bedroom), and it is really apocalyptic when I scrap, I put everywhere, and after need to clean. Hoping that someday I will classify albums like you do.
    Have a great week-end.
    Karine from france

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  2. Carolyn E. Avatar
    Carolyn E.

    congrats ladies!
    Thank you for sharing! This is great!
    i started sbing with CM albums and they are organized by year. this past year i stopped sbing with CM albums and i’ve had some problems finding a really good album…i bought an AC postbound and i’m currently putting 2007 in that, i also have an AC 3 ring modern album that has my “A Week In The Life” album that i took from Ali Edwards (& i love the options of diff sized pages). Of course both stick out further than the CM…but i’m not going back and taking them all off the “white” page and redoing them. I’m going to finish putting 2007 in the AC pb and have it sit with the rest of my albums before making a decision, which hopefully will come to me!
    Love the metal ringed tag idea…i made my own tags, i printed out rectangle tags with the year and/or title on them and paperclipped (w/ color coordinated rectagle clip)them to the spines. But they don’t stay put most of the time, might do the binder clip idea!
    Question: Are all of your albums from MM?
    sorry so long!
    Carolyn

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  3. Deneen Avatar

    Totally loving the new way you are organizing your albums and I have been wanting to do mine since I first saw Stacy Jullians albums in her Big Picture book. Someday. I need to order the American Craft Albums now.

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  4. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    Hi;
    Don’t you just love the look of the albums with the tag labels on them? I took Stacy’s LOM class last year (her book is based on the class) and changed all of my albums and added tags to them and I love the look. I have a baby picture of my kids on their younger albums and an older picture on their older albums (used medium sized MM tags), then I just used alpha stickers for the others and used cardstock that matched the album covers as the background on those albums. I have been working on a Christmas highlights album (never did Christmas pages before, believe it or not) and for the tag for that album, I used a reduced picture of one of our xmas trees in an oval MM tag. I used black and white poka dot ribbon on all of the albums. Just thought I would share – love seeing all of their little faces when I sit at my desk everyday. Have a great weekend!
    Eileen

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  5. Sierra Avatar
    Sierra

    OMGOSH!! The album label tags are so fabulous. I want to go home and do that! I hate having albums lined up for the SAME reason. Love, love, love it.

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  6. Carla Avatar

    I love the tags with the clips on the albums. What a great idea. You have a LOT of albums!!! Thanks for sharing this.

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  7. Leslie Avatar
    Leslie

    You’ve been super busy organizing! I love the album clips to let you know what’s in them – such a great idea – thanks for sharing! It gives such a uniformity even when they are in different colors – which I love all your colors. None of my albums are organized that way (I used to just buy what I liked) but I really like the way it looks on a shelf – classy! I have one binder type album and it does stick out longer than my other ones but the ease of adding in a page (since I do like to have them in chrono. order) makes it a breeze. Thanks for all the tips 🙂

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  8. Leslie Avatar
    Leslie

    Oh and I forgot to mention in my previous post – I’m going to have my daughter start coming to your daycare just so I can have you scrap a page of her wink – your work is so great!!

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  9. Sara Avatar

    LOVE the tags on the albums! I was soing mine a different way but wasn’t thrilled with it. Gonna have to try this on my post bound albums. I have a few of the AC 3 ring albums & the WRMemory Keepers albums & love them!
    BTW—I know I owe you a bunch of emails…sorry!!

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  10. Renee Avatar
    Renee

    Must be universal consciousness thingy, but was going thru some Scrapbook Trends magazines and saw your girls. I didn’t even need to look at the names.
    Thanks for sharing your organizational stuff…I think I do that more than scrapbooking.

    Like

  11. Susan D. Avatar

    i’ve been wanting to put tags on the FEW albums that i have…i love the way they look on your shelves. i so need to go find that book. it’s been so long since i’ve bought any scrap related item or even scrapped for that matter. maybe this will get me going.

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  12. Maria Avatar
    Maria

    Laura – I just stumbled on your blog and I have to tell you I love your studio!!! Amazing……and I love the tag idea on the albums too! What brand are those albums you have in different colors? Are they MM? I am thinking about going to a theme based color system but I want to pick albums that will be around for a long time. I have a friend who uses CM albums and they discontinued all the colors she uses for her children so she is in trouble now and I don’t want the same thing to happen to me!

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  13. Angie Avatar
    Angie

    I love what you did with the tags and the clips on your albums!! Great Idea for labeling them like that!!

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  14. WENDY MYERS Avatar

    I can’t believe you got all that done!
    You are definetly getting some photo freedom.
    Doesn’t it make you feel to accomplished?
    Great Job

    Like

  15. danni perez Avatar

    that is a great system for labeling your albums. funny because i was just talking to a girlfriend the other day about starting to use the ac albums too. i used to be totally against three ring binder {for some reason}, but now i think i want to start using them.
    let me know if you buy one and love it or not.
    either way, i gotta do something, because i have tons of lo with no homes.
    ~danni

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  16. Susan Todd Avatar
    Susan Todd

    me again! I have been ordering the Stampin’ Up! albums with the rings, and love them. MUCH easier to put stuff away, and no fussing with the posts. they are covered in linen, not too many color choices, but with the labeling…..makes it easy to find which book you want.
    Susan

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  17. wendy sue Avatar

    Wow!! You are so organized. Please come to my house and HELP me!!! ;o)

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