Scrapbooking My Kids School/Life Albums

We have finally moved into our new home and the dust, literally, has nearly settled. My office space is not quite as neat and organized as I would like it, but I am so excited and inspired to get started on my 16 year old son's scrapbook!

I have two other kids whose scrapbooks are pretty bare. I'm hoping the systems I have set up many years ago will be helpful now!

I had started by ASSESSING what I had and what I've done over the years. I realized I had a few albums that were partially done. LOTS of loose photos, digital photos, photos on cd/dvd, and negatives.

Next, I started GATHERING all of my photos, papers, art, memorabilia - basically everything I had from their school years.  I have been doing this through the years. I started out compiling everything into filing bins with file folders labeled by age and then by school year (birth, 1, 2, 3, preschool, kindergarten, grade 1, etc).  The file bins were similar to these I found at Staples.

Now that we've moved into our new home I have a smaller office/creative space. I have set up a temporary desk until I decide what I will do and bought two commercial size filing cabinets, that are  acting as temporary desk supports. I chose these Staples filing cabinets because they are heavier duty and much deeper than the others I had found. I have three kids and have designated a drawer for each of them and this is where I now hold all of their school stuff. It's easy to file things away now that I have the drawers and files in place. 

I have already collected and sorted all of their stuff because I had been doing it all along as their items came in. If you haven't sorted the school stuff you will want to do that per child. I pulled out all of their stuff and organized it by year and/or teacher. I used stickies and wrote the grade/year/teacher's name on it and sorted everything into piles. Once sorted, I placed everything into file folders as "holders" until I could scrapbook them. I didn't make any decisions as to what to keep or toss. At that moment, I wanted to just sort and organize. (Batch process!)

This is where I am now. The next step will be to DECIDE WHAT I WANT TO KEEP OR WHAT THE KIDS WANT TO KEEP. For items that are too big I will photograph and include that in their album. For other papers and artwork I will either cut it down to size or scan it and use in the Project Life App to create a page. I may also make digital pages using photoshop depending on the items.

I currently have two different scanners. One is the Fujitsu Scansnap ix500. It's fast and efficient. It can scan a lot of pages at once. You can go into the settings and have it save as a jpeg or pdf. You can set the image quality to automatic resolution or as high as 600 dpi for color/grey scanning or 1200 dpi for black and white scanning.  You can choose to scan in color, grey, black and white or automatic color detection. Duplex (double-sided) or simplex (single-sided). AND it can be programmed to be used wirelessly! It's a little pricey, but worth the money. ($495.99 at Staples, but you may be able to find it for less elsewhere).

I also have the Epson Perfection V750 Pro. I've had this one for many years. I don't use it quite as often, but find it is great for scanning older prints. It can scan up to 6400 optical resolution and can automatically remove dust and surface defects from your photos and can even remove scratches from old black and white photos. It is also great for batch scanning negatives, slides, and more. I haven't used it to its capacity, but it has been great for scanning more fragile or bulkier items. 

My next step is going to be to go through, sort, scan, and photograph starting with preschool. 

I can't wait to get started!