Today is the beginning of National Scrapbook Month. What do you do with your family photos? When my kids were little I really tried to keep up with archiving our family photos. I did a good job until they got into middle school and started getting involved in sports and Scouts and church outings and ... well, you know. Life just got really busy and the photos started stacking up in boxes. Then we went digital and the photos continued to pile up, but in a less obvious way. Now they're hidden from sight in digital files on my computer.
May is also Tornado Season! The recent bad weather has reminded me of my precious photos and how important they are to me. Just a week ago we had a tornado warning which forced me to go to the basement. This was predicted well in advance so I did a little pre-planning and packed up all my old photo albums to take down to the basement with me. Of course we looked through all the photo albums while we were there and I realized what a loss, for me and for my kids and any future generations, if these photos were permanently lost. The severity of the damage done in Alabama made me realize that the basement is no guarantee of safety and that these items could still be lost.
The timing of May being National Scrapbooking Month is just the push I need to get started. Here is my plan.
FIRST: the risk is too high to have only 1 copy of the photos. I plan to use my scanner and scan the pages of the existing albums and the photos in the boxes and give copies to all three girls.
SECOND: I do have a copy of Stampin'UP!'s Digital Scrapbooking Software: My Digital Studio. I just haven't spent a lot of time playing with it. I want to go through the photos and make a hardbound photo album for each daughter. The cost of the software is only $79 and well worth the investment. Actually there is a downloadable version for only $39.95.
Now, my dilemna. The 2 photo albums you see open are both non-archival. Silly me! The black and white photos are in one of those old sticky page albums with the acetate pages and the pages in the bottom album are on paper that is like construction paper - definitely not a good way to save photos. Actually almost half the albums are non-archival. What I can't decide is whether to just re-do them in paper (which is totally fun and very appealing to me) or whether to re-do them digitally. The cost of having a digital book printed is just about the same as the cost of the paper and supplies you'd put into hand making a book and having it digital means more than one copy can be made. Of course we can scan the hand-made one so everyone can have a "copy". I'm trying to decide which would be more satisfying to my creative spirit. Would love to hear your vote on this. . . leave me a comment below.
Are you are feeling inspired to start digitally scrapbooking? You can order My Digital Studio (#118108) online from my website. Check out this page on the Stampin'UP! website to learn more about this product. I can help you with the program, and there is also training available online.
Speaking of my helping you. Would you please take a quick (5 question) survey for me about scrapbooking. It will help me to plan future classes. Thanks so much.
Hopefully none of us will ever lose our family photos, but if we take appropriate action now we can ensure their safety in the case of a disaster.
--Katie
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