I saw the greatest idea in the new Top Ten 2006 issue of Creating Keepsakes this weekend. Faye Morrow Bell, who always has such great ideas, suggested creating an Idea Index to keep track of all the creative, fun and gotta-do-it ideas you come across.

She suggested creating a spreadsheet and listing the ideas in it with details as to where to find these great ideas again. Sheer brilliance!

I created a Scrapbooking Idea Index spreadsheet and thought maybe you’d like to grab mine so you don’t have to start from scratch with yours. I also created a second tab to list each source as you use it (so you don’t have to wonder if you have already cataloged something).

A final bit of advice from Faye:

Do not attempt to index five years worth of magazines and idea books in one sitting! Start with this Top 10 issue and build from there.

Thanks, Faye, for the great idea and the solid advice (as usual!).

Here’s my Scrapbooking Idea Index file. It is an Excel spreadsheet file. Feel free to share it with anyone - just don’t start selling it and please leave the credit lines to Faye and me intact. Enjoy!

I am still struggling with organizing our almost 900 digital photos from our Alaska vacation. S far, we have gotten them off of my husband’s laptop and onto our computer hard drive and backed up onto CD. They are even sorted into the days of the vacation. But that is it. I am now stuck. How on Earth am I going to figure out which of this equivalent to 37 rolls of film should be printed? I may just stay stuck for a while. I’m not ready to scrapbook it yet anyway…

I did find a great article about this topic at ScrapsAhoy. It is by Jess Atkinson.

Tips - Organizing Vacation Photos

Picture the scene. You’ve returned from vacation. You’ve unloaded the car, unpacked a little, maybe thrown the laundry down by the washer, and found the most important souvenirs of your trip-the ten rolls of film you’ve managed to shoot over your five day vacation (a reality for many of us, I’m sure!).

This is my typical after the vacation routine. Read on to find out how I deal with organizing the tons of photos I inevitably end up with.

Read all her tips here.

I love my paper! In fact, if I could only use one thing on a scrapbook page besides my photos, it would be PAPER. (Wonder why I buy all those stickers then?) Anyway, I really want to get it organized so my scrapping goes faster and easier.

Found a great article about organizing your 12 x 12 paper by Rebecca Ludens at About.com. My favorite is this one:

It looks great for at-home storage and also portable. Since I sometimes crop here and often at my mom’s, the portability factor is huge for me.

I highly suggest checking out the whole article as Rebecca shares some really great ideas for organizing your paper. Lots of other pictures and practical suggestions.

My friend, Kim Wolinski (aka Dr. DeClutter) has an excellent e-zine about decluttering called Dr. DeClutter’s Organizing Tips & Tools Newsletter. In her Q&A column this week she wrote about how to organize the massive amounts of school projects that come home all the time.

Dear Dr. DeClutter,

School is around the corner and I’m already dreading all those
“creative crafts” and materials that the kids will bring home from
school. What’s the best way to organize these things and what
do I keep?

Too much Schooltime Joy!, Destin, FL

Dear Joy!

Millions of parents are feeling overwhelmed already just like you!
A few years ago my mom gave me a box, a 12X10X5 inch
cardboard box. It had several projects and class worksheets
from my 3rd Grade Year! Just smelling that old glue and construction
paper took me right back to that classroom, back into my
3rd Grade body. I don’t think I have memories from back then,
but when we actually can see, smell and touch “artifacts” from
our past, the memories come alive again. It’s a good thing!

Here are some simple answers.

1)
Make files that are kept in the kitchen or the area of the
house where everyone knows where to find them. Label them:
a) School projects;
b) Activities, like sports and plays;
c) Parent/Teacher meetings;
c) Papers to READ & SIGN;
d) and other such files specific to your school and children’s activities so that nothing gets lost.

2)
An extra tip here: Put up a Family Calendar too with every
activity noted.

When arts and crafts and worksheets with stars on them start
showing up, do this:

3)
Keep on the “best of the best” and show on the refrigerator or
wall for a week or two. When the “next best” comes through,
replace it — get rid of the rest!

4)
Get the really large lidded tubs for storage. Label each with
a child’s name. In it goes “the best of the best each week.” Only
one or two items is good. When it gets half-full and there’s still
plenty of school year left, cull it out and complete it for the
year. School class assignments are in this same category.

5)
Use their paintings and art as show pieces on your walls.
Get inexpensive but colorful frames and frame their paintings
and drawings. Put them in the hall, kitchen and other walls
to showcase their work. They will feel very loved and honored
when you do this and they can show their friends and other
guests. A great way to support encouraging high self-worth
in your children.

6)
Plan on a mantle, shelf or other area for trophy’s and such.
Make sure to always have a “place of honor” for their creative
productions.

I hope these tips, tools and techniques are helpful!

Do you have a question for Dr. DeClutter? Email your question to
kimwolinski@msn.com . Type Dear Dr. DeClutter in the subject line,
write your question and see it answered in a future newsletter edition.

Life’s too short to keep dealing with the same stuff over and over again!

Thanks, Kim for that great article. Since yesterday was the first day of school I am not too far behind for this year to be the one that is well organized.

You can sign up for Dr. DeClutter’s e-zine here.

My friend Carolyn over at CropChic posted a great article about Preparing for a Crop. Her first of four terrific suggestions is:

Pick one album, project or up to three layouts to complete. Before you set off for the crop, know what you want to do. If you’re going to a 4-hour crop, it may make more sense to do a few layouts. If you’re going to a weekend/marathon event, try working on an album. Either way, set a scrapbooking course and follow it.

I also suggest having a secondary project and bring it along. In one instance I actually finished up the project I had brought, leaving me hours to organize my supplies and gaze at idea books wishing I had something else to work on. Another time, the creativity just wouldn’t flow for my chosen project. So now I always bring a couple different projects.

Be sure to check out Carolyn’s other three suggestions here. And have fun cropping!

Just returned from our Alaska cruise and our laptop’s hard drive is bursting at the seams with digital photos. Honestly, we took at least 1000 photos during our week-long trip. Now I am faced with getting them organized before I can even begin to scrapbook our trip.

This is new to me. We’ve never used a digital camera before as our primary camera. I’ve grabbed my Simple Scrapbooks, A Simple Guide to Easy Organization, special issue magazine and culled a few tips from it:

- Organize the photos into folders with different category names
- Print out an index print and store it with the CD for long term storage

Sound simple enough, but I’m sure that there is more to it than that.
Do you have any tips for organizing digital photos?

Just got an email from Jo-Ann stores announcing Creating Keepsakes products are now exclusively available in their store. It says they have scrap totes, albums, storage units, kits and CKOK-Scrappin’ Creations embellishments. So I popped online to see what I could find.

While it appears that their online selection is still limited, there is one item in particular that caught my eye. It is the Creating Keepsakes Basic Essential Tote that is not just an empty tote, but comes stuffed with scrapping stuff from Creating Keepsakes. (I tried to grab the photo to paste in here, but it is not grabbable.) Here is what is included in this cool looking bag:

Kit Includes:
* Fabric Tote
* Trimmer
* 12″ deckled edge ruler
* Set of 3 pens
* 25 sheets of cardstock
* Scissors
* 4″x6″ photo organizer
* 12″x12″ paper holder
* Sketch book
* Tool guide

It is $99.99 but this week at their online store, they have a 50% off coupon which does appear to apply to Creating Keepsakes products. That is a pretty good value!

Just thought I would share this. I am going to take a minute to stop my local JoAnn store too to see what the offline selection is too. Could be fun. (Or dangerous…you know, to the pocketbook =:)

An article in the August 2005 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine by Faye Morrow Bell about using 15 minute blocks of time to organize your scrapbooking got me thinking about how being organized would really help me to get more scrapbooking done (and have more fun doing it).

One of the reasons I don’t scrapbook more often is that I don’t have something ready to go. I think about running into my scrapbook room to work on a page or a layout and I realize that it will take the entire time I have available just to get ready to scrapbook.

So, I’m going to follow Faye’s advice and spend 15 minute blocks of time in my scrapbooking room - just getting organized. When I have a few minutes instead of plopping down on the couch to watch another TV show I will head into my room. Here are a couple of the dozens of ideas she shares in the article.

Journal a memory.
Without worrying about what it looks like or even if there is a picture to go along with it, just write down a memory.

Shop.
Go through your inventory and see what you’re running low on. Do you have enough adhesive? Pages? Page protectors? Make a quick list of what you need and with your next 15 minutes jump online and order your necessary supplies.

Unshop.
Go through one supply (card stock, stickers, accents) and get rid of items you know you won’t ever use. I had a giant bunny sticker for years. It got to be a running joke with my scrappin friends when at each yearly weekend crop I STILL had the giant bunny. Finally, I gave it to my daughter and she used it within minutes.

Here are a few more places to get organizing ideas:

Get Organized Today
Tips, tools and techniques on organizing our lives inside and out. Motivational tips to live life with less stress and trauma. Humor to lighten your daily load. Education for goal setting, personal growth and bringing order to everyday life.

Figuring out how to store your scrapbook paper so you can find what you want when you want it is an age-old dilemma for us scrappers. I should have known that Cynthia Townley Ewer (aka the “CEO”) over at OrganizedScrapbooks.com would have a truly unique solution.

Here’s what she says:

Professional organizers will tell you that when it comes to paper, vertical storage beats horizontal every time. For everyday filing needs, hanging file folders make it easy to find and retrieve papers and records. No shifting and sorting stacks of paper; just flip, drag and drop!

Solution: make your own.

To see her step-by-step instructions (with photos) on how to make your own scrapbook folders read this article by Cynthia.

The other day my mom was reorganizing her scrapbook room (where we frequently do weekend crops together with our friends). As I moved my Crop in Style bag I’ve had for so long it occurred to me how much I use it.

Every time I set up to crop I put it right next to me. All my stuff goes in it - paper, pens, scissors, punches, rulers. You name it and I put it in there.

It keeps me so organized. And it is not just for traveling to crops either. When I set up my own scrapbook room here at home I thought I would stop using it. But it stores so much stuff, so neatly, that I couldn’t find a different way to keep it.

Plus it is ready for a trip to my mom’s with a flick of a zipper.

I noticed that Crop in Style has a newer version of my bag and it looks amazing. It has in-line skate wheels, a telescoping pull-up handle, a truly stackable lid and a multitude of pockets and loops. It even comes in Black, Navy Blue and Hunter Green. Here’s a picture:

What do you think? Does anybody have this one?