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How to squeeze out a little more scrapbooking time!
What seems like many years ago, I was a "business
person" who worked in the business world before I got involved
in scrapbooking and the craft world. I used to carry a Day Timer
everywhere and I frequently attended seminars on Time Management.
Over the last seven years as a stay-at-home mom and work-at-home
mom, I thought that many of those "business person" habits
had been left behind and forgotten.
However, on closer examination,
I realized that some of those time management principles had crept
into my scrapbooking and home life after all, and that they were
helping me get things done. Time management can help us save time
and money with our scrapbooking.
The basic elements of time
management are:
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Evaluating
your use of time.
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Focusing on your priorities.
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Planning for effective use of time.
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Using time more effectively.
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Creating more time.
Step one: Evaluate the use of your scrapbooking time
Take
a minute and grab a piece of paper right now. Quickly write down
the steps you take to create a typical page layout.
I am sure that
most scrapbookers had no idea that an "average page" could
take 22 hours of their time and cost $100 in addition to the supplies
needed for your page. Obviously, the sample log is just a sample.
Sometimes you will have all the supplies you need at home or you
will have a great layout idea and it will take less time, but other
times, you might spend more time than this on a layout if the supplies
are hard to find, or the page requires elaborate matting, paper piecing
or lettering. Also remember this didn't include the supplies for
the page - just the expenses incurred in creating the page. This
example makes it possible to see that it would be EASY to invest
this many hours and this amount of money for a single layout.
Consider
the number of children you have and the number of photos you take.
If each layout requires an investment of 20-25 "premium hours" of
your time, most of us will not ever finish our children's scrapbooks.
Why take a chance that you will have 22 hour/$100 pages in your
scrapbooks when time management can help you save time and money?
Step
Two: Focusing on your priorities
When you are planning your scrapbook pages think about the reason
that you scrapbook. We all have different reasons for scrapbooking.
Some scrapbook to preserve memories, some scrapbook to create a
memento of childhood, some scrapbook to preserve family history,
some scrapbook because they enjoy the craft, some scrapbook to pass
along family values and others scrapbook to build a child's self-esteem.
Probably most of us scrapbook for a number of these reasons.
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If we want to preserve our children's childhood memories for
them, but want to ensure that we are able to finish the project,
we may want to combine pages that are quick and easy along with
our artistic endeavors. In my books I try and create very special
pages for the special events in our lives, but I let the less
important events be represented by pages that are simple and
fast to complete.
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If you consider journaling to be the most important part of
the scrapbook, you may want to spend extra time taking journaling
classes and doing your journaling while your pages have a simple
design.
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If journaling is a priority, also consider using pre-cut
acid free paper to do your journaling at the time of an event
instead of waiting until later when your memory has faded and
the details are hard to recall.
Step Three: Planning for effective
use of your time
Review the time log above and you can see that
in addition to using "premium time " wisely, we need to
try and reduce the number of hours spent per layout but not sacrifice
the outcome or the quality of the pages. One way to do this is to
do group-like activities. Cropping several batches of photos at the
same time, looking for multiple layout ideas at the same time, looking
through your supplies at the same time for materials that will be
used on more than one layout are effective suggestions. You may also
shop for 20 layouts at the same time instead of just one or two layouts
and save a large amount of time at the store as well as travel time
and gas.
Do you have any "waiting time " on the phone
or in lines or "found time " like TV commercials or while
your kids play in the back yard or at the park that can be used for
scrapbooking tasks? How about small bits and pieces of time in your
day that otherwise are wasted? Can you replace some of the "premium
time" that you use for scrapbooking with "waiting time" and "found
time?" Think about your schedule and time usage and write
down another sample log. You may be surprised at how much time you
truly have!
Written by Jennia Hart
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