2007 - Chronological Layouts & Non-Chronological Layouts

When I began transitioning how I store and process my photos and memorabilia to Stacy Julian's Library of Memories system earlier this year, I began with my 2008 photos because I had created yearly photo album scrapbooks for 2003 through 2006 and was in the process of creating one for 2007. So the logical choice for me at that time was to start the new system with 2008 and work forward. It has worked wonderfully and I love my new system for scrapping nonchronologically.

Unfortunately, I never completed the album for 2007 and those photos and memorabilia where still in my closet where I stored them to get them out of the way while I worked to set up my new system. I have pulled some photos out over the past several months to add to layouts that included photos from various years and to complete a layout about our Christmas Brunch. I decided this week to pull out the partially completed album, the photo storage box holding all the remaining photos, my calendar, and the memorabilia folder and integrate these into my new system.

However, I have noticed over the past several months that while I LOVE LOVE LOVE scrapping whatever inspires me and creating connections layouts, I miss having a chronological record of each year. So, I decided to create a simple one page layout for each month of 2007, then incorporate the remaining photos into my storage binders, category boxes, square punch drawers or cold storage boxes.

I decided to use a simple layout dividing each 12x12 page into nine squares. I would have one square for journaling about the month and at least one square with a patterned paper to tie all the pages together. The remaining squares hold either a photo or another piece of patterned paper depending on how many photos I had to highlight each month. I used my Cricut to cut letters from Kraft cardstock for each month. Here are a few of the layouts.

As you can see, I only added simple embellishments to each layout, typically just a few stickers or a rub-on. I also created an overview of the year layout using 32 square punched photos.

I really like this system for having a chronological record of the year while still having most of my photos to scrap as I'm inspired. I am hoping to create monthly layouts for 2008 and 2009 in the next few weeks, chosing a different layout style for each year.