Organizing Photos!

As much as I would love to sit down and scrapbook the minute I take my pictures I know that it isn't always possible! So how do you make sure you scrap what you were intending when you took the picture? Here are a couple of tips that will help you keep your pictures organized!

First thing I try to do when I know that I am going to have photo-ops, is keep track of it in a scrapbooking note book! If I know that today we are going to the zoo I will write the date and locations in the notebook so when I go back through my pictures I know when and where we were at the time of the pictures so I have a reference on the page!

If the pictures are random and completely unplanned then that night when I put the camera back on its stand I jot down what we did that day so I then I have an idea of what the pictures were about and what inspired me to take the pictures! This way when I go back through my pictures that I have had printed then I can know how to link them to a page!

Another great idea is storing your pictures on a share site! I personally like http://www.shutterfly.com/ for my photo storage because they have unlimited space and they do not delete photos over time! These sites will allow you to organize your photos in albums named after the occassion, and set them up with the date of the event. Bonus is they usually offer great pre-pay rates for ordering prints!

Once I receive my pictures in the mail or get them printed off at a local shop I try to organize them right away. This is usually pretty easy because I am able to use my photo journal that has the dates, locations, and reasons for the pictures. I tend to only print the pictures that I am planning on scrapbooking so I don't usually use photo boxes to store my photos in, instead I use envelopes with page titles on them. I put the theme and date on the outside of the envelope and include snippets of the idea I had for the page inside the envelope with the pictures. This way when I have an extra 30 minutes to scrapbook I have it started ahead of time so I can make the most of my time!