Scrapping in batches

[jfugina]

Any of you who have known me for long know that I tend to scrapbook chronologically - or at least at a minimum, that's how my albums are all organized. Given that I'm still working on finishing up 2017, that's nearly 5 years worth of photos to work on and once I started picking it up again during the pandemic, I found that I couldn't obsess over finishing 2017 because there were so many other photos that I could "knock out" quickly with pages I already had made.

Anyway, this weekend was super rainy and depressing and I spent most of it at the scrap table. And I am very nearly done with 2017! Woot! I just have one trip in June that is either going to be 5 or more double-page spreads, or I'm going to have to narrow down my photo choices even more, which is so difficult! Unfortunately, I don't yet have anything to share because all of the layouts I've been cranking through are only 90% done. They're either missing titles, journaling, embellishments, or possibly all three. I also went through and got nearly all of my unscrapped 2018 photos printed as well, so those are ready to jump on in whatever order the mood strikes.

To that end, I've been wondering how you all manage your printed photos. Do you regularly get prints and then just file them so you have them? Or do you wait to get prints until you're working through that particular event? Or do you do most of your photo printing at home on demand? I've been doing more on demand stuff, I but I swear it seems like I go through a $50 ink cartridge and only get a few layouts of of the deal. This printer is supposed to be so much more efficient, but I can't imagine the ink costs if I tried to print everything from home. It seems like it would be better if I just got into a habit of submitting a print order every couple of months or so, just so that I have them available when the mood strikes. But it seems like storage could start to be an issue.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few months re-thinking my photo organization. I need to establish a better method for printing and organizing so that I don't have any barriers to sitting down and working. Just curious if any of you have any tips.

[nchoney]

unless it's something I want to work with right now (and then I print them, myself) I wait to get big batches of photos printed at SnapFish when they have penny sales... usually I'm getting prints for Helen and/or Peggy, too... so I save a ton of money using the penny print option. Then they're stored til I get around to scrapping them.

[jfugina]

I tend to use Walgreens because it's quite literally right up the road. I had a really bad experience with SnapFish many many years ago (spent a ton of money and all of the prints were terrible). So they haven't been on my radar since then. But if they do have sales like that, maybe it's worth giving it another shot. I used to do prints from Shutterfly, which I really loved because they printed the file date on the back of the print which was super helpful. But their print prices and shipping just got completely out of hand and prohibitive.

I'm thinking I like the big batch approach - especially if I can sign up and get notified about penny sales. My challenge if I get 4 years worth of photos printed, will be how to store and organize those for easy access when it comes time to scrap them.

[pbp908]

I take so few photos now that I tend to print on demand, especially if it's for a challenge and non-standard photo sizes. I guess that's the best part of being pretty much caught up. I did do batch printing when I had the 24" printer which saved tons on ink even though it didn't feel like it when I'd run out of a few colors. The only photo project that I have left is to finish scanning the remainder of the old family photos (circa 1920s - 1950s) and doing some restoration on them. I've put that off because of the screen time involved and my vision issues. Printing those won't be costly as there aren't many left to do.

In a way it's sad that I'm out of photos because it means that the kids have grown and (mostly) moved away. (Anyone want my youngest son??? I want my guest room back!)