This is part of the “Reasons to Digital Scrapbook” series.
Digital scrapbooking allows you to easily duplicate your scrapbook.
When my son was a baby I worked a few hours a week at a local scrapbook to help support my hobby. One day we had a customer who bought three of every item in her cart. Three of this color cardstock, three of that sticker sheet, etc. I was curious when I noticed the pattern of her purchase and asked her about it. She mentioned she had three kids and when she scrapbooked she created three copies of the same layout so each of her children could have a copy in their scrapbook.
While I love the idea of creating an individual book for each of the children, I admit her idea overwhelmed me. I felt as a new mom I was already struggling to keep up with documenting the memories of one little baby and couldn’t image the time it would take to create duplicate copies of each layout.
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We were recently visiting my inlaws and the subject jokingly came up about what “stuff” we wanted to claim when they passed. Jared and I had two requests.
- His childhood Legos
- His mom’s journals.
My mother-in-law kept meticulous journals throughout her early marriage, her four kids’ childhoods, and now as a grandmother. Her preserved experiences and insights are treasures to me and as much as I may love her other “stuff,” I think those journals are the most valuable possessions she could pass on.
I’m not alone in this though–my sisters-in-law want copies too. The journals are all handwritten in notebooks. While I LOVE that her handwriting adds to the authenticity of her documenting, it’s going to be very time consuming to transfer the entries into digital form so all the family members can enjoy a copy.
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For the past three years my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law and I have gotten together for a “girls’ getaway.” The first year we went my sister-in-law (who is an AMAZING traditional paper scrapbooker) and I both unknowingly created my mother-in-law a memory book of the event. Hers was an adorable mini album made of clear acrylic pages, patterned papers, tags, ribbons, etc. Mine was a hardbound digitally scrapbooked album. Both were loved and appreciated and treasured. But one of them would have taken hours of time to duplicate 
so after seeing my digitally-created album Shaela asked if I could print a copy for her as well! And I was happy to oblige! It took about five minutes to place a second order with the printing company and cost me less than $15. It would be amazing to have a copy of her gorgeous acrylic book, but it’s not practical to spend the time recreating it at this stage of my life.
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So I guess the choice to scrapbook digitally has become a matter of practicality for me. I simply don’t have the time or financial resources to purchase three of every paper scrapbooking supply to make three individual books for my kids.
My scrapbooks are the way I have chosen to journal and (hopefully) they will be passed to my future generations. And (hopefully) as long as I’ve backed up the files it will be easy to print a duplicate for anyone who wants one.
And, by the way, it’s now unofficially become my job to create the annual girls’ getaway and family reunion scrapbooks. Everyone loves having the memories organized and printed into a beautiful book, and it’s SOOOO easy to just print multiple copies.
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What’s your experience with dupliating your memories?
This is probably my number one reason why I scrapbook digitally. My plan all along has been to make copies of the family scrapbooks and give them to my kids as wedding gifts when the time comes. And all I have to do is click a few buttons. So efficient, so much cheaper. I’ve only made multiple copies of a scrapbook once. I scanned in all my husband’s mission photos and created a book. My inlaws saw it, and “ordered” two copies for themselves. A few days later, the books arrived at their doorstep. Awesome.
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Pam Reply:
October 29th, 2010 at 12:43 am
@Mandy, Eeek, I need to do the mission scrapbook too. . . .Someday. I’d love to see some sample pages. Did you do journaling, or mostly just label the pics? I think that’s what overwhelms me about tackling my husband’s pictures.
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I looooovvvvvve the way I can make multiple copies of the albums I have done digitally (even the non-embellished, non-shadowed ones that are just photos and a caption back when Sfly first came out with them.) 2 years ago, when I was feeling ambitious, I even made a 30-page digiscrapped “Cousins” album documenting the first five years of life of the 4 boys my sis and I have between us.
I had 3 copies made: one for each family, and one for my folks. They were everyone’s favorite Christmas present and my boys look at our copy at least once a month. It comforts me to know I can make more when my guys leave home and start to fight over what will be one tattered, well-loved Cousins album.
And doesn’t it just make more sense with the way we’re going digitally?? Not to mention how worried I’d be to let anyone touch my album if it were a paper scrapped one. Yikes!
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Pam Reply:
October 29th, 2010 at 12:46 am
@blurooferika, I know, I’m totally doing a post on that. My kids LOVE looking through their (starting to get tattered) books and there is NO way I’d let them (at least unsupervised) look through a traditional embellished album. WAY too stressful for me!!
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As a foster mom – this is how I keep my foster children’s scrapbooks. They take a copy with them and I get to have a copy too! I have “generic” pages for the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I just reprint the ones that that foster child might want to remember. Makes putting together their albums really quick and easy for me!
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Pam Reply:
October 29th, 2010 at 12:49 am
@Lynn, Oh Lynn, I just want to hug you! What an awesome foster mom you must be. Those kids will probably treasure those books forever and will give them security knowing they have documentation of being loved and taken care of during what could be a rough time in their lives. I have a friend who was a foster child and one of the saddest things to me is that she doesn’t have many pictures from her childhood because she was in several different homes.
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Lynn Reply:
October 29th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
@Pam, Thank you. Sad as I am to say it, I know a couple of my foster kids books were destroyed by their biological parents. But that is what happens sometimes when kids are returned home.
If they ever contact me when they are adults, I can always print them another copy, can’t I?!? 
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Pam Reply:
October 30th, 2010 at 12:30 am
@Lynn, That is sad
. But true, thankfully with digital you can reprint later on.
LOL! Are you sure you didn’t work at my LSS? I was the lady buying SIX, yes six of everything. One for each child’s album and one for my family album (the one I would keep). Sure, the 2nd through 6th time it is quicker…but still. It takes a lot of planning. A sketch, print the photos in the right size swapping out the main photo each time for one of that child, etc. That child’s coat was navy, so use navy for their background paper, but green for the other child, etc. Do you know what it costs to make a cute criss-crossed word title of scrabble tiles FIVE times??? WAY too expensive. I run out of letters with ANY lettering set.
The switch to digital was WAY less expensive for me. I’ve been printing multiple copies as I go. I print a yearbook each year. I’m afraid printing 10 of them when they get married or whatever might do me in. So throughout the year (or all at once when they are on sale) I order 5 (or 6) copies each year.
Except seldom are all the copies on the bookshelf…there’s one under her bed, one on his nightstand, one in the living room. LOL!
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Pam Reply:
October 29th, 2010 at 3:09 am
@Chelle, SIX. That gives me a pit in my stomach just thinking about it. Yes, I think the switch to digital was a good one for you
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My books are rarely on the shelf either. My kids tuck them in bed with them, put them in the “church bag,” etc. And I love it. No stress about them ruining paper pages with all the fancy (expensive!) supplies.
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Oh, my mother’s journals…41 volumes to date…I think we’ll cut the back off of them (they’re the hardbound kind) so they’ll go through a copy machine and make multiple copies that way. Technically we could run them through a scanner that way as well. I can’t imagine how many months it would take to open up to each page and copy/scan it.
She won’t care. She’ll be dead by then. She won’t let us read a single word of it ’til she’s gone. LOL!
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Pam Reply:
October 29th, 2010 at 3:11 am
@Chelle, WOW, 41 volumes! Do you ever wonder what she’s writing about? LOL
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The generation you are preserving for will live on the computer anyway. A lot of them don’t even care if there is ever a “hard” copy or not. I love paper scrapping, but have scanned and digitized my favorite layouts, it’s so much easier to share digital.
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