Scrapbooking: the new process

I am trying something new for my 05-06 scrapbook. I shared my old process with you a few weeks ago. With the old process once I got my pictures printed I was ready to go. The problem is that since I got the digital camera I take way more photos than I ever did when I used film (that is the beauty of digital) and most of them are not really scrap-worthy. In the past I used to print everything and then just toss out photos that weren't good enough. That is a huge waste of money and paper. So I am trying something new.

First I printed out thumbnails of all my photos from the computer harddrive.

Next I grabbed my idea books and magazine clippings for inspiration.

Then I tried to come up with an actual layout sketch. I picked the photos I wanted to use from the proof sheet and made a list of photos and sizes. I stapled together the proof sheet, the sketch, and any magazine pages. I then uploaded only those photos I planned to use onto scrapbookpictures.com. I am ordering the photos pre-cropped to the size they will be on the layout. The goal is that I will only print photos I will use and I save time not having to crop them myself. My only complaint about scrapbookpictures.com is that they take a little longer to come than other sites like snapfish or shutterfly. It is worth is to have so many other crop and size options. In the time I spend waiting for the photos to be delivered I am going to start finding papers and embellishments for these planned layouts and organize them in the Cropper Hopper plastic folders I ordered and blogged about last week. Over the weekend I did about 20 of these planning pages. We'll see if it makes things go faster during the construction phase!