SYW308 – 12 Clever Ideas for Budget-Friendly Scrapbooking

[00:00:00] Some of these ideas might save you money, some might save you stress, and some might do both. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode. I'm excited to sit down and chat with you. About budget friendly scrapbooking. We all know things are not getting any less expensive and scrapbook supplies were never quite cheap in the first place.

Jennifer Wilson: So I wanna talk about a variety of different perspectives and ways to think about how [00:01:00] to make your hobby a little bit more cost effective, whether that's diving into. Clever and unique ways of using your stash or other parts of your process that might use some tweaking.

I've got 12 different ideas here and these are not rules I want you to take what resonates. Leave the rest. It's all gonna depend on maybe where you often. Invest a lot of your hard to earn cash and where you don't care as much.

It is really going to depend on what type of scrapbooking you like to do, your style, and of course your existing purchasing and using habits. I'm hopeful that this episode gives you some food for thought and new perspective so that you can be more thoughtful with the funds that you have.

[00:02:00] All right, let's dive in to each of these ideas. So number one, and this perhaps is one that is a no-brainer, but it was important to me. To not tell you to just buy less. That's not the point here. You know, you can do that. I wanted to think about what are all the different ways that we can be a little bit more budget conscious in our hobby, and one is being strategic and creative about building kits from your existing stash of supplies.

You can build mega kits that could help you make many pages, or you can build single page kits for one particular story. But even the smallest kit can help you finish a page, with more purpose and intention and a lot more speed, and help you use supplies that you already own. And when you put them together a new configuration, it can give you more [00:03:00] creative momentum and excitement about using those supplies.

All right, number two, and that is to incorporate more hybrid scrapbooking into your hobby. Hybrid involves using your computer and printer, whether it's a printer at home or a way to print only what you need for your scrapbooking, whether that's a journaling block, particular papers, specific elements like stickers or die cut pieces.

You can. Leverage the relative inexpensive costs of an entire digital kit or collection, and only print the pieces that you need for your project. And as a bonus, you have the opportunity to reprint those items as needed over time.

Now as a connected idea also relating to [00:04:00] printing. My idea number three is to. Be more strategic about where and when you are printing your photos. So I would encourage you to use photo services, whether that's local or mail order for bulk purchases and more common sizes, like four by six, five by seven, eight by 10.

Reserve your home printer for those more unique or custom sizes, or projects where you might be making decisions more on the fly. When you do a little bit of both, you can gain the economies of scale of outsourcing your printing while also still maintaining some of your flexibility for printing at home.

And so you can think about. The different types of scrapbooking you do and when it might work best for you to order in [00:05:00] advance and order in bulk versus printing at home.

As a bonus tip, for those of you who are printing at home. Not only is it helpful to watch for sales and coupons and things like that for your printing supplies, but often there is quite a bit of savings in ordering larger quantities, particularly of your photo paper. So rather than going to the local office supply store and purchasing 10 sheets at a time, oftentimes the price per sheet is far lower If you're ordering a hundred sheets at a time.

All right. Idea number four is one that might be difficult, but I think is really, really important, and that's to. Really be decisive about what stories need a whole project. Sometimes one really well designed multi [00:06:00] photo spread, two layouts, even one layout or a couple layouts, can tell the story just as well as an entire album.

When you're creating a project, often that requires purchasing the album, all the page protectors and the supplies to create the whole thing, and that has a much higher cost versus creating one to a small series of layouts. So I want you to really think about what projects you have in the queue and.

Which ones really make sense, both from a story perspective and from your creative satisfaction to be projects and which ones could really be layouts or pocket page spreads, or whatever format works best for you.

All right, tip number five is something that I know a lot of you struggle with, and that is. To please resist [00:07:00] stockpiling. I fully support buying extra adhesive. So you have some for the future buying an extra album because it's on sale and you know that you have one album that's almost full. But I really want to encourage you not to purchase empty albums, particularly project oriented albums that may have a design, maybe a smaller size without a very clear purpose and timeline for that project.

So if you're someone that has a lot of empty albums sitting around, and yes, these are so full of possibilities and potential, but there also is a cost associated with them, and I want to encourage you to think about how you might shift your purchasing behavior to be just a little bit more reactive to your current needs and ideas rather than.[00:08:00]

Buying something because it's available now and you like it, there will always be something else later that you like just as much.

Tip number six encourages you to try on or embrace a more minimalist approach to scrapbooking. Particularly embellishments are often the most expensive part of our layouts. Especially those that may be a little bit more dimensional or preassembled. There can be some pretty pricey items. So when you create pages that focus more on the photos and story, really emphasize the white space and kind of a tight, simple or more graphic design, those often end up using fewer embellishments.

No, it's not to mean to say that you need to change your style completely, but if you are trying to be a little bit more frugal, how can you make the embellishments you do [00:09:00] have stretch a little bit further?

On a similar note, you can stretch the use of your paper supply. Now, most of us, particularly paper scrapbookers probably are never going to run out of pattern paper, but we can probably be more. Thoughtful and budget minded in our use of pattern paper. There's sometimes that abundance fallacy, we think we have so much we don't have to treat it, with much preciousness, but there is so much potential within our pattern paper.

So that's saving and organizing your scraps, using them creatively and with intention for future pages. And even that kind of tried and true trick of cutting the center part of a pattern paper out of. The full sheet that you're using as a background, 'cause all of a sudden you have a really large [00:10:00] area that you could use again for another page or even a companion to that page that you're already making.

Tip number eight is one that leverages a strategy that we teach inside of the Simple Scrapper membership, and that is using a creative hub or a centralized Idea Bank for your story management. When you get all those ideas out of your head and onto paper, including those you've already completed, that can help you reduce redundancy, avoid printing photos that you've already scrapbook and overall, save money by focusing on really matters most to you rather than.

Just, reacting and scrapbooking based on the whims you have of your most current photos and your newest supplies. Now, I'm not saying that that can't bring you a lot of joy, but if you are trying to be more mindful about your overall [00:11:00] volume, and of course the overall associated cost with that, using your creative hub, having the centralized location for all your planned and completed stories can really help you get a hold of that process.

My advice here for number nine comes specifically from some of my own experiences and those that I've seen from our members of choosing classes that require. Specific and new supplies for that particular class. And so my advice is to, when you are looking for a class to support your motivation, practice a new technique to look for classes that.

Encourage the use of supplies that you already own, that may have ideas that you can use again and again, and that just don't require a wholesale purchase of a lot of new and different things in order to complete [00:12:00] that class. With that as a bonus tip, you can always use your own creative mind to come up with adaptations, but I think for most of us, it makes sense to look for that flexibility, the personalization, that adaptability to your own stash. Now there will always be times in which you need something new. As I mentioned in the very beginning, the intent of this conversation is not just to tell you to shop less, but to shop with more intention and more mindfulness. And so when you do identify that there is something that you need.

Whether it's for a class, a project, a layout you wanna create, can you find something similar within your existing stash? Sometimes things that maybe you forgot you had, something maybe you bought in multiple. Um, things that will satisfy your intention, the mood you're going after. Even [00:13:00] thematically, are they close enough to be able to meet this need without having to buy new?

All right. Suggestion number 11. It is kind of a way to back into this budget savings and that is to set natural limits for your supplies by using containers, bins, limiting. Total folder size if we're talking about digital staes, or of course, even using your budget as these signals of this is enough of this particular item.

So the more that you can think about boundaries that are physical or even self-imposed, that can help you. That can offer you an additional lens of saying yes or no. So let's just say you're only going to keep the number of letter stickers that fit in this particular [00:14:00] container. So if you know you want to buy more because you saw some that are really cute, then you need to use up some that you already have or you need to say, oh, okay, maybe not now.

I have plenty. And in the future, I will consider buying that thing if it's still available or looking for something similar. But right now I don't need anything of that particular type. And I know it could be so hard because I. When things come out, we know they're not gonna be around forever, but as I mentioned earlier, there will be something else come along the lines, whether it's a new mainstream release or from a independent manufacturer or from your favorite digital designer that you love just as much, and that excites you even more.

And my final tip here is another way to. Further sustain, this approach and perhaps new [00:15:00] commitment to being more budget conscious in your scrapbooking. And that's to really place an emphasis and a celebratory factor on using things up. Using that last sheet of paper from a paper pack, the last item from a kit, the very last sticker on a sticker sheet.

How can you make this more part of. Your creative process so that you have even more incentive and deep seated motivation to use what you have.

All right. I want to remind you again and reassure you that you don't need to try all 12 of these things. Even one or two can make a big difference, and maybe you've identified one that feels like the easiest place to start, or maybe the one that could offer the biggest, literal bang for the buck for you in terms of being more.

Cost efficient with your [00:16:00] scrapbook, supplies, being more mindful of your purchases and getting a better use of your supplies. Scrapbooking should feel light, joyful, and sustainable, and I hope that you learn something new and receive some new perspective this week.

We've got some more great interviews coming up and a very special series later in October, and I am just so excited to be continuing to chat with you here on the podcast and I can't wait until next time. As always, please remember that you have permission to Scrapbook Your Way.