Duplicate Layouts

I've been on a self-imposed hiatus from scrapbooking the past week or two, simply because I've been distracted by other interests. I spent the better part of a week engrossed in reading the Twilight series, at the suggestion of my sister. Now that I've finished that, I am slowly working my way back toward my scrapbook area.

I wonder how many other scrappers out there make multiple layouts of the same event like I do. When my first son was born, I decided I wouldn't want to part with his scrapbooks when he was grown and on his own (at least I only hope he will move out someday; since he's still just nine I'm not in too big a hurry), so I decided to make pages for his album, and then pages for mine. Making duplicate layouts didn't bother me much. I generally did his album first, trying to stay fairly current. Then I had more time to go back and do mine, having the journaling from his pages to jog my memory when needed.

Then I had another son, and suddenly I wondered if I was insane for scrapbooking events in triplicate! I do it anyway, since I had already started down this road. I don't duplicate every page, and I have taken to only hitting the major events for the boys' albums, saving the more "everyday moments" for mine. My older son also has his own Cub Scout album, which I don't duplicate for myself.

Sometimes I make it really easy on myself and make identical pages for each of the boys, even copying the journaling word for word. Other times I'll take the same basic design and just change the colors. That's what I did for this recent layout. Most of the photos are identical, and I used the same design, but managed to individualize them just a bit.

I even managed to use some papers that have been sitting in my stash for years, which is always a plus. The paper collection always grows faster than it is depleted.

I have a number of pages lined up for the boys' albums that will likely take this same route. Let's hope I can carve out some time to actually work on them. My general scrapbooking goal is to keep my boys' albums fairly current, and mine about a year behind. I'm not doing too bad on the boys'. I am up to this summer. However, with a few random exceptions, I haven't even started my 2009 album. I do have the photos printed (thanks to the last day of 99-cent shipping at winkflash), so at least that's a start.