Where do you get ideas for your books?

I too think that the pictures are the most important part of the page - well, that and the journaling. I get alot of my ideas from magazines and books, but the finished product is never the same as I use them for inspiration, but don't copt them exactly. Alot of pages that make it into the books are too visually cluttered for my taste. Unfortunately, it takes me alot of time to finish a page. Sometimes days. My kids are up from 6 AM till 8:30 PM and rarely nap at the same time.

Usually I come up with my own ideas, but sometimes when I buy a kit or something it has ideas on it, and I do copy those sometimes. It takes me quite a while sometimes just to make a page, which is why when I do get around to scrapbooking I only get 2-3 pages done in a session. It is very time-consuming, but the end product is great! I have been meaning to go to crops, unfortunately I always seem to be working when they are going on lol.

There is a website that has several ideas and it is also a tv show on PBS on Saturdays. Here is the website. www.scrapbookmemoriestv.com

Most of the time, I just do my own ideas or I will ask someone around me what they think is best. I had have a few magazines that have some ideas in them but they take too long to do one page so I take bits and pieces from the lay out and use it. I think the longest I have ever spent on a page is about 45 minute and that was just because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. My brothers fiance can throw a cute page together in about 5-10 minutes I'm so jealous!!

Wow, this was posted a year ago! Anyway, I like to look through magazines and books, but rarely do I copy a layout exactly. I like to change it up and have it fit my style. The longest I have ever spent on a two page layout was probably about 3-4 hours, but that's because I was recreating a family tree with specialized pulls on one of the pages. I wish I had a copy to post on here. It was a really neat spread that I did for my grandfather's 90th birthday celebration. I don't usually spend so much time, but I had to engineer the thing.

I've seen a few scrapbook on TV. But when I started my grandson's last year,I did it on my own, my way. It was a football theme for High School. I started off with him as the main page getting to graduation. Then, I made each page a part of his life, with newspaper articles written about him and the team, putting in pictures of those games, the scores, etc. I ended with him graduating and going on to college. My granddaughter graduated this year. She was a soccer player. And being a girl, I could use ribbons, etc. So I bought a book of extra pages of cut outs and heavy pages and some extra pages that were of soccer nature. I started with early pictures of her childhood, things she loved to do, family members with her, friends, soccer pictures and lots of other things. She played in High School Varsity and Premier (traveling teams) soccer, so I had all those pictures to use. I included her prom pictures, as well. I think you just have to make up your own ideas as you go. It took me much longer to do her scrapbook than her brothers, but it took a long time to do both. I suppose one page could take an hour sitting and deciding just how to place things on the page and what pictures went with the others. But, when you finish, it is a great feeling to see what you have accomplished.