How to make a scrapbook page when you're short on time

You have the photos, you have the paper, and you really want to finish a page for once. But there's never an empty afternoon. The good news: a lovely page doesn't have to take an afternoon. With a few set habits you can make one in an hour, sometimes in half an hour. The secret is mostly in making fewer choices.

How long does a page actually take

There's no fixed answer. Many scrappers admit their pages take hours. They swap papers, shuffle embellishments around and spend ages deciding on a single button. Other scrappers make a simple page with one photo, a title and a few lines of text in ten minutes to half an hour.

The difference rarely lies in the sticking itself. If you keep track of where the time goes, you'll see that most of the work happens beforehand: which photos, which paper, which story. If you already know that before you sit down at the table, you'll be done much faster. If you decide everything while you're making the page, you can easily lose an evening.

That's also the key to the rest of this article. Scrapping quickly mostly means making as few decisions as possible in the moment.

A set formula for a quick page

Come up with a formula you can use again and again. Then you don't have to work out what a page should look like every time. A formula that almost always works:

1. One plain background in a calm colour.
2. One large photo, matted on a piece of paper that's slightly bigger (matting means putting a photo on a border of paper so it stands out from the background).
3. A short title, perhaps just one word.
4. Three or four lines of text: who, what, where, and one detail you don't want to forget.
5. Three embellishments in a triangle around the photo.

A large photo is the quickest route. It fills a big part of the page, and what's left is space for the title and the story. Leave some breathing room. White space makes a page calm and looks deliberate, not unfinished.

Also pick a set colour palette of three or four colours for a while. You'll spend less time searching, and your pages will go together too.

Sketches and kits that save time

A sketch is a simple drawing of a page layout: blocks showing where the photos, the title and the text go. You copy the layout and fill it with your own photos and paper. That way the hardest decision has already been made.

Two layouts you can use straight away on a 30.5 x 30.5 cm (12 x 12 inch) page:

• The offset plus sign. Place two landscape 10 x 15 cm photos side by side, and run a strip of paper of about 10 x 30 cm (4 x 12 inches) across them. Rotate or mirror the layout, and you've got a new page.
• The grid. Lay six 7.6 x 10.2 cm (3 x 4 inch) cards in two rows of three, for example leftover cards from pocket scrapbooking. Put a strip of tape or ribbon between the rows, stick a 15 x 15 cm piece of patterned paper slightly off centre on top, and put your photo on that. Use one card for your text.

Choose five or six layouts you really like and use them again and again. It doesn't feel boring, because your photos and paper are different every time.

A kit saves even more time. A kit contains paper and embellishments that already go together, so you don't have to dig through your whole stash. You can also make one yourself: put a few sheets of paper, a strip of tape and some stickers with a pile of photos in a folder or envelope.

A word of warning from scrappers who do this a lot, though: a kit is only quick if you stick to it. If you start searching halfway through for that one ribbon that isn't in it, you lose everything you've gained.

Preparing in small chunks

You might not have an hour, but you probably have fifteen minutes. Use those odd moments for the groundwork, so your actual scrapping time is all about sticking.

Things you can do separately:

• choosing photos and getting them printed
• making a little pile for each page: photos, paper and embellishments together in a sleeve or envelope
• matting photos and cutting paper to size in advance
• thinking up a title and a few sentences, on a scrap of paper or in your phone
• choosing a sketch and writing the measurements next to it

A smart trick is to think about a page while you're doing something else: washing up, on the train, while out for a walk. When you sit down, you'll already know what you want.

Make use of waiting time too. If glue or ink needs to dry, cut the next piece in the meantime. And if you're cutting or stamping anyway, do it for two or three pages at once.

Finally, keep your table or a box with your basic supplies ready: scissors, glue, a pen and your colour palette. If you have to spend ten minutes searching first, you're starting behind.

A page in an hour

This is what an hour looks like once your preparation is done:

1. Five minutes: lay out your pile and choose your sketch, if you haven't already.
2. Ten minutes: cut and mat whatever isn't ready yet.
3. Ten minutes: lay everything loosely on the background and move things around until it feels right. Don't stick anything down yet.
4. Ten minutes: stick down the background layers and the photo.
5. Ten minutes: title and text. Write directly on the page or on a separate card.
6. Ten minutes: embellishments and small finishing touches.
7. Five minutes: tidy up and write the date on the back.

Feel free to set a timer. Some scrappers do a speed scrap like this every week: a finished page within an hour, with a few ground rules such as three kinds of paper, two photos and a title of one big word. Those limits actually make it easier, because they cut off the endless choosing.

If you don't manage it in an hour one time, that's fine. Leave your page as it is with everything on it and finish it another time. Lay a sheet of paper over it to keep the dust off.

When is good enough good enough

A page is finished when the story is on it. A photo, a date and a few sentences about what happened: that's what you'll want to read back in twenty years. Nobody will notice that last button or that extra layer of paper by then.

A few signs that you can stop:

• you no longer know what else you want to add
• you've been moving the same thing around for fifteen minutes
• you're thinking about taking something off the page rather than putting something on

If in doubt, take something away rather than adding something. A full page feels busy; a page with breathing room feels finished.

And don't forget that a simple page can be a deliberate choice. An album you actually finish holds more value than three perfect pages and a pile of photos in a box. Better ten simple pages with a story than one beautiful page that never gets finished.