Scrapping For Two - My New Approach to Scrapbooking

I haven't been doing a lot of traditional scrapbooking lately, since I've started documenting our day-to-day activities with Project Life, but there are some things that I still want to do traditional scrapbook pages about.  To streamline that process, now that I'm scrapping for two children, I've decided to try to make some of the  layouts for Drew and Maddie simultaneously.  I've done this twice lately, and I've been pleased with the results.

My first attempt was two layouts about our Christmas trip to South Carolina - one for Drew's book and one for Maddie's book.  I had some pictures that I wanted to include on both layouts, but I also had some photos that would be specific to each child.  I found a sketch that worked for the number of pictures I wanted to use, and I ordered pictures from Sam's (a 5x7 family photo for each layout and some 4x6 photos).  I had quite a bit of Christmas paper in my stash, so I picked some more traditional-looking Christmas papers for Drew's layout and some slightly more girly-looking Christmas papers for Maddie's layout.  I was able to make all of my cuts for both layouts at the same time - backgrounds, scalloped edges, cropped photos, photo mats, and die-cut shapes and titles.  Doing all the cuts at the same time for the two layouts saved me quite a bit of time.  All I had left to do was to write out the journaling, which was specific to each child.

 The two layouts aren't identical.  Drew's has an extra photo, and some of the photo dimensions are a bit different, but overall, they are very similar, but individualized for each child.  I was able to knock out two layouts in just a bit more time than it would have taken me to do a single layout.

 I used this method again recently to do an Easter layout for each child.  This time, I used the same sketch  for both layouts, and I used papers from the same paper line and mixed and matched them on the two layouts.  I was able to get all the patterned paper for both layouts from two two-sided pieces of patterned paper.

 I used many of the same photos on the two layouts, but a few different ones too.

I am enjoying this new way of scrapping, and I think it works especially well for holiday layouts like these, when I want a similar look with a bit of a personalized feel.  I plan to keep scrapping this way as much as I can, and I will share the future layouts here on my blog.