How Do You Scrapbook?

Two posts in one day - a little crazy, I know! But I've got to fit in my scrapping (and blogging) time whenever I can. Today, my little girl decided to spend extra time at her best friend's house, son was off with his dad, and I had a completely quiet house - free of any distractions. What's a girl to do when that happens?! Certainly not do housecleaning or catch up on laundry!!!

Now, here's my Sunday evening question to you - how do you scrap your pictures? Do you scrap them in chronological order? Or do you scrap them using some other method? I used to go strictly by chronology, but sometimes my layouts felt forced because I didn't have the right inspiration or paper. Once I switched to using three ring albums and could easily move pages around, it was totally liberating to stop using that system! Now, I look at my papers or a sketch and generally let those things dictate which pictures I am going to use.

In this instance, I saw a new Page Maps SKETCH created by the wonderfully talented Becky Fleck. As you probably know, I am a HUGE fan of her sketches and the very instant I saw it, I KNEW I wanted to use pictures of my son with his boat project for physics - pictures that had been patiently waiting on my computer for almost two and a half months. And the layout came together perfectly - with no wailing or gnashing of teeth that sometimes used to accompany layout creations when I wouldn't deviate from chronological order.

The only downsides I can find so far are: 1) It takes longer before I can say I have completed an album (I still have one only halfway finished with pictures from almost a year ago); and 2) sometimes I forget which pictures I've used and which ones I still need to crop!

Is there a third or fourth way to organize and plan layouts? If so, let me know! And tell me what method you prefer to use - I'm curious.