Taking the hybrid album for a test drive

In my last post, I wrote about my vast goal to get all my old pictures into sparkling, new scrapbooks. I'm excited to get started, but I'm juggling them with current books I'm equally excited about completing.

My latest project is a book about our three-day stop in Paris last year on our way to visit my husband's family in Ivory Coast, West Africa. It's my first project using a "hybrid" album -- the 12x12 3-ring binders with a variety of pocket pages you can simply slide your photos into. With these books, you have the option of a page as simple as a group of photos or as elaborate as a picture here, an embellished block of cardstock there. It's a good concept, in my opinion, and no doubt the perfect solution for some scrappers. For me, it's turned out to be a mixed bag. I like the option of the pocket pages, and I LOVE the ease of popping open the binding without the hassle of taking the entire book apart, like with postbound albums, which I normally use.

What I don't like is how the pocket pages force you into layouts. I've labored to find just the right combination of horizontal and vertical photos to fill a page, only to turn the page and realize I have to do it all over again because I have to fill the back side. I've actually taped pocket pages together just to escape that frustration,which is a total waste of resources. My other pet peeve is the fact that the pages don't meet in the middle in hybrid albums. The 3-ring binding, much as I love it for its convenience in moving pages around, keeps me from being able to design a cohesive double-page spread with a photo or headline across the break in pages. That's a technique I've become rather fond of in the past couple of years, and I would hate to give it up.

I'm still open to using hybrid albums for some projects -- especially those with a lot of photos of the same thing, or for layouts for which I can't find just the right paper. And I just can't quite let go of that 3-ring binding's ease of use.

But, for the most part, I think I'll be sticking with my postbound books ... and, oh yeah, grumbling whenever it's time to add pages!