How do YOU scrapbook while respecting your people's boundaries?

angiekey

Sweet Shoppe SugarBabe
I'm curious ... how do YOU scrapbook while respecting the boundaries of the people in your life?

My stepdaughter got married in mid-February. Her wedding photos were delivered to her over a month ago - I know because I got a copy of them - and I asked her when she'd be okay with me beginning to scrapbook them. She said she wanted me to wait until she and her husband had a chance to go through them and post them on social media.

No problem - that's why I asked.

Over a month, she still hadn't looked at them. She wanted it to be an "experience" with her and her husband sitting down together and making it a whole thing.

I'll admit, I've been torn between wanting to do the right thing and respect her wishes, and also being super excited and wanting to start scrapbooking the pics. Of course, I waited, but it was killing me.

She finally gave me the okay to start working with the pics last night but doesn't want me to post anything on socials until she does.

I know I'm not the only person who's experienced this, so I want to know - what kind of boundaries have the people in your life placed around your scrapbooking, and how have you dealt with it? How has your pursuit of this art form changed over the years because of those boundaries?

Let's talk!
 
I have a blog post drafted about this and haven't finished it up. Maybe I'll do that sooner than later.

Personally, I think scrapbooking the wedding pics without posting on social media is a great compromise. If you had a commitment and needed to post it, replace pics with stock images or journal cards. I do this often if I want to censor something personal or someone hasn't given me permission to post them.

I definitely love the community aspect of scrapbooking so it does feel weird to not post some scrapbook pages. But I also really love the freedom of pages that are just for me or to print and share with loved ones. The Internet doesn't need everything. :)

I will say though because there are pics I don't want to post or don't have permission to post, I have avoided scrapbooking them. 😂 But that's because a lot of times I scrapbook for challenges or creative teams or my products and need to share online.
 
I just pixelate all faces, logo, places, whether they're private people or posts everything on social media, as long as I will post the layout in the gallery I would always do that. I am also a private person, so when I scrap, I make sure to not include the exact location of the places on my layouts. My original jpg will not have pixelates since I print them for my family. But of course I always make mistakes especially in the early years of my digital scrapbooking 😁
 
Yes same. I pixellate or blur my husband and kids faces or anybody else, really. Because I don’t have their permission and for privacy purpose for my family. I’m not going to reach out to older friends to ask them lol
 
I scrapbook everything: good, bad, or otherwise. I would say that I share about 70% of the layouts that I make. I don't share any layouts on my social media.

I share more via scrapbooking than I do on socials. My people don't care if I share on here, since 99% of the world doesn't know what digital scrapping or SSD is, but they do not want me to share some things on my social media channels. If I'm scrapping my friends or my kids' friends, I only share those layouts with the same/similar photos they've shared on their own social media. If I'm scrapping group photos with randos (especially randos who are kids), I will blur out their faces.

On a handful of occasions, I've blurred out or deleted sensitive journaling from a shared layout. I do blur school names, addresses, etc.
 
I scrapbook everything: good, bad, or otherwise. I would say that I share about 70% of the layouts that I make. I don't share any layouts on my social media.

I share more via scrapbooking than I do on socials. My people don't care if I share on here, since 99% of the world doesn't know what digital scrapping or SSD is, but they do not want me to share some things on my social media channels. If I'm scrapping my friends or my kids' friends, I only share those layouts with the same/similar photos they've shared on their own social media. If I'm scrapping group photos with randos (especially randos who are kids), I will blur out their faces.

On a handful of occasions, I've blurred out or deleted sensitive journaling from a shared layout. I do blur school names, addresses, etc.
This they don't care about what I post in scrapbooking sites but some don't want it on Facebook
 
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I've scrapbooked since all of my kids were babies - they know this and they also know there is a good chance any photos they share with me will show up on a page at some point. Now that they are adults I do try and respect their privacy. If they haven't shared something on their own social media somewhere, then I don't share it either unless I've asked permission for a particular reason. And yes, sometimes that kills me a little (or a lot). We knew about E's pregnancy for months before she got around to sharing about it on her social media - she likes to share things with people in person if she can and it took a longgg time for her to get around to everyone. When my grandson was born a couple of years ago, I didn't share any photos or pages about him until after his parents finally posted that he had arrived. His birth was early and stressful and they enjoyed that first couple of months without people's questions constantly about what was happening. (Family knew things through non-public means of communicating pertinent details.)

I've blurred faces of the kids' friends when necessary, but I've also just not used those photos on my pages or cropped people or changed pics out, blurred or removed text, etc. I do scrap things I don't share everywhere too. If I don't put something on Instagram or Facebook, most of the people I know aren't going to see it, and sometimes that is sufficient.
 
I tend to scrap first and foremost for myself so there are A LOT of pages that I don't share. There was one week where I had a bunch of personal scrapping *and* a bunch of CT pages to make and I basically made double the pages so that I didn't share my kiddo's business in public spaces. I know we're a somewhat weird case in that there is so much personal medical information that goes into his scrapbook.

As for other people, I usually ask them before sharing any pages they're in publicly. Most people know that they're going to be in the scrapbook and are excited about it but I still try to ask if I don't have an umbrella approval.

I pretty much only use my Facebook for CT duties these days but share some more personal pages in the gallery here.
 
I stopped sharing my layouts and took them down as my kids would prefer them not to be up there (it doesn't help that when searching my name they show up so it was kind of tricky with that) Its a different world compared to when digital scrapbooking first started and not as many people perused the internet. social media wasn't even a thing then LOL.

I am thankful for those of you who do share and have family who are fine with it though!! LOL :D :D

I have basically stopped scrapping I think in a large part because of it. I really don't like taking photos of myself, we don't do a whole lot here that is scrapbook worthy.. I have trips I could still scrapbook that are just of nature and such I just haven't done it yet.
 
This is something that I often struggle with- especially now that my kids are teenagers. I did recently make my instagram private- I had kept it public because I shared layouts there, but after they both asked, I of course changed it. It is a scary world we live in these days and part of me says that there's no preventing the scary things anyways, so who cares. But since they care, I try to just share here & in my private spaces (mostly for family who is far away.) I'm also working on photos as old as 2017 so kids don't care as much about the older ones. As far as friends/family permission- most of them know that I am a scrapbooker and that the chance of them ending up on a page is high! I have blurred some in the past though. I do know that some CTs I've been on did not faces blurred or pixelated. Who knows what the best practices are these days!?
 
We havee three children and seven grandchildren. Our daughters don't mind if I post layouts of them and their families but our son does. Since most of the scrapping I do know is for my CT work, and not necessarily for family use , I just use the photos that I am given permission to use. There have been occasions where I have asked friends for photos if I am needing one for a themed kit. I am sure to explain where the layout will be posted etc. I have a scrapping profile on Facebook and I have a personal profile. My layouts are shared on my scrapping profile.
 
This is the very reason why I don’t scrapbook extended family. I have 6 nephews and nieces but most people wouldn’t know that. I think I have scrapped a sum total of 5 pages that features them but that’s with the older ones permission when they became adults.

I have countless beautiful photos of Tige with his cousins but Ive been told I can’t share any pages I might make in our galleries. With my scrap time being so minimal and I tend to scrap to help promote my new product or for challenges that means sadly, I can’t scrap them. Maybe I’ll do a huge catch up when I’ve retired from designing.
 
I usually ask if it's a newer family member (married into our family) or if they have wee bitty children. I've been lucky that I've gotten permission from almost all. I have thousands of my own photos to scrap, so it's not like I can't find another photo if I'm not given the OK.

I started sharing my layouts in 2007 on my blog and at different scrapbooking sites. I started sharing layouts on Facebook in 2009. My layouts told childhood stories of my children, and of myself. Olivia started scrapbooking in 2009, so she was creating layouts herself. I can only remember a handful of times when she asked me not to scrap a photo. We sat in the same room, so we were always shopping and looking at photos as well as creating and sharing those layouts with each other.

Both my children are adults now and capable of telling their own stories. I still scrap layouts of them now, as they are a part of my own story. Olivia shares her photos with me of family events or dinners, as well as random other photos, and I share mine with her too. Daniel hasn't asked me not to scrap any photos, but on occasion Olivia has and I respect her choice. I hope anyway. LOL
 
Blur and pixelate for any friends or kids of friends that I don't have permission. I don't post on socials. I know I won't be able to post grandchildren when they do arrive, but my kids have not cared in 90% of incidences. They occasionally specify - not for posting.
 
I definitely love the community aspect of scrapbooking so it does feel weird to not post some scrapbook pages. But I also really love the freedom of pages that are just for me or to print and share with loved ones. The Internet doesn't need everything. :)
I love that - the internet doesn't need everything! I've actually stepped way back from my own socials and have mostly stopped posting on Facebook. Instagram is usually reserved for my "making" - sewing and scrapping - so I have a completely different set of followers there than on the mostly-family-friends-and-colleagues aspect of FB.

I will say though because there are pics I don't want to post or don't have permission to post, I have avoided scrapbooking them. 😂 But that's because a lot of times I scrapbook for challenges or creative teams or my products and need to share online.
Same! In my case, I get super motivated and encouraged by comments and feedback when I share layouts, and that helps to fuel my enthusiasm about scrapbooking ... so when I have the choice between working with pics I can post vs pics I can't, I almost always reach for the former.

If and when you get that blog post finished, I'd love to read it! You should come back here and post a link...
 
I just pixelate all faces, logo, places, whether they're private people or posts everything on social media, as long as I will post the layout in the gallery I would always do that. I am also a private person, so when I scrap, I make sure to not include the exact location of the places on my layouts. My original jpg will not have pixelates since I print them for my family. But of course I always make mistakes especially in the early years of my digital scrapbooking 😁
That's super smart, Cherry - I've got one set of grandkids whose mom is like, "scrap anything you want and post it wherever you want!" And another set whose mom is much more concerned about privacy and safety and doesn't want stuff shared publicly... but she's okay if I post it here, because this is a much smaller and more niche audience.
 
Yes same. I pixellate or blur my husband and kids faces or anybody else, really. Because I don’t have their permission and for privacy purpose for my family. I’m not going to reach out to older friends to ask them lol
The more I learn about facial recognition software, the more I understand why people blur out faces in photographs. It's scary just how good Google Photos is about automatically detecting my family's faces in pics when I upload them to my account. I keep that as a private, invitation-only repository of pics as a secondary offsite backup so it's not publicly searchable, but still, I wonder if Google has some big master file of everyone's faces they can use for other stuff. You're such a good mom, Lea!
 
I share more via scrapbooking than I do on socials. My people don't care if I share on here, since 99% of the world doesn't know what digital scrapping or SSD is, but they do not want me to share some things on my social media channels.
That's exactly how some members of my family feel. I was conscientious about asking everyone before I started posting layouts, and they were all like, "sure you can post on a scrapbooking website! Just not on Facebook or Instagram."
 
The more I learn about facial recognition software, the more I understand why people blur out faces in photographs. It's scary just how good Google Photos is about automatically detecting my family's faces in pics when I upload them to my account. I keep that as a private, invitation-only repository of pics as a secondary offsite backup so it's not publicly searchable, but still, I wonder if Google has some big master file of everyone's faces they can use for other stuff. You're such a good mom, Lea!
that's definitely super scary! eek
 
If they haven't shared something on their own social media somewhere, then I don't share it either unless I've asked permission for a particular reason. And yes, sometimes that kills me a little (or a lot). We knew about E's pregnancy for months before she got around to sharing about it on her social media - she likes to share things with people in person if she can and it took a longgg time for her to get around to everyone. When my grandson was born a couple of years ago, I didn't share any photos or pages about him until after his parents finally posted that he had arrived. His birth was early and stressful and they enjoyed that first couple of months without people's questions constantly about what was happening. (Family knew things through non-public means of communicating pertinent details.)
You're such a good mom to your adult kids (and that's a whole new skillset from being a mom to minors!) - I have always done my best to check in with the kids before posting anything online about something big like a new baby or a wedding. I've seen the fallout when other family members don't respect their wishes - like the uncle who used his phone during the ceremony to shoot photographs and posted them online that night despite it being printed in the programs, displayed on signs, and said by the officiant that they wanted a completely unplugged wedding and everyone was to turn off their phones and allow the official photographers to be the only ones shooting pics. At another wedding it was a grandmother who did it. And in both cases, there was a lot of hurt, disappointment, and outrage from the people involved.

But man oh man, sometimes it's so hard to keep from sharing our excitement with our online communities!
 
I have basically stopped scrapping I think in a large part because of it. I really don't like taking photos of myself, we don't do a whole lot here that is scrapbook worthy.. I have trips I could still scrapbook that are just of nature and such I just haven't done it yet.
If and when you do scrap those nature photos, I want to see them! Especially pics of your walks in the snow - the ones I've seen are beautiful!
 
Thankfully my kids (adults) are mostly fine with me sharing the layouts I scrap. There have been a few times that Kayla has asked me to wait to scrap/share something, but it's been rare occasions.
 
I've really stopped sharing most of my layouts, I honestly don't think my adult kids would care if I did here, or I wait to upload a huge batch on facebook, keep them private, then adjust the setting once the album is full, I figure most people don't actually look at them, aside from my mom and inlaws.

The kids will say when I take certain pictures, don't post that, like I'm posting to FB 24/7. LOL!
 
I don't post anything on scrapbooking sites that I'm not okay with being public. I don't know if people realize this, but you can find scrapbook layouts posted here on Google, which makes it just as public as Facebook in a lot of ways.

For CT, I lean into the pets or nature or me. Or trips. If it's the munchkin, I'll ask if I can post it first. I've always lived by the not posting anything super embarrassing because I didn't want a college to google his name and find something embarrassing. I scrap a lot more than I post since my reasons for scrapping are not based on validation from anyone but my family.

For not my kid, my siblings are cool with photos of them since they are all adults, and their childhood photos are quite old obvi. For their kids - I don't post faces, except my one niece because my sister doesn't mind, and she posts her way more than I do! Only backs of heads for the others. For other kids - if it's a public photo (publicity for school teams), or like a basketball game, where the kids on the court know they will be photographed, I might post it.
 
I never asked my kids when they were younger, and there was only one LO I posted that my oldest son had an issue with. I always check with them now and I think they are happy that I do that. I also have several nieces and nephews whose kids I have created pages of, and none of them have ever had a problem with my sharing them, but they also appreciated that I asked them ahead of time.
 
The main reason I don't post much here is privacy concerns. I feel bad about it because I find that people who aren't into scrapping really don't find my pages interesting. It is so nice to share pages with people who appreciate. My children do not allow me to share pictures of them or their children, and those are the photos I want to scrap. I usually participate in the birthday month (February) and the summer months, and I either blur their pictures or put an element on their faces.
 
I stopped posting layouts anywhere a long time ago. I scrap for me. I do scrap extended family photos and those are made into books for them that they love getting since they aren't scrappers. I've never shared layouts on IG although I did post layouts on FB when I was on CT's 12 to 13 years ago. The only places I ever shared were on scrapbooking sites.

Although with the ability to link to Pinterest, layouts that are no longer in a scrapbooking gallery are still out there. I found out a couple years ago that something I posted at Scrap Orchard made it to Pinterest and was used as an example in a lesson on a paid site for learning how to use Paint Shop Pro. The owner does credit and link to the original but mine wasn't credited because it was found on from Pinterest. When I saw it and told her it was mine, she wanted to link it which she couldn't do because the original no longer existed. Thankfully, it was a layout that had no people on it. But that pretty much ended my sharing of any layout.
 
@HaveaDrPepper and @bestcee - You're absolutely right. Anything we put anywhere on the Internet is essentially released into the wild and we have zero control over where it appears or how it's used. Even if you think something is deleted, all it takes is a visit to the Wayback Machine and you'll be shocked by just how much is archived.

It's a tough balancing act between protecting your photos, your writing, and your layout creations versus all the good things we can gain from sharing within a like-minded community. Personally, the kind words I receive on my layouts help keep me motivated to scrapbook during the times my family might not be as interested or supportive of my hobby. I know they eventually cycle back to loving our albums and wanting to look at them, but sometimes I question if I'm wasting my time. Being a part of a community helps to remind me that there's nothing wrong with doing this for myself, and a little extra validation from my peers can make my day.

Thank you to everyone for sharing your thought process around respecting the boundaries of your people while still sharing your layouts online - I have really enjoyed this conversation!
 
@HavaDrPepper I had a similar thing, only the person who swiped my layout never credited me and claimed it as their work.
Thankfully, she did change it to credit me but it couldn't be linked to the original gallery post since the gallery is no longer available. I've become friends with her and have found out since then that any layout she puts as sample layouts in the monthly lessons posts, she does get approval from the creator. They tend to pull a lot of them from the scrapbook.com gallery and credit the creator with a link to the original gallery post. I don't remember seeing many layouts from Pinterest in the last couple of years. Guess they learned that is not a good place to pull a layout from.
 
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