Feeling overwhelmed with your scrapbooking? Part 2

Photo and Scrapping Stress

If you are like me, you’ll look at the ton of photos you and your family takes and want to do them all!  But is that realistic?  Very overwhelming.  

I’ve learned the hard way that when you load your photos onto your computer, you need to tag and think about them right there and then.  

Something that I have always done is to know what album the photos will go into in the end.  Will it be the family album for that year?  Will it be a child’s personal album?  Vacation album?  You get the idea.  I’m still trying to find the best way to do this on my Mac, so I am still putting the originals by Year-Month folders.  

Now I can hear you saying, “But I don’t know what I’m doing because I’m so overwhelmed!”  Yep, there with you again.  What I found personally was to have an Overview for my scrapping with small parts of categories or albums I wanted to scrap written out.  Take everything in smaller bites.

Getting an Overview

• Review what you want to get done and WHY!  
• What’s important?  Do you want to focus on albums with messages?  Or maybe an album of events?  Do you have the need to create chronologically? Are you wanting to create individual albums for each child or family member with chapters of life?  Or do you enjoy the freedom of a huge 100 page family album for the year? 

Write down each main idea you want to accomplish.  Assign a time span if relevant or a due date if it is for a gift.  (Speaking from experience of having something ready on time so I’m not running around like a you know what days before hand.)

Break it All Down

Once you know what you want and your direction, you can then begin to break it all down into smaller manageable pieces-parts and more importantly, manageable tasks.

First! Give yourself permission to do baby steps.  Daily baby steps if need be.

Second!  Take pride in each and every achievement no matter how big or small. 

Now step back and look at your list. If you already know Specific album names list them or use general names.

For example currently mine looks like this: (yes I do at least this many a year plus more).

2011 Family Album - This is usually a 100 page album.  All my misc. pages go in here. (what's awesome is I print several so all members of the family will have a copy, gotta love digital!)

Bailey’s “When I was Five” Album

Bailey’s “2011 Monthly Pages” Album - 1-2 pages for each month

Casey’s Grand Canyon Album -  These are all his photos from being a Boat Captain at work and his love of the American Natives and the beauty of the outdoors.

Kara’s “Land of Fae” Album - One day I will finish this. ;)

Messages to my Children Album - Ongoing Chapters of life.

My personal Art-Life Journal Album-  I do one each year

Since these are all digital albums, I create a folder for each of the above.  

Then I create sub-folders within each for all my items I will need to work with.

NOTE: For my "themed albums", ones with consistent art used throughout it,  I use COPIES of everything and leave original photos and art in my other folders.  I simply delete the folder when done with the album.

Why?  Because I just find it easier and faster to have it all in one spot then to go searching for it in the middle of my high creativeness which is valuable time for me.  

Here is what my sub-folders look like for example:

Art to Use

Completed Pages to Print

Journaling Docs

Photos-Scanned Items to use

Templates to Use

Working PSD files

So my break down of tasks for EACH Themed Album would be:

Gather Photos

Decide if and what art theme the album will be

Decide if I want to use a certain set of templates for an album

I assign time slots each day or week to do this until done or caught up at least.

Some days I can only do 15 minutes.  AND THAT’S OK!  I did something!  Remember, we have permission to do this in baby steps.

Photos to Use folder:  As I go through and/or upload new photos, I put a copy of them into the appropriate Album’s Photos to Use Folder that I think I might use.  

Templates to Use: If I know I have a set of Templates I want to use for a particular album, I put a copy of them in that folder.  Example: I am using Tiffany Tillman’s Summer Templates for Bailey’s 2011 Monthly Pages Album.  

Art to Use: Decide on Art - I do this for themed albums as the art I use usually has a theme.  So no matter if I make the art or I buy the art, I put a copy there for fast and easy access.  

If I buy a kit with a particular album in mind, I put a copy of it right into this folder as soon as I buy it.  

I don’t work on one album all at once.  I hop around as inspiration hits me.  Unless of course I have a deadline set to have it done.  Then I do try to focus on that album before others.

I keep my weekly 1/2 hour or so to keep up with my Supply organization but I found that more and more, I buy, download, and organize right away now that I am caught up in my downloads folder.  It’s easy to maintain once you gain control.

I schedule time each week to work on my albums and pages. This is MY time!  It does change week to week, but I block the time out on my desk calendar.  

Then I just keep plugging away.

Try and find a time in your schedule that works for you that you can sit down and do those baby steps.  If you are not feeling creative to make a page, work on journaling or gathering.  If you are caught up in that, go find yourself some inspiration!  Look at galleries or other scrapper’s pages you love.  Screen shot it, Evernote it, Pinterest it, anything in any way you keep track.

I have a few artists and scrappers that I adore and it never fails.  Five minutes looking at their pages and I have my inspiration!  

Know that no matter how or what you scrap, you CAN do it!  Just take those baby steps and have a plan that you can return to.  Hopefully you will find some useful tips from my system to adapt to your own.

One last piece of advise from my personal experience.  Archive!  Weekly or monthly doesn’t matter.  That will depend on how much you are creating or uploading photos.  Just do it!  Because the day WILL come, your compy WILL crash.  And like me, you will be giving a big old smooch to your external hard drive or offsite storage host.

How often do I archive?  NIGHTLY!  I have my Mac's Time Machine to back up nightly.  I also do a weekly backup to a separate External Hard Drive and I keep all my completed work there along with all new art created or acquired.

And by request from my dear friend iDebbie, Next week I will get deeper into my organization of my stash and will share my actual folders of my organization of my stash and how I search and find the art. 

You're still here and reading all this?!?!  Kewl! ;)

So here's a question for everyone… how do you do your scrapping?  Do you do random pages and put into a book for the year?  Do you do themed albums like me?  Or do you do something entirely different?  Share your thoughts or how you do and I'll pick a random winner this week to get a $5 coupon for the shop.  :)  I'll post the winner on next week's post so be sure to check back to see if you won. :D

Let's get organized!

Was a big debate if I should make this a blog post or send out in our Newsletter.  I'm sure you can guess what the final decision was.  I felt I could share with more people if I posted on our blog and it would be more accessible for everyone.

So each new year I reanalyze how I organize my digi products and albums.  Following Marcie's post from yesterday I decided to share how I do things and also how I organize my albums.   I shared some of this last year in our forum, but it is buried deep and difficult to find now.

I will be expanding on this throughout the month too as I've switched over to a Mac this past year and want to look into using iPhoto to organize my scrapbooking items.  I have read several articles that this works well for Mac users and will share what I learn.  

First things first

Develop a consistent routine for downloading new items, unzipping, tagging and finally moving to it’s final home on my hard drive. And let’s not forget ARCHIVING the zip to an external hard drive or DVD!  

I download to a download folder with “Type” named folders.  Kits, brushes, textures etc.

I unzip there within the folder and tag accordingly.

I archive my zip file to my EHD

I rename the designer's preview file with the word "_preview" on the end so a simple search can pull all my previews up at once for quick reference if need be.  

I then MOVED my tagged items to their final resting home within my folder structure of "Graphics". (More on that later.)

Set up a time slot that you can live with for organizing daily or weekly. If you’re starting from scratch, I suggest taking 15 minutes a day to get a handle on things. Hopefully after that it will not take much and by then you will have developed a system that fits you and your download habits.

I’m not going to pretend to be all knowing here, but I will pass on what I have learned and how I personally organize. You’d think I’d be really good at it now that I have revised it three times as my uses and scrapping styles have changed considerably since I started. And now I have had to divide my stash from purchased personal use, commercial use, professional use and of course my own creations.

I personally used ACDSee on my PC before I went Mac and loved it. Will not work on my Mac and thank goodness I have had some type of directory folder system in place on my PC before I started with ACDSee.

My Hard Drive Folder structure is also set up the way I work and look for things.  Everyone's should be set up in how they search for things.  So for now, think about "how" you scrap.  Make notes while making a page next time.  do you look for a kit to use or do you "shop your stash" per-say pulling papers and elements from many kits as you go?  I will share my personal style this month also. 

Today I'm going to focus on how I work my albums first as this is at the top of my list as I put 000 in front of the name so it stays on top of my folder list.  I have been using this system for many many years and it works well for me.  I took Anna Aspnes's Album Magic class last year at Renee Pearson's site and found she and I think a lot of like.  I did tweak some, but felt very validated and learned a lot of little tricks also.  Highly recommend her class!  

This is my folder structure for my scrap albums and pages:

Working Albums: This is where I keep all my currently working albums that are in progress. Within each Album folder are sub folders for that particular album.

Example:

000 Working Albums

Land of Fae – Name of Album

1. Photos – These are a COPY of the photos that I have chosen for this album to use.
2. Art – COPY of all the Papers, elements etc that I want to use throughout the album.
3. Journaling – Copy of my personal journal pages for this album. All the word files I have written for the album.
4. PSD Files – These are the working files for the pages
5. Printing Files – Files saved as JPGs for later printing.
6. Web Files – Files saved smaller to a web format for uploading to a gallery if I want.

When the album is completed:

1. I upload all the printing files to my printing service and wait for printed copy before moving on.
2. I zip all the printing files.
3. I delete the Photos folder. It is only the copy of the photos.
4. I delete all the copied art. (If I made new art, I MOVE it to my art folder)
5. I zip my PSD files. (Cause I’m anal like that). I have pulled them up later to create templates and new pages though. I know many who don’t keep at all.
6. I delete the Journaling folder
7. I delete the Web Files folder
8. I then take the album and copy to my EHD for archiving. This gives me 3 copies of the printed pages as one is archived for life at my printers also.

All of my artwork and scrapping fits into some type of album or project somehow.

80% of my scrapping goes into albums or Storybooks... and I have many going throughout the year. (Have a couple I've been working on for a couple years). 

Page or by the Album? 

If I do a page that doesn't seem to belong to one of the themed books (vacation, holiday, messages to my children etc.), it goes into the annual family album. That's where all the misc. pages are printed for that year. 

If it's a long ongoing album that will take me over a year (Like Messages to My Children), I archive what's completed by sections... I think of it like chapters.  I do the same for very large albums (100 pages like the annual album). 

The other 20% is artwork for my walls or Art journal. I have a folder for "Art Projects". This is where I keep my subfolders for posters I do, canvas art I do, and single items for framing when printed. I archive this one the same way only after the project is finished. I tend to have these single item projects in two directories only. A simplified version.

Photos and Art and IF I had any journaling with the PSD Files 

Printing Files – Files saved as JPGs for later printing.

Guess I'm never able to work on a project WHEN I have the idea... so I quickly pull the items together I do know I want to use into a project so they are there when I have the time. Many times I find or create something that I think "Oh that would go well with..." and I stick a copy in that items folder for later when I have time to scrap.

OR I create a project "sketch" page as a PSD in my ART Projects folder... and save as "Proj_RockPoster.psd" for example as one I did for my daughter. In this sketch page I have the photo and notes and colors I want to use for the item. Sometimes I even pull in digi items like paper and elements too I will use... all in one PSD file for the project.

I hope you have found something useful reading this and would love to hear your ideas too.  Join the DDS team this month and let's get organized!  

Bailey's July Page for her Album

Finally got this layout done and thought I'd share... think I will start sharing more often than I have been... never thought to post pages here, but DUH, I find inspiration from others blog's and galleries and someone told me yesterday they find inspiration in mine.  Awwww... made me feel SO good! :)

This page is for Bailey's album.  Bailey is my 4 year grand-daughter who's birthday is Halloween!  So yea... was time to finish up her yearly album and now just have three more pages to get done before her birthday.  "You CAN do it!"  is the little voice in my head LOL.

Also... came up this morning from a friend that she just can't even think about putting a themed album together... as I wrote her how I do it, it occurred to me that maybe this information might be useful for someone else... after all, I used to be the same way with albums... wanted to do, but could never complete.

So my Advice!
Start small... maybe a mini album?  Actually... I think it was Anna Aspnes who gave me this advise years ago. 
My first digi album was an Art journal... just to get me warmed up.  It was a 6x6 booklet (easily cut into four from 12x12 page).  Each page was a color theme, sketches, odds and ends for creating.  It was me learning to create in digital so everything was an experiment and I just played :)  Kinda kewl to look back on now and how far I've come since then.  I think it has 12 pages and I just printed and put a ring through all of them and hung on my wall for inspiration.

   My second album was a baby book... first year.  It was 13 pages.  Each page was a month with a picture of the child along with one page being the ultrasound picture.  I took one photo a month, just jotted a little list of accomplishments that month, dated and done.   You can do this kind of idea with anything... a child, a pet, a family...  It's easy with just one pic a month and a list type format that could be a gratitude or dates of events that month.

  I have made lots of these little albums now.  I start with a template and a kit and just rotate, flip, add a pic, delete a pic... but through the whole thing I keep the same papers, repeat elements and just play with the original template... even repeat the template pages just not side by side.  Makes it fast and easy. Each month I spend about an hour doing a page for each album.   Vacations, ski trips, holidays, Yearly family, a teen's life, heritage etc etc... an album can be any kind of theme.  I have at least 6 of these going at any given time... I add to them throughout the year and print in a in a bound storybook when done. (I do 2 page spreads only now too). Each book is like a chapter. :) 

And with digi scrapping, I can also print a copy for whoever I made the book about... too greedy, want my own copy. :)  Kinda learned with quilts... For 20 years I made quilts as gifts... never even took a pic of them... my current sqeeze didn't believe I had made any since I had none in my house when he met me.... LOL   (Did he learn quickly that I have this HUGE stash of fabric and get obsessed with making a quilt!) LOL  Now I take all the scraps from a quilt I make for someone and make a little block or wall hanging for me... AND a picture! LOL 

If you keep it simple... stick to the theme... it's easy to put together small 'chapters'.   I have two big ones I have been working on for quite some time now... 'Messages to My Children' and 'Breathings of My Heart'.  They both are 12x12 size and have about 70 or 80 pages and I plan to print when I reach 100 (max the book can hold).  I just add to them when the idea or an inspiration strikes me.  :)  All of my children will get a copy when I'm done. 
  Hope this helps someone else get past that "Where do I begin" or "It's too much to take on".