Not only the name of one of my all time favorite albums, but also how we hope the week does not end.
Most of you are otherwise occupado today with candy, costumes, and last minute decorations. (I hope you all have a safe and happy day.) In light of your pressing needs, today will be short and sweet.
Couple answers. I can hang elements off the edge and still fit it in a page protector as I often scrapbook 8.5 x 8.5 layouts. I love the look of Liz Tamanaha's pages (Paislee Press) and her bitty little pictures. But when I put them on a 8.5x11 they just didn't look right. So I began cutting my pages down to 8.5 inch squares. This means I can hang elements off vertically or horizontally, and they still fit in my 8.5 x 11 page protectors just fine. I just place them vertically or horizontally in the page protector depending on which side the stuff is hanging over. I also like the proportion of letter stickers as titles on the smaller format.
Secondly, the torn up edges are compliments of this little baby:
I'm on my second one, and I love them. (I buy them at the CK Conventions vendor fair, but I think to buy online you need a rep. Mine have been $3 each). They are about 2 inches in diameter. I just hold it in one hand, my paper in the other, and drag it down the edge, going a little back and forth as I do. (If you want more distresser-ing love, check out Bibine's blog. Seeing how she leaves all her edges torn helped me understand that it you tear an edge as you go, just leave it, or add a brad and see it as an opportunity to embellish!) Anywhere I might have before inked edges, I now distress and doodle a line around the edge. I like the little lines of color to finish off the edges.
For my last bit of imparted wisdom (hahahaha), I wanted to tell you the system I have worked out for photo/journaling storage. It took me months of trying various things, but this one seems best for me. In case you haven't yet struck gold on your system yet, here is one more to consider.
I am the one who used to write on the back of every photo ever processed. Name, date, location, and purpose of photo. Then I would put the negatives into an album also so noted. Then all the photos would go in an album. I did each roll of film within one week of picking it up. I worked fulltime and had one child and was incredibly organized back then. Now, I stay home, have three kids, and a digital camera. At last count I had more than 80 000 photo in storage. In four years. I know, I know. Too many. I tried to embed the info into each photo, but it was too big of a task. So this is what I do now.
Download photos. I download by date as I am a numerical girl. Dates work best for me as I remember numbers best.
I go into each date and create descriptive folders separating out different photo groups if there are any.
In every folder, I click through and do my best to take some out, discarding any that are blurry/out of focus/duplicates.
Create an edited photos folder. Place edited copy of these into this folder. (I do NOT delete the originals.) Here is a screen shot for all of September. (it will get bigger if you click on it)
Now, the photos are done, and I go to my typepad account. (My account lets me have three subfolders. On one I put a password and keep it private. This is the account to which I refer.) Here I add all the information I would have put on the backside of the photos. And a little more. I save the date with the same folder name as my photos. If I have time, I upload the photos. If I don't, I can anytime, as they are linked by title and date.
I have been doing this (mostly) successfully for a year now. I feel amazing relief at knowing that all my stories are someplace safe from theft, fire, and memory loss, and all my photos are safely attached to their stories. From here, scrapbooking is a breeze. Any time I am in the mood, my photos and journaling are there and waiting.
Before I got my digital camera, I loved scrapbooking. I kept photo albums for all the pictures, and I scrapbooked about 3-10 photos per roll. I thought I would love scrapbooking even more once I went digital, but honestly, I felt completely overwhelmed by the effort of making every photo (and now I had TONS more) a scrapbook page, lest it not have its story preserved.
Once I stopped trying to make my scrapbooks a resting place for all my combined photos/memories, I rediscovered my love of scrapbooking. It has returned to an art form. To a place of creative discovery where I can take my favorite photos and stories and put them together on a pretty piece of paper. Instead of a chore that caused me guilt for one more undone item on my todo list.
That's it for me. I will leave you with some Christmas cards to segue from Halloween to our new month! Be sure to check in Monday for the new month launch! I have been sneaking peeks and there is some good stuff coming. Craftyp, will you send me your address to marnie at writeclickscrapbook dot com so I may send you some Halloween paper for your efforts on the challenges this week? Thanks to everyone who worked on a layout. I loved them all. And am so proud of your efforts to record yourselves.
xo
