PHOTO BOOK-a-palooza

Thanks to Snapfish having a couple of kick-arse deals at a time when we could (just) afford it I recently got all of my 365 projects including Will's printed into photobooks and also did Les' France Album which we sent copies of to all the guys on the F3J team.

Having the 365's in a easily available format able to be just picked up is the coolest thing and taking a look back at our lives and seeing just what's changed and what's stayed the same (not much) as well as remembering some particularly special moments and people has been just the coolest thing- and totally worth the sort of money I have never paid on a single book before.

 

These books are hardcover with 30x30cm pages.

2009

 2010

 

2011

2012

Will's Book also a 30x30cm Hardcover included all of his monthly day-by-day pages as well as a selection of the 9:28 photos as a heading page for each year.

 

Les' book is a 20x28cm Hard cover book- I created 5 different variations of the books because not all of them went onto London, or did the tour of Paris or wants to have a full page photo of Les. :-) It was a mission but totally worth it and I'm super pleased with the results.

 

 

 

(Back Cover image)

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Makes Me Happy- Album Dividers

 One of the things that I am using in my Library of Memories albums is album dividers. I had a look for them online and could only find Becky Higgins Project Life ones- US$7.99 for 12! So I came up with a plan and made my own. A few years back the scrap camp girls were buying these plastic chopping mats from the dollar stores. They were using them to make templates from their die cut 12x12 papers. I brought the mats but never got around to using them until now. I cut each mat into four and used a corner rounder and crop-o-dile to turn them into dividers that I can customise to  suit my needs. And the best thing for the $7.99 I could spend on the PL dividers I can make 32 of my own dividers!!

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MY Library of Memories

A year or so back I finally got a hold of Stacey Julian's book Photo Freedom. It outlines her 'Library of Memories' system which she uses for organising and storing her photos, scrapbooking her memories and storing her pages. It category based and suits the way I scrapbook so I decided to adopt most of what she does and adapt it for my process/style. I started with my photos (mostly complete) and then dived into taking all my previously made pages (about 1000 of them) out of their albums and dividing them into categories. Then I started to put the pages into chronological-ish order in their catergories- because that's the way I like it. And then something happened and I stopped and boxed it all up and stashed it all away under my scrap-table.

Until the other week.

When I got them all out and started to file them.

Then I ran out of albums. So the next day I went to 3 different spotlight stores and brought 22 more albums. And then I spent another day and a bit putting the rest away. And now I have this.

And it makes me exceptionally happy every time I look at it- which is fairly often seeing as they are right in my lounge! I still have a little way to go with some stuff. And over time I will change things like Will's albums- so he gets some with a little more personality and so I can use his current ones for expansion in the other categories. But in the meantime it feels pretty good to have them all there are able to be viewed... because really that's the whole point isn't it?

Stacy has a whole system from photo storage and curating to album categories. Here's what I am doing...

Photo Storage: All my photos to be scrapped (or not scrapped) are in slip in albums- each set of photos has it's own pocket. I have added a sticky note on each of the set that I have enlargements for and they are stored elsewhere because of size constraints.

I have some sets of photos that are designated for mini albums and these are enveloped up and stored in a photobox.

I also have a photobox which is currently divided into sections for each of the members of our family- I'll add some more as I develop a need for them. As I work my way through my albums I come across photos that I know I'm no longer interested in scrapping or I decide not to scrap all the photos in a set- these photos will get filed into this box for 'other pages' Eg if I decide I want to do a page about the special songs we've sung to each of our kids to settle them when they were babies I can go to this box and pull a photo of each kid from their section that I want to use on the page.

And I have a drawer with all my enlargements in chronological album. 

Stacey has a category that she calls Cold Storage- essentially the photos you think you'll never scrap- I don't normally have any photos like that and if I do I generally pass them on to Will or Merenia to use as they please.

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My albums are titled:

• All About Me (Individual albums for each of the six members of our family)
• All About Us (These are for the pages that show relationships between the members of our family)
• Things We Do (Sports, Scrapping, Gliding, Theme dinners and stuff we do that isn't place specific)
• People We Love (Sorted by Les' Family, My Family and Friends)
• Places We Go (Specific places that we revisit time and again, places that are special to us eg Scrapcamp, Shakespeare Bay, Starbucks, and places that we might visit on holiday)

I also have albums for the Cats, Christmas LO's, each kid's school life, my Gifted and Talented Class, and also some themed albums like Les' Deployment to the Gulf and our big South Island Holiday).

I haven't grouped the layouts in the album (ie all the scrapcamp LO's together) I have placed them in rough chronological order. I like the fact I can flick through the album and see a different thing with each spread- as opposed to having to look at 6 years of Netball LO's all in a row. And I also like to see the progression of time in my albums.

I love using the ring bound albums- originally when they first came out I wasn't so keen to have a big gap between the pages especially in a double page spread- but to be honest I just don't see it when I look through the albums and I love the flexibility of being able to slip a page in where it belongs chronologically. I don't think the pages are as stable in the album as they are in a post bound album and therefore maybe not as kid friendly but I am happy to put up with that. I also love these American Craft albums as they have the 'no snag' binder rings.

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One of the things I really like about this system is that it lets me see the holes- the places I haven't told as much or as many of the stories as I would like to. For example I don't have a whole heap of pages about Les and Tama full stop- and I don't have many LO's about some of the important places we loved in Auckland or about the different relationships that each of the kids have with each other. 

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In terms of actually scrapping a full page LO-  I simply pull out a slip in album and flick through till I find some photos that I want to scrap then I pull them out and scrap them. I am also incorporating more divided page protectors into my albums- more on that in another post.

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For the Birds

In the most recent school holidays we had the class birds to visit. When they went back to school I put together this little book and post card set about their adventures on holiday...

 

 

 

 

Supply Overload!

Just a quick one from me today because I'm busy with a bunch of 'stuff' and I really need to have an early night!

But I've got a problem and I'm hoping my scrappy friends can help.

I'm slowly getting back into scrapbooking and I'm changing the way I deal with most of my photos (more on that later). What I'm finding is that what should be a fast and easy way to scrap is being slowed down by supply overload. I can easily purge a bit of stuff but there's still a whole bunch that I have that I really want to use. But I can't keep going through my whole stash for each set of photos that I scrap because it's wasting my time!!

So my question is do you have any strategies for using up your stash easily?

In the past I have essentially kitted up a number of pages at once laying out the supplies I want to 'use up' and matching them to the best fit photos/LO's. But I don't think that will work for me now and I am reticent to 'kit-up' a bunch of pages as I am scrapping too slowly so I know that when I come to my kitted pages my motivation/ideas/mood will have changed and I won't necessarily want to follow the plan I had already started. I also want to avoid using stash just for the sake of using it- because I've found in the past it often doesn't make a page that I am 100% happy with... rather it makes a page that is the best of a bad situation. Or it makes a page that was supposed to use certain supplies but actually doesn't. :-)

Ideas please....

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Woven

So I have a bit of a sentimental attachment to the kids baby clothes. Woven into the very fibres are my memories. The size of their little bodies. The softness, the smell and so many adventures. Specific items bring to mind certain babies- even Saskia is in there. I have got a least one key outfit  in each of their memory boxes- a item that just screams "Will" or "Kieran" or.... And I did manage to move some of it on to the Op shop. But the stack above remained. I don't want to hold onto too much stuff so I came up with a plan, and on my recent day off I started to execute it.

When I went through the stack there were a few more items I realised I couldn't bring myself to use for this project so these went in their memory boxes as well.

Then I cut the rest up.....

  

And now I have a pile of what was the largest square or rectangular piece or pieces I could cut from each item. And some time in the not too distant future I'm going to sew them all together and make myself a quilt. So long after my babies grow up and leave home I'll be able to wrap myself up in the memories of them that I cherish.

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Horsin' around

The Stick Horses from Will's school needed some tender loving care. Three of them managed to get away with minor repairs but the other three needed a complete facelift. I've never made anything like this before which makes me even happier with the results which I think are pretty darn good. All in all with a little recycling, op-shopping, and stash busting I think they cost about $12 for all three.

If you want to have a go I used the tutorial here at Mad Mim.

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Recycling

Our shire has what they call a verge side collection every six months. Much like the inorganic in Auckland- only it's pretty much everything. I spotted the notice board below as I was going past some ones pile the other day on the way to grab the kids. Then on my way back past I didn't see it and figured someone had scored it. A week or so later and I see it again so stopped by and grabbed it.

As you can see the notice board is mouldy and mildewy but other than that it's in pretty good condition. I stripped it back to it's bare bones and left it out in the sun as the week long sit outside had left it a bit damp.

 Then when I had my 'day off' I dug through my fabric stash for something suitable. The only piece I had that was big enough was a piece of amazing red silk which I am totally in love with and wish I could find a use for. It wasn't the best choice for this project but it was the only choice without having to waste precious time on a trip to spotlight.

30 minutes and a bunch of staples later... done!

(I ran out of black ribbon but I actually like the green here anyway and may look at replacing all the black if I can find a similar colour ribbon some where.)

Then I installed it in it's new home.

 

And I love it!

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365 Week 17

 
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