Scrapping Confession

I’m just going to come clean…I am woefully behind in my scrapbooking!  I just never got back into the groove when we moved last summer, so other than creating two pages a month for the books we give grandparents for Christmas, I’ve done very little.  I mean, as in maybe half a dozen other pages. To put it in context, I usually make between 125 and 150 pages a year.

My biggest summer resolution was to catch up on scrapbooking.  I’m not there yet, but I’ve made a sizable dent in it.  As I scrap, I’m also organizing my photos, deleting duplicates and only keeping those with meaning. I save about 5,000 photos a year (imagine how many I take, since I’m the queen of deleting while they’re still on the memory card in the camera).  As I’ve been culling this summer, I find I really only want to keep about 1,500 of those each year.  I know, it’s still a huge number.

I  was completely overwhelmed as to how to go about this organization.  Once upon a time (meaning when I had only one hooligan), each quarter I printed, backed up on CD, and backed up on an external hard drive all my favorites. That fell by the wayside about, oh, five years ago. You can see why I wake up at night in a cold sweat, worrying about this. You can’t?  Oh,well, so I’m a little compulsive.

I came up with a catch-up schedule that’s working really well.  One week I organize and print my favorites from a quarter, ruthlessly deleting all those so-so and redundant photos. The following week, I digitally scrap the photos from that quarter. I just made a little note on my calendar of what quarter is what week (I’m working backward in time) and it’s going pretty quickly.  The organization and cleaning up takes about an hour, then the scrapping takes about 5 or 6 the following week. I try to do a month a night(after the hooligans are in bed, of course) on the the weeks I’m scrapping.

The renaming system I decided on works really well, too. In my “Pictures” file on my computer, the files are automatically created by date as I download photos.  I’m consolidating and renaming all those daily folders into one monthly one that contains 4 or 5 subfolders.  For example, for June, 2012:

Folder Name is 0612

The subfolders in that file are:
Family
Crafts
Food
Stampin’ Up

The photos in each subfolder have names like “0612 MKE Zoo(1)” or “0612 Raspberry Limeade”.”

That way, I’m not looking for a certain photo and they’re all named DSC002010 or something.

I know, it sounds tedious, but I’m enjoying looking back and remembering what we were doing when. I’ve even been inspired to make some cool scrap pages.  These are some of my favorites, of a couple of days we spent on a Lake Michigan beach last summer.

Colorized-Boys-at-Beach 

End-of-summer-Beach
Frank-and-Kids-Lake-Mich

All this photo work has reminded me of why I love digital scrapbooking, and it’s given me new inspiration to save my family’s memories in a way that’s creative and rewarding to me.

I print a large number at Costco for only 9 cents a photo.  I take mine in on CD (because my internet is only a wireless hot spot and works too poorly to upload them all) and it only takes about an hour before I can pick them…and I can easily waste an hour at Costco! I usually print two quarters at once, to qualify for the discounted price.

If you’re like me and feeling overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of photos you have stuck on your computer, just start small.  Organize this month’s photos.  Then last, and the last, and so on. You can DO it!

About Megan

My various hats: mom to three crazy teens and one quirky dog, wife of 27 years to my retired GI Joe, and high school math teacher. After my husband's retirement from the Army, we've settled in the Pacific Northwest. Crafting, cooking, photography, and reading keep me sane (that's a relative term!) and I hope you'll enjoy following along as I navigate the chaos of life!
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6 Responses to Scrapping Confession

  1. Nicole says:

    Hi Megan! I want to know how you did the mosaic of Esme on your end of summer beach page. Is that a template? We’ve been trying to dig into Photoshop, but haven’t found that technique yet and I really like it!

    Also, Costco charges $.09 for your photos? What size are you printing them? That’s an awesome deal. Have you ever used anyone to transfer your printed photos for digital? I bought one of the machines to do it at home, but the results are not as nice as I would like. 🙁

    Love your catch up plan…inspiring as always, I need to be a more ruthless deleter!

    Miss chatting with you guys! Glad to see you’re all well!

    • Megan says:

      Hey! Good to hear from you! The beach page is a free “plopper” that I downloaded a few years ago…and I’m pretty sure from DigitalScrapbookPlace.com. To do it, I just copied and pasted the photo behind the template.

      The $.09 is for 4×6 when you order more than 500, I think. I haven’t ever transferred (or had anyone transfer) print to digital. I’ve tried using just a scanner, but it doesn’t work very well, either.

      Delete, delete, delete…you’ll feel so organized! Take care!

  2. Sarah says:

    Are you making the page digital and then printing the WHOLE page or just the pictures? I wish I had more time but making a whole page digital doesn’t overwhelm me nearly as much.

    • Megan says:

      Oh, no, I’m totally digital…the ones I print are just 4×6’s of all my favorites (just in case one of my other backup systems fails!). Costco prints 8×8’s for $1.49 or 12×12’s for $3. Frank gave me a large format printer (13×19) for Christmas a few years ago, but it uses so much ink, it’s much more cost effective to print at Costco.

      Digital scrapping is just so much more manageable…no supplies to drag out and put away, no driving to pick up printed photos, just to find you want them in a different size. Argh. Who has time?

  3. Dania says:

    I don’t have time… That’s why I’m always so behind on scrapbooking. Maybe I need to give in and go digital. But I so love the look of real scrapbooks! But there’s nothing to love the look of if it never gets done. Anyway, thanks for sharing your scrapping with us!

  4. Pingback: Project 365 and Project Life | Chaos Served Daily

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