April 27, 2011
Request for Memory Keeping Q & A
It's been awhile since I did a big round of memory keeping Q & A here - August 2008 to be exact (you can check out that series here) - and I'd like to take some time over the next week to do that again.
Feel free to ask anything related to scrapbooking, supplies, creative process, words + photos, organization, techniques, minibooks, paper, digital, classes, etc.
I'll leave the comment section open until Friday at noon Pacific with the first-round of answers posted Tuesday or Wednesday next week.
PLEASE NOTE | Some basic FAQ questions (such as what equipment I use) are covered on my FAQ page.
Hi Ali,
How do you know "what you have"? I guess this would be an organization question. I purge every now & then and find "something new" when it has been in a certain container or basket for a while and I've completely forgotten about it. I keep all of my supplies, embellies, etc in open type baskets and on open shelves so I can see them but I still find myself forgetting about certain products.
Thanks Ali!!
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I just want to say Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! for all of the great scrapbooking inspiration lately. My oldest is graduating from high school this year and I have to admit that I have scraplifted several of your layouts for her graduation album. Thank you so much for all of the inspiration!
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Have you started gathering your thoughts for this years Week in the Life format? Can you share any previews or information about your digital elements for this year and what types of products we can look forward too?
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Hi,
great idea for questions. When making mini albums with rings - where do you put the rings - top side. Always concerned that I will get a critical part of a picture. Plus, need a lessons on hole punching. Thanks...
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If you had to choose one small way to keep the most important memories in the simplest, quickest way - what would you recommend?
Oh, Teal. Love this question. I personally keep a spiral bound index card book, then use file folder tabs with my family member's name on them. So, example, I have a tab for me, my husband, and my son.
Teal, great question...Kim, I love that idea!
This is a great question! I'm looking forward to Ali's reply. For me, I am finding that Project Life is the simplest way for me to memory keep. PL really motivates me because it's so simple to do. It allows me to keep up. Photo box storage and CD-Rom storage is also quite simple and gets the photos off of the hard drive.
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I would love to know about your process on dealing with different projects/layouts at the same time.
When do you decide to start a new project? Do keep layouts/projects open until you feel inspired to finish them? How many layouts/projects do you currently work on at the same time? How do you store unfinished layouts/projects? How do you make sure that you finish them eventually?
I hope there's a magic answer!
I have two 3" x 12 x 12 boxes; one holds all things Disney World, the other all things Hawaii. I'm talking photos, papers, embellies, journal notes.... We went to Disney World in 2000 and Hawaii in 2003.
I have several bags or small boxes or folders, each with similar items for short trips.
And they all sit patiently waiting for me to pay attention!
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i know you wanted the whole family to be involved in project life. any other plans for getting simon and anna involved in memory keeping? and a big thank you for being one of my favorite bloggers for so long!
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I've always been a traditional scrapbooker and have been thinking about getting into digital scrapbooking - how do you recommend I get started?
Thanks so much Ali!
Me too! I just don't know how and where to start. Debbie C.
I took her Yesterday & Today class and each week had a very detailed (but simple) tutorial on a lot of basic/beginner's digi and digi/traditional combo layouts. It was a fantastic intro for me to start dipping into digi.
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Are you writing more books? If so, what will your next book be about? (Can you turn your Storyology class into a book? The class helped me SO much; It would make a great book). You are so collected, creative and poised; do you ever feel pressured about always coming with the next great idea? Also, I've always wondered if you went back and scrapbooked your wedding photo's? I don't remember seeing any pages, but I'm very curious how you would scrap your wedding album if you did today. Thanks for the chance to ask questions & for the continued inspiration you provide in my life and art. You are awesome.
Great question. Would love some wedding answers. I have yet to scrap mine.
I think I am scared of my wedding photos. LOL!
I havent' done anything with my wedding photos either! It's been 18.5 years and I'm scared of them too! Great question!!
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Ali, Thanks for all the daily inspiration you provide on your blog. Do you have a list of all the stories you want to tell? I seem to have lists all over the place but am interested in hearing how you organize all the projects you want to do along with all your stories.
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Hi Ali
Thanks so much for your inspiring site. I have only recently got into scrapbooking and thankfully found your site - I love the advice you give, the 'keeping it simple' ideas. So much of it speaks to exactly where I am at.
I have decided to do digital scrapbooking having made an 'ordinary' photo album online. Although I would love to be more hands on, I thought that long term this would work better for me with limited space/storage etc. However the one frustration I have with this is that I have to wait for an album to be complete before I/my family get to enjoy any finished pages. (Any ideas/suggestions - or just work faster :)
Also, I would like to make albums for my children - perhaps starting with the early years 0-5 or even a first year. We have just had our fourth and I thought that if I followed along her first year and also did one for the boys at the same time I would be more likely to complete them. However we only got a digital camera when my eldest was over a year and I would like to scan some of the photos from his first year to use in his album. Do you know of a good scanner/s that will scan the photos at a good quality for reproduction. And/or do you know what resolution/size/dpi (I don't know/understand all this) I would need to look for in a scanner assuming this affects the quality of the scanned photo. Also do the photos need to be a certain size (kb/mb) to have enough detail in them for printing. I once had a printing shop scan some wedding photos for me and they came back at 300-400kb and the online album site suggested they were too low a resolution to be reproduced any bigger than a 5x7 which was disappointing as I wanted to make some of the photos fill an 8x11 inch page in the album.
Have heaps more questions but will leave it at that. Thanks again!
resolution is similar to dpi
dpi is dots per inch. If something has 300 dpi, it has three times the dots as another thing with 100 dpi.
In order to stuff more dots, each dot is smaller. The smaller the dots, the more variations in color are possible.
Think of creating a 10" high E, with thin stripes, using solid color paper.
1) use 0.5" diameter circles, several colors
2) use 0.125" {1/8 inch} circles, several colors
Which will give you smaller stripes?
Typically, 300 dpi is considered the lowest resolution for clear images. The higher the dpi, the higher the resolution.
hope that helps a bit.
Just a suggestion, but don't get tricked into thinking digital scrapbooking is just for those who have books printed with their layouts. Try printing individual layouts and keeping them in a traditional album. You can print just a few at a time and enjoy them without the wait. My friends and I stockpile layouts and notify each other when one of our favorite printing companies is running a special and upload several pages to save a little $$. I was also a strict chronological scrapper when I was strickly paper but for some reason digital is so freeing that I scrap what I want, when I want! LOVE IT!
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I was wondering if you are still liking your fuji cameras and which one you find yourself using more....the vertical or horizontal one...I am leaning towards getting the one that takes the vertical pics but I am still not sure
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I'm not good with words or journal-ling i need help in that area.can you make some suggestions Just want to say thank you being an inspiration to me i have learnt heaps and love to read your stories it starting point for me .
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Hi Ali A technique question - I use photoshop elements and have recently been given a basic tablet YAY! I like the way you put thin borders around your photos with a word encased in the border. Using the above tools is it possible for me to create borders like you. I like the rounded corners you make and would like to do similar things on my photos but sometimes with my own writing to make it more personal for my kids (though I do love yours!!!).
Thanks
would love to know how to do this too.
I like this question too, would love to know that answer. Good question!
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How do you decide whether a photo is good or not for a specific layout?
Does this photo tell or add to the story I want to tell? Is it the best of any/all similar photos? Two yeses - I use it. Which means I use blurry or otherwise less than stellar - way less than stellar - photos quite often.
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How do you keep from being inundated with supplies? I have favs, but so many punches, stamps, etc that I've spent $s on and it doesn't make sense to get rid of it all.
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I bought the See and Stamp Jumbo upper and lowercase set because I really like the font and how you use them in your LOs. But I realise they seem pretty big and in some of your LOs they dont seem so big at all. Did you use the See and Stamp Upper and Lower case ( not the jumbo ones?)
Perhaps I can let my 2 sons play and stamp all they want with the jumbo ones LoL!
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Thank you for giving us a chance to ask questions. We were given two large bags of old family photos. Some of these photos are from the early 1900s. There are so many that it would be overwhelming to scan them myself. Can you recommend where to send these photos for high quality scanning or even an idea of how to start the search for a local business that could do this?
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How do you get yourself out of a non-photo-taking rut? In other words, how do you make yourself pick up the camera again and shoot? I only have one child and he's 13. He doesn't participate in a ton of activities (band at school and church youth group) and I find it very difficult to find new things to take photos of. I work full time (but only for another month as the Army has decided to move us yet again) and I find it difficult to pick up the camera and shoot day in and day out. (Get up, breakfast, make lunches, put son on bus, clean up from breakfast, take shower, go to work, come home, make dinner, clean up, do some housework and/or laundry, sit down, watch TV, read blogs, sort photos on computer from the weekend, go to bed). It blows my mind (in a good way) that you take photos every day. But I don't know how to get myself excited about taking photos day after day. And take pictures of what?????
Creating Keepsakes has a list of 365 things to photograph. There are several sites dedicated to a photo a day; they usually have lists or some other triggers for people to use.
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I know you moved recently and was wondering what you used to pack your albums in? We are moving soon and I am concerned about my albums being 'safe'. Should they be packed standing up like on my shelf? That is what I'm thinking, but worried that the boxes will end up on the bottom of a ton of other boxes in the moving truck and get damaged. I am wanting to pack them myself (rather that the movers)..they are all different sizes. What do you suggest?
Hi Debbie - This is a bit of a hijack, but when I moved 5 years ago, I too was worried about my albums, so I didn't let the movers take them. They were one of the items that went into the car with me, standing upright in a crate.
hi Debbie,
You DO NOT want to pack any items. Items & boxes marked "packed by owner" are not covered by the moving company's insurance if anything is damaged or lost while in the custody of the company.
We moved 11 months after getting married. Plenty of my things were still boxed from my apt to house move. The guy doing inventory wrote "owner packed". I told him that was unacceptable. He had two options - repack the boxes OR mark as 'company packed'.
Since the estimators had grossly underestimated our house contents, the packers were struggling to finish up in one day. When the guy realized that I wasn't budging, he marked everything as 'company packed'.
(We had packed the boxes well, anticipating that we'd move in the near future. So I wasn't worried about a lousy packing job.)
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I want to know more about journaling, you writing is so inspiring, vivid/descriptive, and you can feel your heart/emotion in the writing. I love to read your journaling because I can see the story unfolding in me eyes, and I can feel the emotion you have for the subject/topic. Very inspiring! Thank you!
How do you do it? How do you approach your journaling? Does it take a long time? Did you take classes or have a natural talent for writing?
Any insight would be much appreciated.
I am curious, too how you organize your journaling? Do you have categories (Around the house, Around the yard, the weekend lens, everyday, Anna, Simon ...) Do you type it on your computer or jot it down in a journal and how do you match it with your photos? I don't print at home, don't like Costco that much (too dark and the colors are not as bright) so most of the time I order at shutterfly and have to wait for a week for the photos to come. By then something new has come up. I LOVE your "today you", "right now" etc approach to document the every day routines - I wish I had done that when our children were little (they are 10 and 7 now) how do you decide which school stuff and other memorabilia to include with those "snapshots" of their lives? Thank you for all your inspiration and tips to make it not too complicated
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Hi Ali,
Do you ever use your Silhouette in your projects?
Thanks for all your inspiration!
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I am really curious not so much about anything specifically scrapbook related but more as to how on earth you manage to do everything you do on a daily basis. I don't think I could manage half of it!
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I know Anna is 2 now but I was wondering if you ever did a baby book for her, you talked about it. I know that she will have her own set of books like Simon but I remember you saying that you didn't like the "pre-made" ones that you find at the store. I didn't buy one of those either and I was wondering what you scrapped and how you did it. Also, do you plan to complete last year's Project Life or are you not going to bother?
This is what i also would love to know! I remember that you started a First Year Book for Anna. The American Crafts Courdory Blush one... would love to know if you ever finished it!?
Thanks for taking your time Ali!
I have been wondering about that as well. I remember you saved a onesie to incorporate into her book and wondered if you had figured out how to include it. I Would love to see more layout ideas for baby pages.
Great question!
I am curious, too. I filled 5 8,5x11 ring binders for our son but never started for our daughter, now 7 and would love to see how Anna's book developed. Thanks
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I am DYING to know what kind of black pen you have been using in your Project Life for the larger writing (see example here : http://aliedwards.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/AE_PL2011_wk16_page2.jpg)
http://aliedwards.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/AE_PL2011_wk16_page2.jpg
I would like to know, too. I have several in my stash but they are too thick or too think (sharpie fine point too thick and pen too thin/ Faber-Castell S,F,M/ American Crafts F,M,B/signo uniball 0.7 and 0.5/ZIG Ball .05) Thanks.
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