So I've mentioned that I'm taking an online class at
Big Picture Scrapbooking that is completely changing the way I organize my photos and in turn is changing how I'm scrapbooking and how I will be filing my finished layouts. We're only in week five so far of a sixteen week class, but what an ispiration it is already.
The whole class is based on the two books
The Big Picture and
Photo Freedom, both by
Stacy Julian, the teacher of the class. Both books I highly recommend to any scrapbooker!
Week one talked about the process of organizing digital photos. I did this by year already, but then organized it by topic or event. Now, I am organizing my pictures by year and then by quarter within the year.
Once a quarter is complete, I search through and download those pictures I think I might want to scrapbook to an online photo processing store (I use
ScrapbookPictures.com and LOVE them!). Of course, I don't have to wait until the end the quarter to do this, but I do it at least once a quarter.
Once I receive my printed pictures back, I store them in my new three up binders by quarter and year.
From there they are either scrapbooked or sorted into my new 4X6 file cabinet drawers in the categories
Us, People We Love, Places We Go, Things We Do (all with sub categories). In the process of this sorting is where you truly see the connection in your photos.
For example, while sorting through my sister, Tina's, pictures I noticed there was a picture of Heather opening a present of a dress and then I saw another picture of her actually wearing that exact dress. Tina may have already made this connection, but I didn't until I was looking more closely and differently.
How cool is that?
Something even cooler were the pictures I took at Williamsburg, VA last year when Del and I went with his dad and Anna. As I was sorting through my old pictures, I found ones that I took in Williamsburg when I was 12 years old. Quite a few of the pictures were of the exact same things I took last year. I was so amazed by the similarities, I just had to make a layout. Seeing this connection was so awesome to me! (The layout doesn't paste very well here, so I've also uploaded it to my
Scrapbooking Gallery .)
The journaling on the layout reads as follows:
The idea of this page was conceptualized during an online class called Library of Memories. The premise of this class is to organize your photos in such a way that it inspires you to not just scrapbook your pictures, but to document your memories. Part of this is done by making connections to your past. That point was made crystal clear when I came across these pictures during the sorting process.
I remember Aunt Louise and Uncle Bob taking me and my best friend at the time, Tammy Dirrim, to Williamsburg when I was 12. It was such a blast for us. So when Del and I decided to go back with his parents 26 years later, I had fond memories to relive.
As I was sorting through my pictures, I was amazed and excited to see how similar the pictures I took in 2007 were to the ones I took as a kid in 1981. It was so surreal to see that what I wanted to capture as a kid were the same memories I wanted to capture as an adult.
My perspective on life may have changed as I’ve gotten older, but the way I want to see the world may be more similar than I realize.
That's it for now. Hope you all are having a great weekend.
...and Jesse, my great-nephew
Right now we are only able to go about 2 miles (to the end of the street and back)...
By the time we are back to within a block of our house, she starts to run out of steam and her tongue comes further and further out of her mouth.
And just as we are heading down the home stretch...
...Jed (a.k.a., Fat Dog), the neighbor dog, came out to say hello and gave Maggie her second wind.
