Thursday, July 5

How I Scrap, Pt. 1

I talked about using my process for traditional scrapbooking with my digital scrapbooking. Wanted to share what I'm doing now because it seems to be working miracles now. Not sure why I didn't do this sooner. >_<

Made a random test album to try to show you what I'm taking about. That and to give a better idea of what I've been starting at for the past few days for hours on end.

0: (During the Event) take all the pictures that I want, even it's artsy close-ups or cheesy group photos. I keep in mind getting good scrapbook photos though, which includes candid shots, a few details, and big shots of the location. Things with meaning that tend to be overlooked.

And NOTES! Personally, I need to take millions of notes that include dates (often times), names, background information about the location or action, and inside jokes.

1: ORGANIZE (Before Scrapping) Gather all of the photos in one location. Get rid of the super blurry and bad photos. I like to do this on my computer to save battery life in the camera. Rotate everything properly and label it all relevantly. Group photos together by event or day and pick out the best shots to use.

2: PREPPING BASE (Scrapping!) Open up my program- I'm using the simple and cheap Memory Mixer- start a new album, add a few blank pages. After designating a title page, start planning out two-page layouts. That is what has worked the best for me with vacation photos so far. I throw on an arbitrary background color on two pages to remind me that they'll be facing each other in the book.





I do a couple at a time so I don't suddenly run out of space should one group of photos take up more pages that originally planned. Don't want to derail the train of thought!

3: DETAILS If I can pick a font and size I want to use throughout the album now- perfect. (I use a ton of free goodies from Fonts with Peas!) I try to decide now whether or not the pictures are going to be the focus or the journaling. I also think about what I want as a stylistic theme throughout the book, such as matting all of the photos with a certain color or rounding all of the photo edges.

Keeping it simple and consistent erases second-guessing and over-obsessing about those details later on. We all know that I'm prone to that! :P

4: PHOTOS Start slapping those pictures on pages and don't worry where they will end up. This helps me figure out how many pages are going to be dedicated to a certain topic. Add the details like a size 2 photo  mat in white, rounded edges, and drop shadow as I go so I don't forget.



This program lets me select to add that detail to every photo on that page or in the book. I do several pages before going back and enlarging/ cropping to the important subject matter/ brightening (my best friend) on the photos as needed.

I do have fancier photo-editing and sorting software (mostly thanks to getting my handy-dandy graphcis tablet) but the pathetic news is that my laptop cannot handle the lowest level of HD photos let alone such hi-tech software. I do have many of my photos and programs on my external hard-drive, but no desktop to regularly plug-away in front of. Nothing new.

Part 2 comes tomorrow!

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