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Ideas for the Project Life Mini Album Pt 2

We're going to talk about going back in our own past our own childhood memories, ok, this is something that a lot of us avoid this topic because we're thinking hah! Finding all those pictures and knowing where they are and then figuring out how to organize. Well, that's, why you got to go back and watch the organizational segment because we do address how to bring it together, break it apart, create your categories. So this is this comes to us from laurie made barbara, she is part of our creative team is, well, lori me started a project life many albums that specifically for her childhood notice that I'm saying many album she didn't want to overwhelm herself by saying that she was going to scrap book every single picture that she ever got about her childhood that's, not her goal. Her goal is just to get some of her random favorites into a mini album so that she can have something for herself and something to share with her family. And I love that another idea that we have is from rebec...

ca cooper. Rebecca is a very special part of our creative team as well, and I have to mention with rebecca, I'm going to find her album tio it's black here we go, rebecca on has one of my favorite styles she is very clean, her photography is strong and throughout creative live whenever there's been promo stuff and commercials that's rebecca's layout that keeps getting shown and I have to throw that out there because every time I see it I'm like I'm so thankful for people who are using project life and using it without feeling like they have to embellish so much and she is one of those she's a great has a great clean, simple style and we appreciate her letting us use her examples and this is one of them. Rebecca created my favorite quotes she loves quotes, she says I'm an avid quote collector, and a few years ago I had high hopes of finally getting my collection organized into one place I had quotes everywhere jotted down on scrap pieces of paper recorded in my day planner and penned on pinterest now, thanks to the project life many album and happy to say that all of my quotes will finally I have a home and I want to emphasize that what you're seeing here this is kind of taking it to the next level these aren't our products these are excuse me this is rebecca who has skills and knows how to actually design as she does I'm hand lettering as well she designed a lot of this stuff and she does offer it on her site she has a blogger simple is that and she's a very, very talented designer photographer and very in aspiring to follow, and she designed all of these and she shares them with people, so if you're one of those it's a quote collector, putting them all in one place is a really fun idea. So moving on to a few more ideas because we have a trial because you marie insists that she's not a scrapbook and doesn't do any of this thing, but yes, you've just brought up something and I really want to share this and I don't mean to embarrass you because this is one the nicest thing she's ever done for me she doesn't do much, but my tv wife marie, gave me this the other day because she met my dog at the weekend and it's beautifully embroidered and then inside of my dog, I just want I thought it was a perfect moment to share that with everybody not embarrassing because it meant a lot to me when she did that, she says she's, not a scrapbook, really, she is, yeah, and my husband took the photographers he's, the photographer in the family, but I that was a collaborative family project for you I did not do the embroidery thing, I think for me to start my yeah I mean, why? Why did that mean something to either one of you is the giver or the receiver? Because you have a friendship, you work together and you took the time to do something that was so sentimental to you as the recipient? Obviously it goes right to your heart too, because this is, you know, we all have people in our life. We all have these special people, family or not friends, co workers, it doesn't matter, tio give that gift of something that says, I took time to put this together for you, whether it's in the form of a scrapbook or just something that you made up put together there, it speaks volumes, it just does thank you so much for sharing that. I'm so glad that you did just a few more ideas as we kind of run through this toddler face. You know, some people have have said this is worth an entire album of itself, and I don't I don't do this myself, I have my kids stories described illogically like this is your life, it goes on and on and on and that's what it is. But in this case, with the toddler phase, she really was like holy cow. So many stories of the messes and the funny things that they say and do and so it was worth it this is this comes from robin lambert in indiana she use the rain many album, which is that really pretty bluish color and she is the bridge port many kit and I point that out again, this is that child had many kids and you don't it's not just for school age children. This works really great for toddlers as well. So thank you, robyn, for sharing that with us another idea. Oh, sorry. Just a couple lay out samples that you see in robyn's robyn's album and you could see it's just very picture heavy that she wants to show a lot of that. All right, speaking of special people in our life, I have a really special people that I love and adore called my nieces and my nephews. I have many, many of them I have many of them in my family and I have many in david david's family. Excuse me. So what? What I'm going to share with you now is I have a teenage niece. Her name is ellie. Um short for elena. Elena is sixteen years old. She's driving can't believe it elia's sixty years old now and, um well, just turning sixteen I think this coming week anyways, so what she did is she put together I many album now I'm skipping a part of this story and let me explain to you that she wasn't just like, hey, I'm going to make a many album because most kids don't necessarily think that way she and her family her dad is kevin who's going to be a guest instructor with us later today so kevin and learning their kids alley in her five brothers four five you can see I've lost track wait, what is it? They came to visit us last year? They visit us often and they know and they come to at becky's house that something's going to be up my sleeve there's something that I'm going tohave in mind for them to you guys want to do something fun and it usually has something to do a scrap booking and so now that the many album exist the last time that they came, I said, how would you like to dio ah whole many album about you and that's what we did. So this is a teenager who literally took the phone that can excuse me the pictures on her phone and went through and selected a bunch of them that we printed really easily we'll talk about tech later and we slip them into the album and this is what it looked like she sat down, she spread out and she is documenting her life and she's doing this in a way of split simplicity for her scattering them out seeing the pictures and then choosing the cars from a childhood many kids she used that the mayfield win was the way that it made sense for her and you can see that sometimes she had to kind of she want to figure out which picture goes with which story or anecdote so she would dig into the box and find the journaling card that goes with the picture and that's how she would know what to slip into her album so that's what she did she spread out her pictures and rhoda wrote on her car's she slips it altogether and now she has this album and it's all about ellie it's all about her life right now not going back to childhood are younger years a baby see her with her friends sunglasses the glasses that she wears her little brother on the playground you can see she's a fan of a certain young to celebrities I don't even know his name I don't know who that is her makeup I actually I love that she has a close up of her makeup it's the way she does it right now which will be different in two years and fighters in ten years this is documenting her right now just a couple more example she's wearing contact lenses the's air the details we want aren't changers and our kids and our preteens to take now, as we were doing this, I was noticing that there were some pictures that I felt like she should have. She had a lot of her friends and that's cool, but I took the picture of her putting on the makeup I'd love to see a picture of myself putting on makeup as a teenager, that's when I was trying to figure it out that's when I didn't really know what I was doing, and so it would have been need to see a picture like that, and she has, you know, has an iphone. She changes her case all the time, and so we took a picture of the case, is laid out, she took a picture, so that's an example of how getting kids involved means so much, not only, and definitely not as much to the parents as it does the child guess what? Ellie has a brother who is also a teenager, and I, for sure, was going to get thomas to do this as well, and thomas was a great sport. In fact, I have to say that, thomas, sometimes I follow them both on instagram, and I see their pictures, I even think that thomas is almost a better life documentary than ellie I think he's taking after his daddy takes pictures of things that really tell story not just friends, friends, friends, but he really thinks of cool things to photograph and document let me walk you through a few examples of what thomas put together love the boy hand writing love it he did the same thing he spread out his cars, he kind of made sure he had the journaling in the photos. Everything bounced out remember eighty photos fits in many albums so we knew how many to print begin with the end in mind this is his album, he has a picture, we decided that a picture of himself doing a selfie in the mirror. How cool is that? How two thousand thirteen is that on dh that's how he started out the album and then look, when you go through, you see that I don't know if it was dad or who took the picture of him actually holding the phone is that not the most telling thing about technology and how we're using it today and how our youth are using technology today he took a picture of his soccer shoes he took a picture of his one of his favorite meals that mom made x another selfie in a scout uniform before he heads off scouts what else do we have here? His favorite pajamas? He plays the violin he's clearly a very talented kid he's the athlete and the musician another selfie with the braces that brace is there going to be gone one day and so it's fun to see those and he's got some of his family and here more selfies, silly pictures his favorite logo from like his favorite team he has a stack of pictures excuse me a stack of papers from school and it goes on and on through his album and really tells the story of thomas's life doesn't make you want to just grab your favorite teen ager whether it's your own child in eastern nephew and just say do this tell you a story let me walk through some more we're not done yet we have lots this's how you put together a guest book for something as big of an event like a wedding so we have some friends abby and jacob were getting married and they asked me teo to put together a guest book they knew that it was going to be project life they knew and so I didn't want to just put it together after the fact I wanted all the guests to be involved there when they came to the reception the big celebration after the wedding and I wanted everyone to participate and so I wasn't going to stress about the pictures of the reception that's a separate thing what we did instead as we took pictures from their engagement shoot their photo shoot and we put them throughout the album we meaning me I don't know why I'm saying we nobody else was involved hey, david what? You scrapbook with me? Not so much. All right, so what? The reason and kind of hanging out on this friend before I show you the album is because you see here I have the album and the album was at the what we call it a registration table welcome table whatever you have as people come to a reception this place that people see and I propped up in a really pretty fancy frame this note that says welcome sign in choose a card any size right and note to the newlyweds slip the card back in the album on guy put ideas you can write your happy wishes you can give marriage advice reflect on a memory about jacob and abby be funny or serious or both and I included a hashtag on there that we used throughout, you know, taking pictures of the wedding reception so so that's what I did to welcome guests to the reception please sign in and this is what I did this is high through it together there is a cinnamon many album cinnamon is like this really pretty warm brown and then I took spare cards from the sea foam edition of project life one of our most popular and then I took a stack of photographs now I'm not going to use eighty of them I can fit eighty photographs and many album but I want to be selective and only put a couple on each page because really this album is for the guests to write their messages to jacob and abby so what I did because I was pulling from a full corps k is knowing begin with the end in mind knowing that the purpose was for people to write on cards I knew that I had to select cards out of this that had plenty of room to write on and that would be appropriate for the theme so I didn't want to have you know, soccer balls or palm trees flying around in this album I wanted to keep it clean classic and simple so I created my own designs that were specific for jacob unhappy really quick took me about two seconds in two minutes and my my word documents are in my pages document rather and I printed them out trim them down, slip them in I even rounded the corners on them we do have a project like corner rounder by the way I didn't show you that yet but it's the exact same radius of the corner as our project life cards I have that actually here we can show you later and so what I did at this point is I toes to pictures to place on opposite corners of each layout and so there's one in the upper left and then the lower right and then there's everything else is just blank and ready now some of them like the top right corner that's a title card that's intended to be a title, but guess what? Some people really don't want to write take time the right advice or, you know well wishes of late because they're chatting with people and trying to write, so that gives people an opportunity to decide the name if they want. So what I did with this is that in the album I taped or adhered a temporary note inside the album in case it got separated from the frame and I put that same message welcome sign in gaba card, slip it back in and the end result is that now jacob and abby have this gift. They have this gift of of loved ones of family and friends who door them who were at their wedding that I have here in person they were, you know, was able to privacy from their tight grip and and share it with you hit here so that you can see what it looks like not just in setting it up but the end result and this is words and words and words and words from people who love jacob and abby who are sharing their well wishes with the happy couple and it fills up the entire album how fun is that? So that is a question for you? We do have a lot of photographers out there, some who do wedding engagement, photography, this is a retail product, but do you work wholesale as well? Name perhaps there's a way to thank you for that? Incorporate that into the product line of a professional studio? Absolutely, yeah, we dio thank you very much for that question, and I appreciate the reminder that we have a lot of photographers who are watching. This is an excellent way to help your clients actually pulled together a photo book and some in some way and help them feel like they're being d I y and crafty about it. And so we d'oh we we can offer that we do offer that in fact, if you go to becky higgins dot com, you click on a can't think of the exactly what you're looking for, probably contact like how to contact us, and in there you specifically consent an email to our email address. I don't want to say it because I might mess it up. I don't dare go there and so that email address, so we'll send an email to american craft it's an american cross, they're the ones who are currently producing our product right now you could set up a wholesale account with them and so that's one way that you can get the products tio at wholesale price for your business whether it's photography or otherwise so thank you very much for that question I appreciate it okay? So moving along as we're wrapping up here some a few more ideas to get your wheel spinning christmas through the years this comes to us from jeanette kirk um and what she did what she did is she used two of our very favorite products I haven't here to show you really quick it's the kiwi many album and it is also the merry and bright many kids the merry and bright men intent excuse me is is brand new I'm going to open it up so I can show you it's brand new and darlene and has in it designs that are very holidays very christmas superfund and it is a great way to get christmas into one album so you can see here just a quick glance at what some of these cars look like and how cute that color palette is okay, so that's what she's doing here she's you're using the merry and bright many kids have to go back to that slide you will see that flipping through her album what she has done is she has actually documented christmas throughout the years so this isn't just a christmas this is a christmas throughout the years two thousand three I'm showing you two thousand six there's an example of two thousand nine two thousand ten you get the idea she decided that I could narrow down I can do this I can scale back one lay out her year and now her family however many years they've been a family has been one album this concept now I've done this myself I started it back when we were first married it has been many many years and I have this album it's a full twelve by twelve I decorated every layout and I have fun about five or six years behind why? Because it wasn't simple enough it's not simple I'm not going to get it done and there again lies why why I developed the system for me so project life is the way that I know that I can keep up with it and so I am tempted to reading my christmas album I'm so inspired by wenjun it's dad one lay out for christmas but not scrap booked in a creative decorative way slipping into the pockets really simple all right a school project is another way to use a mini album I have brought this with me my son had a project where he had to create an alphabet book on the revolutionary war okay well the assignment was tio make it small and the suggestion was to fold the in half by eleven paper in half and staple that that was the suggestion well he's becky's son so that wasn't going to fly, so I'm going over where this is perfect this is so perfect we can do and many album if you want porter, if you want and he's like no that's cool that's great! And so the reason I tell you that and bring that up is because what's funny is he actually got deemed a little bit on his score because it was in a mini and this nice album. So I was like, are you serious? What? So I actually talked to the teacher and like, because it's nicer and he's like what we really did want it to be, you know, more paper and I'm like you said it was a suggestion why suggestion is everyone needs to get on board with project life right now and actually it's really funny to follow up with that. We have a lot of teachers at my kid's school who, when I wrote, when I roll down the window to say hi it pick up there like, I just want you to know, I was doing project life over the weekend, I'm caught up on this or that I just finished too many albums, so I think it's ok that he got nixed a couple points, so he created this abc revolutionary war book, and the idea was that he had to create this he had to do it himself, and he had to pull images from the internet that go with each of these topics. And so that's what we did, these are not pictures that I took. Obviously these are pictures that are pulled from, you know, from the internet about these different topics about the revolutionary war. That's all part of what they were supposed to do as a school assignment. And then they were supposed to draw out or decorate the letter for each. And then it says, what the what the topic is and they had to have written, you know, blurb of text that he did that we print it out, and he slipped everything into the album. So in essence, he did this at the time. Ten years old. Porter, at ten years old, did this by himself, and I was there to guide him through. You know, we had we as parents had to help him, but you get the idea very call such a neat way now, outside of that many album, just as a reminder, the baby album on other topics that really you do want to have a full twelve by twelve size. We do have a baby many kit, but we also have that full baby. Apple core ket and so doing a baby albums such as this catherine davis on her creative team did this and this is another theme just to get this the wheel spinning, she was able to take something that was really precious to her on dh put it with products that compliment as she has twins, she has twins and she kept the palate neutral by using our baby edition not baby addition for him or for her, but our baby addition just because she preferred that neutral yellows grays and you can see as I foot through these sites rather quickly that this's a shared album that she's keeping for herself and is done it's done and caught up and her babies they're not babies anymore she had to go back and do this. So just to wrap up the last few, we've got a road trip and you know what a fun way to document an experience where you're on the road whether you're driving in a car are flying somewhere but teo the whole trip until many album honeymoon album, you know, calling out special attention to a special occasions such as this this is by theresa victor on our creative team and she is the sea foam addition inside her album and pulled this together rather simply rather quickly and you can see now who wasn't yesterday that talked about the gift for the coach was it you lee said ok, here's, a visual to give people an idea. This comes from terry in texas and she created a mini album for her child's soccer coach. It's soccer. Right. Okay, good. I don't want to say sorry, terry, her gymnastics coach. I was really grateful. Now her soccer coach receive this and she says I wanted to share with you the books I made as a thank you for my daughter's soccer coaches. The team is going to present them to their coaches tonight at their banquet. I used too many album and photos I took during the season. Each player as well as parents. Rowe a short thank you note to each of the coaches. There are two on blank grid cards we have outside of our decorative elements. We have just you can get a plain old box of just grid cards. No designs. You also can get a box of white cards, no designs and the purpose of those is for complete and utter versatility. Use them however you want vertical, horizontal, no designs, no fluff, no colors for things like this. And then to wrap up because we're about out of time for these fun, fun ideas, a halloween album. My friend jen we keep talking about jen she's pretty special she has now this many album of her halloween memories remember the christmas through the years that's what this is for her family halloween's a big deal in their family we have halloween specific products that you could put with halloween memories and she has year after year after year other halloween memories not just the pictures but also the very special written memories that she participated and sharing as well as the stories from her kids a wedding is another topic this is danielle in australia put this together and this is something that she put together with a very special story that I'm actually going to share with you later I wanted to just share with you brandy in texas he's part of our team and she was sharing her husband's military they are military family, she says. Matt sent one picture a week for me to add to the family album he had a pack of cards that he recorded on each week and then oh, I cut that off when he when he got back they were able to slip those cards into the album with the pictures one last idea that I want to share because we do have to end and I don't have anything visual other than a star as a completed album I've talked about these theme packs that we have we're live right now some of your washing it rebroadcast, but right now, for the sake of everyone tuning in, we have a really special holiday in america coming up called thanksgiving, and it is something that's special to a lot of people to get together with loved ones and celebrate on be thankful for blessings and each other and all of that we have one of our themed card pax is called fall. I wouldn't want to mess it up. I wasn't sure this autumn or fall and look at all of these darling designs that are so warm and fun that are appropriate for fall and cute designs is one thing, but on the other side, plenty of room for writing so that you can get together around the thanksgiving table before the meal is served there after you know, after everybody is stuffed from their pumpkin pie and therefore meal and have everyone participate and writing what they're thankful for and put pictures of that thanksgiving together in an album, and I would say that it would go really well with one of these colors, like a rain color or a cinnamon color, so I'm going to stop there, I could go on and on and on and on, but there are so many ways to approach project life again, I don't want to overwhelm anyone, I hope that nobody's list is this long I just want you to kind of listen to your heart and like what's really standing out to you as a priority for what would be really special in your life for one reason or another for one person or another for yourself whatever it is weight loss building a home thanksgiving coming up school year in a child's life so I'm gonna stop I'm going to stop right here and let the vocal cords rested may you have some other insight from the internet or other questions I should address? We do action I think some of this one's just be not so lots of people immediately asking where they can get the merry and bright they said they couldn't find you on your website but in fact nikki has already got in there and answer before you so if you go to back his website it is there yeah can I just interject really quickly? I mentioned this yesterday but I realize that a lot of people are just tuning in today and that is the fact that becky higgins dot com just got a major face left it's an awesome thing we're really excited about it but it also means that we wiped a lot of things clean and so if you go to the site and feel like it's not supercontinent heavy we have you guys now because you've been to my my block on my web site we have an enormous amount of content and that's why it's not back up yet because we're getting it all shifted back on so it's coming and we're also building our shopping cart that's almost ready merry and bright we'll be on becky higgins dot com in the meantime, check out amazon, check out your local stores, check out all of the resources that we talked about yesterday as far as where you can buy it but becky higgins dot com is the home base, but we are yeah if it's not there right now it's because you know it's coming yeah, did your digital project life dot com is is where you'll find that that's really going to chat room if you're following us and you have a question about well, I have just a couple of things for stuff love the thanksgiving idea and abby ads in that you can make a recipe same tio or even add some of recipes to the storyline. But there there are the questions about the school kids that you've had are they air? They're still available. Are you bringing the time about? Are we talking about the child had many kids? Are we talking about the personal yearbook? I'll go ahead and address both because you may not know they don't really describe the school fees school yeah, they I'm trying to look for the exact murdered their goal specific it's a little different so I'll just answer from both just in case if that helps people the childhood many kids is I think that only the wellington edition is one that has chosen for retail that actually got mass produced for retail but I directly as a company I saw all three and you can find all three on amazon right now ok, so even though they're coming to our shopping cart that I know they're not there yet because of shopping carts almost done amazon dot com is where you can find all three now as far as the personal yearbook in case you were asking about that and that's this one right here and I was talking about this it's exclusive and digital format so if you go to digital project life dot com or you can go to becky higgins dot com and, you know, find it from there. This is where you can find the exclusively digital product and when I say digital please don't be turned off by that it doesn't mean you have to have a digital skill set to do it in your computer. It just means that all of the files will be available to you to either manipulate on your computer if you want which we're talking about later or you could simply print out the pages that are already sized properly print them out, cut them and put them in your album great. Fantastic. We actually take a forty five minute break at this point here in san francisco we gonna grab some lunch. I'm sure wherever you are on the war is going to take a buy a break. But, becky, what we're going to talk about when we come back oh, I don't know that way talking about next segment oh, we are so excited. Ok, the next two segments are both digital related, but in the very next segment for project life we are going to be talking about on an overview of digital stuff. So there is this digital project life. You've heard me reference that we have a whole web site for digital but there's a lot of digital topics to cover that have nothing to do with the specific project life but getting your phone off your camera and how do you do something in photo shop? And what does this mean? What does that mean? We have a tech knowledge e expert is going to be here with me, who happens to be my brother kevin and kevin. A lot of people know is a he wears a cape hey, is that he's, the mastermind of a lot of tech questions that people have and he he's here to address them to answer them? We'll take a lot of questions as they come and I'm excited about that