Lessons

Lesson Info

Organizing Photos & Using Momento

I'm going to kind of move on to one of those stumbling blocks which is getting your photos ready to scrap book because remember we said a lot of people just have them all on there have them all on their hard drive or their or their phones and they don't really even know how to get them printed so that they're ready to be scrapped booked on dh this is I'll be honest with you this is my least favorite part of the whole process kind of just like a tour but you have to get it done because you need those photos to be able to get to the next step. So the first thing you have to figure out is where are you going to print your photos? Are you going to do it at home on a home printer which is very convenient and obviously if you are printing as you go that might be convenient for you or you're going to send them off tio photo printing service there's lots of them online you could send them to the local drug store in your town or wherever and you have to kind of make the decision first. If you h...

ave a large amount of photos that you're going to be printing, you probably it's more economical to send them somewhere to have them printed out because a little bit more costly to dio on your home printer that way the next thing is where your photos stored, so are they on your hard drive of your computer? Do you have to upload them from your computer? Are they stored in your phone? In that case, you might have to use an app to upload them to a photo printing site or do you have an older camera and you have, like a camera memory stick that you need to take to the store and have put it in the machine? Have it printed that way? So these are all things you kind of to think about? And I found that the best way to get this tor don is to kind of schedule it. So just like you would do any other shore or event, write it down in your plan or if you keep a planner, maybe once a week or maybe once a month you sit down and say, I'm going to spend half a knauer we're going, I think my picture is figuring out which ones I want to print and either setting them off or sending them to my home printer to have so if you do that, I think you can break it off into manageable bits and then have the photos ready to go. The other advice I give you is be picky about what you print because like I said, we've taking lots and lots of pictures these days now that cameras there so accessible that can fit in our pocket, we tend to just take pictures all the time, which is wonderful, but if you try to scrap book every single one of those pictures, you'd probably make yourself crazy so you don't have to scrap book every picture, pick out the best ones, pick out the ones that have a meaningful story behind them or your favorites and keep it manageable that way by being a bit selective about what to print. And then finally, once you print them out, organized them right into your photo album chronologically, and this is a stumbling block they didn't mention, but a lot of people like tio scrapbook chronologically, and I used to be that way with my twins when I first started their photo, their scrapbooks, I wanted it to be in chronological order, which was great because it looked nice and it was just flowed with as they got older. But the problem for me was I would come to the next page and I was supposed to d'oh, and if I wasn't feeling very inspired by those photos or buy that story or I don't really have the perfect paper or I need to get an embellishment that goes, well, you know, whatever it wass. It would kind of be a stumbling block for me because I was kind of just I'd waste my whole scrapbooking time sitting there like pushing the things around, just not feeling it so I feel like I've been much more productive and scrap booking now that I just scrapbook the photos that inspire me at the time so they might not be in chronological order and my albums at home are not in chronological order but I know that's important to some people because I used to be that way. So if you're one of those people who wanted to be in chronological order here's a little tip of what you can d'oh, you can print out your pictures and then slide them into the page protectors in chronological order you know your photo out your scrapbook should come with, you know bunch of peach protectors already with it once you can do is just slide them in order right in the page protectors you could even slide if you have a few notes written down, you could slide that in the page protector as well and then when you do go to scrapbook you know, pick whichever photos you are speaking to knew at that moment or what matches the product that you have to use scrapbook those photos and then just slide that page back into its spot and in that way your final album will be in chronological order even if you don't scrapbook that way. Does that make sense? That's a way to organize them? And this is an aside, this was not part of the photos, but if anyone has seen these, these are for bucky higgins, her project life supplies. This is a fun way to store some memorabilia in your baby scrapbook, so it's, just like a hard side it page protector, basically, that also has a flap on the top, so it's a pocket and inside you can slide some bulkier items, so I have, like, the hospital bracelets and his little hat that he wore in the hospital. So that's a fun way to keep those all organizing together and kind of just put it the funnier album. Okay, all right, so the next thing I wanted to talk about is how to keep track of your memories because all these things are happening as we said, you think you're going to remember everything, but you don't actually remember as much as you think you will, so how can you keep track of them? The first thing I would say is that you could write things down if you have a planner that you use, you could write things down in your planner, if you have a journal, you could write things down there. This is kind of funny since in gettys was just a creative live the past three days it was funny when I took this out this is actually my little planners last journal that I used when my twins were born in is from two thousand three and what I use this for was just a place to document things that were going on and I liked it because it was just small little places it didn't feel daunting to me that I had to write in writing right and I just would jot down you know what happened on this day and then you also have the date that it happened right there so that's nice just like you know what happened adjusted how much did they weigh that day? You know what that visit or what was something a milestone that they reached this week so that's an idea if you have a baby at home right now that you could start doing that and really keep track of things that way and then if you're doing this now give a baby at home now you're also lucky because when I did this in two thousand three, this was kind of the way to do it because there wasn't technology there that I knew of any way to make it easier but now there is all sorts of technology and also it's a great things and I wanted to show you an app that I have on my phone that I think is really useful for keeping track of these things it is called momento I think right now it's just for iphone I'm not one hundred percent but I think you could find something similar if you have an android phone basically it's like a diary app and so what it does is it keeps track of your thoughts your diary entries but it also thinks all of your social media feeds so I have a think thinking my instagram feed and my twitter feed and my facebook feed and it just puts them in chronological order, which is really awesome. So if you're someone who you facebook you know status updates about your child or what's going on, you know, a month or two later when you go to scrapbook that picture you could be like oh, that was in october let me scroll back and see if I posted anything on social media that will kind of trigger my memory. You can also look at it and, um in calendar format and it will tell you with a little blue dot on the number if you have anything entered for that day, you can hit this right button and then you can just create a moment so it doesn't have to come from social media you could just start typing in something that happened and this is a especially nice if you have a baby and you're feeding baby or something, you just have one hand. You could just sit here and type in one hand it the memory that you have or something that's fun that just happened you can add a photo to it you can tag it with who was there you can put keywords in so that's really nice. And the other thing that I wanted to show you that I thought was really fun with this app was that you can set reminders for yourself and they have some preset ones here but you could add your own and then it will ask you that question as often as you ask it to. So if I fed it to daily ask myself what's baby doing today you know it would just send a notification your phone would buzz and there'd be a little picture in a little problem there that says what's baby doing today and so would remind you to enter in maybe it's a sentence oh he's starting to try to crawl he's not quite there yet and you can even take a picture of it right then and there so it kind of just remind you it's a it's a nice way to prompt you to stop, take a minute, just jot something down or enter something into your phone and then when you do have time to scrap book because I know you can't just do it immediately right there, when it happens sometimes it's months later that you actually get time to do it, but once you get to that point, then you'll be able tio have all that information stored. Okay, so what if you are well past baby's first year? Obviously, this is helpful for people who are kind of in the thick of the first year right now, and they're or they're about to have a baby and then kind of the intentional about starting this often the gecko. But if you're going to be working on an album for a baby that's like mine five years old or even older, how are you going to go about this? So what can you d'oh? Um, the first thing I'd say is if it's been in the last few years or recently, since the invention of social media, look back through your social media accounts. You know, on facebook, I used to post a lot more on my personal facebook page when my kids were younger just to let my family, who lived far away, kind of know what was going on so you could look back through there, and that might jog your memory a little bit. Another thing you could do would be to just look through your photo albums on on your on your computer, and I found that if I didn't remember the specific time something happened, like for instance, I was trying to do on one of our pages that were going to in the next segment is a monthly review page and I it's for will my youngest to, like I said, I have some gaps in his album it's been five years ago, and I was thinking, I don't remember exactly what he was doing a five months, how my I didn't write it down, what am I going to put down this page? And so what I found is that when I looked back at that time frame on my computer and looked at the photos I had taken, I could kind of piece together I remember we were doing that at this time, and I remember he was crawling on the hotel floor were on that trip, so he was crying that's when he started crawling, and a lot of that will start to just prompt your memory a little bit so that you can kind of enter that on your scrapbook. The other advice I'd say is just start writing, you know, when you look at the photo that you want to scrap book. Just start writing down, you know, first things that come to your mind. Oh, I remember this. I remember that outfit he was wearing grandma got it for him on kind of might spur some other thoughts so that it all kind of comes back to you when you became a mom. And I should jessica's just a relatively new moment actually hurt nobody. People say to you, get memorializes writing don't think because you will forget the time goes so quickly and you don't believe it. And the next thing you know, they're twenty six on do you forgot everything. So your advice here is so important. I mean, he took to preserve these precious memories in that first year is so vital because you do forget on tying russia's, right? And I like I said, I don't want people who are trying to approach this project now that their kids a little bit older to feel like it's, not worth it, you know, I don't have it all. I don't have it all written down in a journal or on a memento app. There's no point in me doing this that's not true because I think you can kind of jog your memory and anything that you document is going to be better than documenting nothing. You know every little bit that you get done because I know it can be like I'm never going to finish this whole album anything you get done is is a win in my book so on ben finally I'd say start with the stories you do remember first so you might not remember every little detail like I said, if if your child's older now but start with the things that you do really remember first and again it might not be in chronological order and that's okay, but just start with those first things that remember the things that really stand out and then go from there, you know, and what what I find is that might kind of trigger some other memories and other stories that you want to tell and you'll be able to fill in the book with those. So there any questions from online or in the classroom here? And I'm going to hear from our strength I mean, jessica just told me you got a way, young lad, really, this is your first child, you're you're a new mom, have you found this experience that you just you know, you're so overwhelmed with everything else that the documenting the moralizing has become a struggle? We take lots of pictures, right? So because we have cameras on our phones, our cameras that are fans here um but yeah I'd like I said I bought this all before he was born and then he was a month early so I didn't really get started organizing it also yeah definitely russia's by really fast alyona your mom am I have a five month old oh congratulations I didn't realize so you another new mom is that your first it is so if you have the same struggle yeah I've been using just the notes app on my iphone to just jot everything down and so it's great that I have that and now that I'm finally have time like she's a bit more predictable I can go back and look and so just kind of getting started now on that album I think the technology has helped us enormously happiness is not a picture with your phone because when my child was born elizabeth was reminding me especially is our producer that we I tried to carve everything out in stone cold christina you're expecting your first child or your child is this your first round? It is our congratulations thank you when it when he's on december six very soon and you were talking about like I have my baby on the way journal that's kind of all I have but but that's a great I mean that's wonderful that writing down everything so I'm excited to get all of this started again because I really like scrapbooking but to have her whole try to get her whole not life, but everything that I can get down and album would be great, and I think that's what's so special about a baby scrapbook, if that you're like telling baby story from the very beginning, you know, you're kind of telling those first memories, those first connections that are being formed, and for for children later on, when they go back and see that in the scrapbook, I think it really like I said, it gives them a sense of belonging and it's really special to them and terry and for yourself, teo, I mean, we said that baby stage go so quickly, they don't stay little for very long, and so when you look back it's almost like a wall, you know, to stirs up all those emotions and all those memories of you with your baby and that's really special that's the love, the idea of christine that you're actually documenting before your child arrives, I think that that's incredible. In fact, you know, maternity photography has become quite popular in the last decade or so, something that we didn't necessarily see before. So it's lovely to actually document the buildup to the arrival, I'm going to have all this stuff before she's even here, you know, it's a sheet, yes, social know what I went through emily do you have children of two? I think I have a three year old and a seventeen month old oh young one yeah I'm doing a lot of filling in the gaps to sew on going through the pictures I'm like oh, I forgot there they were so small and I'm like it makes me so sad very quickly so how do you approach a layout on the call when you actually thinking about putting together a page where that you know whether it's documented before the birth or after you know do you have an idea in your head when you start working? I usually have some idea I'm inspired a lot by the product that I'm using which is why I said I like to kind of pull my pictures after I see which product I'm working with so if I get my latest kit and I'm ready to go I'll kind of start thinking about the colors in there the themes that are in there and what pictures I have our stories that I want to tell that go with that and I find the product itself very inspiring for me because I liked the play of the colors in the photograph with the colors of the of the papers and just you know, stories that pop in your head I mean sometimes it's photo driven because you wantto scrapbook an event and it's more photo driven other times that might be is it a funny story so you can pick like we said, if you might not have a specific photo for that story, but you can just choose any one of your children's pictures that really our specialty or your favorites and then build the page around that, um, another favorite place for me for inspiration is pinterest, anyone's on pinterest that's a great place to go to find some inspiration when you're kind of feeling well stuck michelle bees joining us online welcome michelle I know she's been with us before she's saying I used a notebook and calendar at home to write down events, but I also like to write letters to my kids and I still do, even though my youngest baby is thirty one, so now I make scrapbooks for my grandkids as well, which opposed anything you've been telling your your latest grandchild? Is that your first grandchild? Second, santa what I'm hearing from all these ladies is you need to scrap book your baby because they grow up so fast, however, then you get to scrap book the grand baby it all over again. That's the fun part yeah mary miami saying that, saying she actually keeps the private block because she's kept it since her child was born main it's the grand parents because the grandparents of her child actually lived in a different country that's a fantastic idea that's a really good idea if you you know you don't want to share it with the entire world but you want to have a record of things you don't wanna put it on social media you could set your block to private and just keep a keep a journal that way that's great I'd love to take a look at we can of what our ladies he have created in in the studio and I'm sure alex is going to be out to get in there who's finished who's got a page me and you've got something that two shows yeah, I had some mistakes but we've covered them another notice um yeah needs to be some trimming here on this picture obviously is the wrong direction so I'll have to get one from home but, um yeah, thank you jessica that's my first scrapbook page right there. Okay, that was his first selfie we took that in the hospital just after we named him because he was early so we didn't have a name quite ready. You know, that's that would be super matter no this's herself in his name is calvin listen, you've seen when he came home on the first day on how well does he know eight oh, ok eight you're adding to his album I actually I have like seven albums of my first child and I have half in an album for my son, and then the other two have nothing. The pictures are all dated and everything's in their category, and everything looks pretty and nice. And now I think they're starting to say, well, did you love that one more of the same experience? You know, it's a lot, even though you're very, very busy when you have a baby, you're kind of more your home a little bit more, maybe or there's naptime, because eventually they stopped taking you out, you know? Gosh, released those couple hours in the middle of the day, but yeah, it is your life gets busier than more kids, you add in the school activities and extracurricular stuff, and you do get busy, so I think that's natural, I think a lot of us have that same problem. Exactly mine looks very empty, but I'm going to probably put that I need to pick which either if I'm going to put an ultrasound picture or because we found out very early. So I do have a lot of those, but I think I'm probably gonna put an actual baby picture either one of those great ultrasound picture, maybe an ultrasound, and then one when she's actually here, yeah, my second born when he came home so very sweet.