Jan
13

Crop Preparations Part 1

Posted by DeAnna

This will be a 4-part series on start to finish how I choose my layouts; organize, edit and print my photos; pull together my supplies; and finally pack for a crop. Sorry for the lengthy post, but it’s worth it!

Like many of you, I have a bunch of ideas in my head so I thought I would start first with a list. I like lists. I try to make lists of things to do around my house, groceries, etc. First I want to write a list so I’m not staring at my folders of photos wondering which to choose. There are so many, if you are anything like us and anyone who uses a digital camera, you can take 300 photos in one day easy. So, I started by writing out a random list of ideas I’ve had swirling in my head. I started with some of the creative things I want to do – a layout about me and my weight loss journey, an art journal, another larger canvas, a sketch book to take note of some ideas and well, sketches, that sort of thing. Then I went through specific layouts I wanted to do about my boys – Matthew @ 1, Kyle @ 4, brothers, Rob and I, halloween, christmas, etc. Then I have a few albums I want to do – a wedding/honeymoon album of our wedding in 2003 (similar to the ones I did here and here). I have a few layouts about our Olympic experiences, and layouts and/or a mini album of our Road Trip 2010 as well. Then on a separate piece of paper I wrote out my list in priority order.

This may become a tradition at the start of every new year – it was a good exercise to decide what projects I really want to do and have them laid out on paper, ready for me to tick them off when they are completed. I need a visual like that otherwise it all gets lost in my head and I’m scrambling when I’m ready to get down to some scrapping.

Specifically for the crop I am thinking about layouts, and since a few other projects will take a bit more time (like mini albums or canvasses), I want to make sure I am as productive as possible at the crop. I aim to have at least 8 layouts done, and I will plan on having several more prepared and packed in my bag. When the crop is all said and done, I will have most of the other projects ready to go, kitted with the papers and embellishments, and when I’m ready to do them I won’t have to search for any of my supplies or photos. I really like having things ready to go. That’s how I did three layouts in a week last summer; they were layouts I had prepared for a crop and hadn’t gotten to, but they were there, waiting for me to do them. It’s easy to take them with you for a weekend with the in-laws or a spur of the moment retreat… I want to be as busy as possible this year with my scrapbooking, and get as much done as I can this year. Part of my one little word is about my creativity and merging my daily life with that creativity. This fostering of creativity is an amazing thing, but that’s for another post (and trust me that post is coming too!) ;D

I find in the past I have been an event scrapbooker, not necessarily a chronological or day-to-day living scrapbooker. However, I am trying to be more of a day to day, living life and capturing the simple moments kind of scrapbooker. I still feel this pull to “catch up” with the layouts I haven’t done, but I’m trying to focus on the ones I really want to get done and am trying to let go of past layouts that did not get done. With that said, I still want to do the wedding/honeymoon album since I think I would like to have a mini album or an 8×8 album that I can pull out and show to my kids, rather than all the photos being on my hard drive or in a container tucked away with the little bit of memorabilia I kept. I feel that this needs to be said in this segment as opposed to the next segment because it has to do with how I choose the layouts I want to do.

I’ll be sharing my process for importing, selecting, editing and printing my photos in my next post in this series (which may or may not be my next post, I have another one I’d like to do first). There may also be a video for that post ;D

One last thing I wanted to say on this: When I started scrapbooking I pretty much exclusively used a sketch for every layout, printing my photos to fit perfectly. Sometimes I would go off a sketch and make it work with my photos, but still based very much on that sketch. I still find sketches to be very inspirational and an excellent jumping off point, but I find I have more fun if I do it by feel and my own intuition (part of the fostering creativity thing ;D). Quite often lately I will see something I like (almost anywhere too) and I’ll get an idea. I then promptly forget it if I’m not in the den creating, can write it down or bookmark it ;D I’m not one for carrying around a pen and paper. It’s just never a habit I’ve been able to get into. Instead, I’ve started using Evernote on my laptop (both as an application and an add-on to Firefox) and on my new iPhone (which was my birthday present in October – I absolutely love it and am suddenly utterly and completely lost if I have forgotten it at home). Evernote is a very cool tool and it’s becoming quite useful for storing away ideas and stuff that I want to keep handy. Check it out!

DeAnna

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