Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Thinking about Organization. . .

OK. . .I am LOVING my Library of Memories Class!!! Right now I am like, well duh!!! Of course that makes sense!!! Most of you could probably figure this out on your own. . . but I needed the class to hold my hand and walk me through the process of organizing my pictures and albums. . .and to see how I can make more meaningful pages.

I was looking at my Album Library shelf the other day. . . and it occurred to me that I had only been scrapping since 2000 and probably not seriously since 2004 (when Brady was born). There are a whole lotta albums on that shelf for such a short amount of time!!! They aren't full. . . .but they are adding up already!!!!!!!

SO. . . I thought to myself. . . How do I make more meaningful pages? How do I streamline the process and not just make pages to make pages?

NOW. . .I LOVE to scrapbook. . .time is an issue. . .but I love to do it. So I will always have those fluff pages. . .as I call them. Simply, pages created because I wanted to make a page. . .maybe I wanted to use some really cute paper ( and that is BIG for me. . .cute paper is hard to cut!) maybe I wanted to try a new technique. . . or maybe I just loved the pictures I was scrapping. WHATEVER the reason this is all OK!!! But. . . is Brady really going to want 900 pages of him in cute outfits. . .no story. . .no memory other than the outfit???

SO. . .it is my quest to begin to make more meaningful pages. . .pages that tell a story. . .show a connection. . . or whatever else I choose!!

Library of Memories Class has you use category drawers for your pictures. . . .so I have a drawer just for Easter. . . or cousin pictures. . .or Brady and Dad pictures. . . you can't believe how cool this is. This is going to make it SO easy to do a Father's Day mini-album for Collie. Just go to my file and pull several pictures of him and Brady together. . . I have also learned that there are A LOT more pictures of Brady and Collie than me!!!! Something I probably need to work on, but I am not too excited about! Now this means you have to separate the pictures from their actual event. . .something I didn't understand and had a hard time with at first. You mean pull pictures away from when they happened? How will I know the details?? SO. . . .I started with pictures I had already scrapped or that were in cold storage. . . pictures I never planned on getting to. . .or at least not for the next 10 years or so. I had LOTS of doubles and even triples. . . .I might put one behind my Around the House Category. . .or life on the farm. . . or Brady. . . . or Family pics. And I only used good pictures! I was very selective with what goes into a category! Only the best of the best! (note: I still have my pictures arranged by season and year in a CM Powersorter box. For example: Summer 09, Winter 07, Spring 06, Fall 05 and so on. This is where the bulk of my unscrapped pictures are stored until I decide what to do with them!)

For example Christmas. . .I don't know about you but I take a gazillion Christmas pictures. . . from cookie decorating, trimming the tree, Christmas Eve, Christmas Morning, and the list goes on and on. AND I always have a huge hang up about Scrapping these photos. . .there are just so many of them!!! Now. . .I just kind of fell into this process. . . I pick a few of my favorites from each event and I scrap a page or two for each event . Some people could probably even condense more, but I think this is pretty good for me right now. NOW the rest of the photos. . . .we always take shots of each of the families at Christmas, , , Sometimes I scrapbook these with my Christmas photos. . .but I always take more than one of each family. . . I will now put these behind a Tracy family category. . .and in the future I hope to make a page or 2 about how the family has changed/grown over the past however many years. Just like we take a grandkids picture here and there. . . these pictures really don't illustrate Christmas, but they can show growth or change over time!!

I wasn't sure exactly what this class would entail. . . BUT it is opening up a whole new world for me. . . a way to make some meaningful scrapbook pages. . . .I LOVE pages that show relationships and change!!

I also LOVE that I am not organizing my albums in date order. . .for me, this is just boring. I know for others this works. . .it is not my intention to put anyone's process down. I ALWAYS say whatever works for you is what you should be doing. . . BUT I am saying it wasn't working for me!!! I started to realize a while ago that I wasn't searching for photos by date anymore. I couldn't quite remember what year this event or that event happened and I was searching through different years trying to find it. And I KNOW this will just get worse for me over time. And being a history teacher, I firmly believe in a timeline and dates. . . So my layouts each will be dated. . . I just won't have ALL of my layouts from 2009 in the same album. (or 2 albums!)

I started a Christmas Album a while ago. . .I love to flip through and see a pages from each Christmas all together. I probably will even streamline this more and only put 2 pages from each Christmas in this album and put the other pages in a Things we do album. I am not sure about this yet. . . something I am still figuring out. I also have a Halloween Album. . . and I plan to start an Easter Album, and a Tracy Lake Bash Album. . .these are events that happen year after year and I always have a lot of pictures from each of them.

I KNOW I can't do this class justice here on my blog. I do HIGHLY recommend taking this class. . .no matter how many times people tried to explain to me this process. . . I JUST didn't get it. Even though I knew it was probably just what I was looking for!!!! I am only half way through the class, so there still is a lot more to learn! I just can't believe the light bulbs that went off for me!! Stacy Julian's books are The Big Picture and Photo Freedom. Photo Freedom describes her system in-depth. . .I tried to do that instead of the class, but I really needed the hand holding. . . someone to walk me through the process.

I know this is a long post. . . and I really have A LOT more than I can say on the topic. I FEEL so much more connected to my pictures and to WHY I am scrapbooking. Sometimes that gets lost. . .I know it has for me. . .and I have seen fellow scrapbookers get burned out. . . to me this doesn't have to be an all or nothing craft. SO, you don't have all the time in the wold to get all of the scrapbooking done that you would like to?? Why not just do a page here or there? OR if you just do ONE album ever. . .well that is at least something!!! Who says if you can't scrap EVERY little detail than you shouldn't scrap at all???

Stick some pictures in Photo Storage pages. . .Leave one slot blank and put some journaling on a 4x6 piece of paper!!! Call it good!!! Now you can SEE your pictures and you have recorded the MEMORY!!! Memories are so much more important to me than Pictures. . . . I think I have said that before, though. My pictures are all well preserved digitally on my hard drive, on my external hard drive, on DVDs, and on the web. The memories are stored in my brain and if I don't record them, then they will be forgotten!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK. . .time to get off of my soapbox and record some memories. .. .or do housework. . .whichever comes first!!!!!!

4 comments:

Darcie said...

These are all my same problems/hang ups . . . That class sounds fantastic!

Meredith Burgess said...

This class is fantastic!! I LOVE it! It is a little bit pricey, but I say it is well worth it! I just didn't get it before. She posts the lessons online each Thursday and you get to them when you can. There is usually a video, audio, and handouts. I am very visual, so I need the pictures to help me figure out what she is talking about! I won't use everything she teaches, but most of it or some adaptation of it!!!!

Stampin Lucy said...

what is this class?? Is it through Big Picture Scrapbooking?? I am assuming you can't just sign up in the middle??

AWESOME Blog....I love how you share so much!!

Meredith Burgess said...

Hi Stampin Lucy!

Thanks so much for your comments! Yes, this class is offered through Big Picture Scrapbooking and it is only offered once a year. I waited four years to take it and I absolutely love it!!! I highly recommend it. . .though it is a bit pricey. . . it has helped me SO much!!