I interrupt our normal photograph posts with something a little more personal–how I preserve our photos and memories.
Before I was a photographer, I was a scrapbooker–as a 13 year old I got my first Creative Memories kit and in college I discovered scrapbook magazines and switched to that more design-centered model of scrapbooking. As it turned out, designing layouts for scrapbook magazines became my gateway into professional photography!
However, as the years went by and Real Photography took off, scrapbooking changed for me. I would make occasional books about trips or births and one or two “year in review” type albums, but I couldn’t keep up with designing layouts. I missed scrapbooking, though–that feeling of having captured the story and feelings of a moment forever.
I’d heard about Project Life for a while, but at the end of last year, with “more memory keeping projects” high on my list of New Years Resolutions for 2012, I decided to give it a try. I have loved it from the start, but didn’t want to plug it before I’d stuck with it for a year. (I didn’t want to rave over a diet only to gain back all the weight 4 months later. :P ) I have been on the Project Life train for just 3 days shy of a full year now and am ready to officially shout it from the rooftops: it is amazing and I think everyone should do it!
Becky Higgin’s site does a much better job explaining what it is than I could, so I’ll share only how I do it. In its most common form, it’s a system of page protectors and products that allows you to make a “spread” for each week of the year where you collect photos, stories, and memorabilia. There are people who go super simple, slipping 8 horizontal 4×6 photos and 8 2×3 horizontal journaling cards into the pockets and then there are people who use each of those pockets as a holder for a gorgeous mini scrapbook layout. I am somewhere in the middle, though more toward the simple side.
My approach to Project Life is “get it down.” I love that it’s a place for all of my pictures–the crappy iphone ones living right next to the beautiful DSLR shots. I deeply admire the spreads I see that are beautiful as a whole, but I don’t take that approach–each pocket stands on its own and as a whole the spread might not be particularly attractive, but if it holds the stories and pictures from the week, I’m happy.
Project Life does take time. Compared to my ‘old’ way of scrapbooking, where I’d spend 3-6 hours on a single layout about a single activity or even just a single photo from that activity, it’s a breeze. But if you don’t currently scrapbook, it is a lot of time–I’d estimate that between picking which photos I’m going to use, tracking down any facebook statuses or emails or texts or iphone photos I want to use, resizing the photos for the lab, adding text, and compiling the spreads I spend an average of 1-2 hours per week on it.
That said, it’s worth every moment. As I grabbed my albums today to take some pictures, I was so happy to have this year documented in such a thorough way. And the kids love it.
What you need to get the basics: A scrapbook album (this year mine overflowed into two, next year I am hoping to contain the entire year into an ‘extra large’ album that was just a tiny bit too small for 2012), a big pack of page protectors, journaling cards (or a core kit).
What you need to have an album like mine: various scrapbook supplies from years in the industry, monthly dividers…
…Extra page protectors: I mainly use Design A, but I absolutely love Design F, and regularly use G as inserts for special events. I also use the other small protectors for things like stand-out 5x7s, kid artwork, or layouts I’ve made as 8x10s or 8.5x11s. Lots of fun options for adding inserts into your weekly spread, but by no means necessary.
What I preserved this year: text messages, kid artwork, grocery receipts, hospital bills, Christmas cards, hiking trips, emails, current events, funny kid sayings, funny Nic sayings, our morning routine, family visits, schoolwork, work triumphs, snuggles, illness, hobbies, weather reports, love notes, holiday rituals, the UPS man’s winter struggle with our driveway, movies we’ve seen, products I’ve coveted, Tooth Fairy notes, favorite websites, things I’ve worn, recipes, growth charts, restaurant menus
Lessons learned
The ‘this week’ card was usually the hardest for me to make. Often I was trying to design something pretty, and compared to just throwing text on a photo and adding it to the ‘to print’ folder, that took energy and creativity. At the end of November I made the entire month of December’s date cards, and this month has been so much more enjoyable because of it. I’ve decided next year to have the entire year’s worth of cards printed out and in their pockets before 1 January rolls around. (Which I guess I should get around to!)
For printing, I liked best printing the photos at home. That way I could do it constantly throughout the week and the layout filled up as the week went on. It was steady and pleasant. The downside of home printing is the cost–it just isn’t as cost effective as printing at a lab. I switched to printing at Costco (since we are there at least once a week), and while the colors aren’t always right, they are fine most of the time.
I found it most fun to leave the scrapbook open on my desk and add journaling moments and memorabilia as it happened. When I would wait until the end of the week and then go through my facebook statuses to find which stories needed to be remembered, it just felt more like work instead of 30 seconds here and there.
Looking at these spreads, I am really fond of the ones that have several of the gridded journaling cards in there. When it’s just pictures and typed text it gets fairly dark and busy–the white journaling cards are like an oasis of calm!
The hardest time I had with Project Life was after our Disney trip. When we got back from Disney I had 1500 ‘keeper’ photos to edit, a few dozen iphone shots I loved, pictures from my parents and sister and her husband, and a second wind wedding season that meant very little free time to even think about that. So, I put a pin in it and moved on to the current week and then worked on the Disney week when I had time. That meant actually finishing the Disney spread two months after the trip itself, but since I’d continued to work the album with the current week at least I didn’t have a backlog. Skipping the week and coming back to it was key, I think, or I might have stalled out at that week forever. I’ve seen people do just a quick recap for Disney (Ali Edwards had a great week spread with just the highlights and plan to make a larger book with more photos), but I wanted mine to be a collection spot for all of it, since I know the album I want to make will concentrate more on the overall look and design and less on getting everything in there.
I love the extras. The flower drawing on the back of the Costco receipt that is very much a part of our life, the doodles I made when I didn’t have a photo of the moment, the texts with friends or the screen captures of comics that are all too true. It’s hard to make space for them when there are so many photos that I want to include next week, but I want to include more next year.
If I feel the urge to redo it, leave the redo for another day. I think this is one of the things that I did right last year that I intend to take into 2013. I don’t love everything I put in my album. There are little things that might have typos or be just plain ugly…but I’m saving those redos for my nursing home days. (I’m going into a nursing home with a giant list of stuff that just didn’t get done during my child-rearing days, and redoing ugly Project Life pieces is one of them.) Because by the time you redo something, you’re behind on the next week.
I think that probably sounded a lot like an infomercial, but of all of my resolutions this year this is the one I’m most glad I made. On to 2013 and a new album!
