Album Organisation–Part 2

I decided to split this post into two parts as I thought it was a bit long to read all in one go!  So here is my new system:

1. I am going to make separate albums for my 2 CHILDREN. These albums will have photos where they are on their own and where the place isn't so obvious. It’s not always easy to journal about these photos (partly because they are so old) so these albums are going to be visual and technique driven. I already have 1 album more or less full for each child.

Here are two good examples.  They are both from long ago classes, so are more embellished than my usual style.  But I love them!  Looking through the albums as they are now I can see that they already capture a great sense of the joy my children have bought throughout the years!

 

2. Other photos of us as a family will be in FAMILY Albums, this will include ‘Things We Do’, and ‘Places We Go’ and includes divided page protectors. It is quite easy to add pages as and when I feel like it.

 

3. BOOK OF ME I did do the ‘Everyone Has a Story’ class with Shimelle, and I’m calling that album finished, up to when I turned 50. Might do a part 2 later on! I have other mini books and albums that are BOMs too. I have also done my early childhood photos, so I would like to do my later childhood and teenage years. Here’s one of my all-time favourite photos!  That’s me sitting between Uncle David and Dad at the motor racing back in about 1960!  How cool are they?

4. I have quite a few photos of me and DH on our own, so would like to do a ‘STORY OF US’ album. I have done our wedding album, which I’ll show you later.  Meanwhile no STORY OF US is complete without pictures of Merlin!

 

5. I am also going to make a FRIENDS AND FAMILY Album, with pages about our families and friends. I envisage doing some ‘upgrade’ albums here, eg my parents, and some friends we used to go away with when we were in our 20s. At the moment I have 1 album nearly full with both family and friends.

This is a really old page showing when we took baby Nicholas to meet his 2 great grandmothers. 

6. I am going back and scrapping older family holidays, as upgrade FAMILY albums. These I am doing with divided page protectors and 12 x 12, and using old holiday diaries and memorabilia. I am loving doing these, such happy memories!  Here’s a double page spread from a holiday in Weymouth back in 1997. 

7. I have found a few pages which are just of places, so will have a ‘PLACES’ album, but this will be for the one-off pages with no people in them, for example this double page spread of Worthing:

 

 

8. Finally I have LOs of things I have done re gardening and craft, and these are going in a ‘HOBBIES’ album. I guess this is a passion album!  Here’s another Shimelle style layout

 

 

I have a slight anxiety about whether I should go back to annual albums (since 2005) and take out pages that fit better into these categories.  For example, I have pages in there that are ‘10 things about you’ for Nicholas and Lucy.  But the above albums are mostly about the 1990s up until 2005 (My children were born 1988 and 1991), and some of my earlier albums are Creative Memories where it is too difficult to remove pages. So I will leave them as they are for now.

My other anxiety is what to do with pages that ‘cross over’ between albums, eg, a day trip with my parents. Should this go in the Parents section, or the Family album? I guess I will just have decide on this dilemma on each separate occasion. Actually, this is going to be less of a dilemma now than it was for LOM.

I can’t wait to get started! In fact, I have already done a second page on a day trip back in 1998 to ‘tell the story’ better. It will be so easy to add pages in as and when I feel like scrapping them, but also the albums will tell our story.  I love that I have now taken the time to write this down and I can go forward from here. Hopefully this system will better tell our story and make more sense to us.

P.S. While looking for the photos for this post, I came across other scrapbook pages that are in ‘finished’ albums.  So I think I’ll write a Part 3 and show you those, if you are not too bored!  I’ll be back soon.

Album Organisation–Part 1

 

 

This is a subject I have spent a lot of time on lately. I have a number of albums now that I have been scrapbooking for several years. I participated in Stacey Julian’s Library of Memories class a few years ago, which encouraged me to get all the old photos out of non-photo friendly ‘sticky’ albums.

I read Stacey’s book ‘Finding Photo Freedom’ before I did the online LOM class.  These black 12 x 12 albums hold my holiday photos.  The red albums are my storage binders and come from Arrowfile along with the black ones.

 

My Old photos are now in ‘storage binders’ which are chronological, and categories. The LOM system was intended to get away from chronological scrapbooking, to banish guilt about not being ‘caught up’. So instead of having annual albums, there are categories: Places, Things We Do, Us and People We Love. But, I have never been sure about the LOM album system. It can be difficult to know which category a page fits in, and there is no flow to the story.

Title page to ‘Everyone Has a Story’, a real life class by Shimelle, that I was fortunate to attend.

I recently revisited Shimelle’s Cover to Cover class about album organisation. Her system is based on a chronological system, which flows along with the story. She advocates ‘upgrade albums’ for a subject which takes a disproportionate amount of pages in the annual album, eg a holiday or celebration. She also talks about Books of Me (BOM), childhood albums and ‘passion’ albums.

As you all know, photography is a passion of mine!

 

It is a very personal thing, so armed with my knowledge of LOM and Shimelle’s Cover to Cover class I set too one afternoon to decide on a system that works for me.

My recent scrapbooking style is to print out photos each month, and construct a ‘month in review’ album. Up until now I have included 12 x 12 pages in with the Project Life style divided page protectors. This year I am going to just have the divided pps, and no 12 x 12 in 2013’s album. I find it really easy to keep up with this, and don’t have many photos left over to be filed away.

Here’s a look at January 2013 pages, done with Project Life page protectors

 

But…I have a lot of photos from previous years. I took them all out of old albums when I first did LOM, which is when I sorted them into categories and storage binders. My dilemma has always been how to scrap these? As I am now scrapping the present in chronological order, I am a bit sorry I messed up the order of the older photos.

I keep my categories in a CM sorting box. 

 

I looked at my albums in progress, Us, Places, Things We Do and People and decided that the Places and Things We Do categories do not make a lot of sense to me. I now think I have come up with a system that suits me.

I like to use American Crafts D ring albums, so it is easy to rearrange and insert pages.

Come back soon and I will tell you all about my system in part 2!

Another snow day!

It was quite a surprise to have a good accumulation of snow in mid-March!  Sussex seemed to be worst hit, with road and rail transport in chaos!  Apparently lots of people had to sleep in their cars having being stuck on the A23 and A27!! 

Here’s a couple of photos of my garden yesterday:

Hpw about these two, taken with different white balance.  The one on the left is ‘shade’, and the one on the right is ‘cloudy’.  I can’t decide which one I like best, what do you think?

So what else could I do but stay indoors, sit by the fire, and sew and knit!

Look!  Here’s my ‘Little Town’ quilt finished!  I am absolutely delighted, I can’t stop laying it out to look at it!

My friends Burnice and Tash have been helping me to learn to knit!  I could knit a little, so we decided to make a cushion with some knitted blocks.  Here’s my first finished block, and I am half way through my second.  Burnice and Tash have knitted some blocks for me, so it is a collaboration!

March craft challenge

Here’s my new monthly craft challenge: making cards.  I have signed up for an online card making class with www.studiocalico.com.  The stamps came free with the class and the 2 kraft cards at the top of the picture include printables from the class.

I was given a big pile of card making magazines at my crop last Saturday, and was inspired to make the card on the right of the picture.  Can you spot the similar card in the magazine below?

I am challenging myself to make all the birthday cards I need for the year, and maybe a few Christmas cards!  I’d like to make at least 30.

Meanwhile I am still quilting the ‘Little Town’ quilt from the last blog post, and am desperate to get it finished so I can do something else!

It’s a been a lovely sunny day today, look where I sat to eat lunch and read my book!  By the way, I thoroughly recommend this book, Jasmine Nights by Julia Gregson.  I have really enjoyed reading it! I would love to pass it on to someone, please leave a comment and I’ll choose someone later in the week

Sew a Day February

 

It has been a very cold and dreary month.  I’ve liked nothing better than sitting on my sofa with steaming hot mug of coffee hand stitching my quilt.  I’ve watched a little bit too much daytime tv!  (My favourite is ‘Homes Under the Hammer’, and last week, I discovered some old ‘Time Team’ programmes on in the afternoons!)  I have spent many happy hours here just sewing.  Hand sewing is very therapeutic and calming.  I’ll miss it when it is all finished!

Pleased to say that I only missed one day of my SAD.  I have very nearly finished quilting, and will show it again when the binding has been added.

And here’s a couple more photos from the odd nice day in February, when the sun did shine:

Simply a Moment–In my Garden

 

It is mid February and the light is getting stronger.  The dark dismal days of deep winter are giving way slowly to brighter warmer days.  It feels like I have come out of hibernation.  Spring is just round the corner.

My garden is very wet and soggy after prolonged winter rain and snow, but it feels like the right time to be out here cutting down and generally tidying up.  I have on my bright wellies (A Christmas present from Mum), and an old fleecy jacket.  It doesn’t feel cold out here.  I’ve collected my bright green bin, secateurs and small fork from the greenhouse, and wearing my new pink gardening gloves, am busy cutting down overgrown plants and pulling off old dead leaves.  The soil is deep dark brown and I detect a few small bulbs poking through.  Even though it has been so cold the weeds have still grown!  My back twinges as I struggle to pull out a bramble that has taken root both ends.

There is a little robin who flits about and gets really quite close to me.  I stay still and quiet and watch him hopping about looking for grubs and worms.  Hey, Mr Robin!  Here’s a big juicy worm, right here! There are lots of other birds singing in the trees.

Merlin comes up and steals a stick from my bin.  He runs off down the garden to chew it.  He notices that the dogs are out next door so goes to the fence to sniff them.

My bin is full up now, time to go and empty it!

 

I am linking up with Alexa’s blog for Simply A Moment.

Some crafting

As well as my sewing, I have been scrapbooking!  I joined a team on UKScrappers some months back, and have finally got myself in gear to do a Weekly challenge or two!

Here’s the last week of January challenge.  The challenge called for a holiday picture, with someone eating, using red, and lots of journaling.  This is a photo of me and Nicholas at one of our favourite ‘stopping-off’ places when going on holiday up north.  We were on our way to Yorkshire in early summer 1990.  I used what was left from a Basic Grey page kit, the collection is Oxford.

And here’s February week 1.  This challenge called for a picture of people who are important to you, a monogram, and journaling about what the person means to you. Here’s my Lo of Maurice’s nephew Simon and his wife Alys.  I used a starting point from Shimelle (thanks Alison, I saw it on your blog).  This paper is from a lovely collection called Victoria Gardens by Echo Park.

 

These 2 pages form part of our holiday to Scotland in Autumn 1990 (must have been a good year!) I used Bo Bunny Autumn papers.  I love the colours, but do find these highly patterned papers difficult to use!  I am really enjoying going back over old holidays, and spent a while looking places up on the internet, like the Auld Kirk in Alloway, Ayr.  It features in the poem Tam O’Shanter by Robert Burns, a famous Scottish poet.

I’ve spent this morning making a few cards.  Here’s a card for my niece who gave birth to a little girl last week and 2 simple birthday cards.

Some good news - Nicholas passed his driving test yesterday!

Finally, I thought it would be nice to have cut flowers from the garden every day.  Here are some double snowdrops.  I didn’t have a vase small enough so floated the flower heads in a bowl of water.  I love the green stripes!