Word for 2013: Share

Last year I realized that I was spending way too much time and money downloading digital product from lots of places, so I chose 2012 to be a year of streamlining. I cancelled subscriptions, unsubscribed to newsletters, and focused on one website: MScraps. This was a fabulous change for me and it went very well until September. In the nine months of actively scrapping with MScraps, I have 212 layouts posted there! That is a fantastic feat! I was able to become a guest creative team member, earned and won over $100 in free product, and got to know some of the members there. When school started back up in August, I was overwhelmed. I had been scrapping regularly all summer and somehow felt it was time to move my computer down to the basement. I wanted to remove some of the clutter I was feeling. What it really meant was that I would barely touch my laptop for four months.

In retrospect, I have been challenged with keeping any routines going for the past four months. My energy has been sucked into the negative events at my school and in just trying to be a good teacher and an adequate parent. I continued to take pictures and uploaded them to my computer, but I stopped telling my story. I stopped working through my pictures. I have done very little with my photos. But now here I am, with a catalog of over 45,000 digital photos - some keyworded, some captioned, some scrapped. I have over 40,000 digital scrapbooking files - with a good portion that I haven't even looked at since I downloaded them. I haven't even processed the Digi files in the past four months, they are still sitting in the downloads folder.

Let's talk about what I have bought for my photoscrapography habit. Last year I bought Photography Concentrate's Super Photo Editing Skills, Erin Cobb's Clean Scrapbooking for PSE, ebooks from Digital Photography School, The Shutter Sister's book Elevate the Everyday and Chris Orwig's People Pictures. These go unread, un-referenced. I bought PSE11. I bought supplies for my Cinch machine thinking I would make calendars.  I have two scrapbooking memberships: Paperclipping and The Daily Digi (a third if I count Masterful Scrapbook Design, I download and browse). I bought Lifebook 2012 and did one lesson. I bought Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas and did three entries. I want this madness to stop. I want to stop downloading and buying and thinking that I am going to do things. I want to DO things

I am having an epiphany.  I seem to remember a similar pattern last year that led to my declaration of simplifying all the scrapbook information that I consume. I was buying but not learning. I was lured in by the thrill of a shiny new kit or ebook or workshop or class. I would purchase, download, and just let the content sit. I vowed to simplify and I did. In the absence of a creative outlet in the past four months, some of that need I have to be creatively challenged has manifested in purchasing again. I have been buying in the hopes of doing. That is just crazy. Crazy wasteful. Crazy arrogant. Crazy period.

As I have relaxed and been super lazy the past two weeks, I now have some renewed energy to reflect on what went well in my creative life in 2012 and what I want to improve. I know that the thing that I have continued to do all year is to take pictures and upload them to my computer. I am really good about that. I have done a little culling and keywording, mostly to separate school pics from personal pics, but it is a step in the right direction. I have been thinking about ways to simplify my keywords to make the process faster and I have some ideas. I want to keep telling my story because that's the most important reason why I take pictures anyway. I want to scrapbook because that's just fun. I seem to have a need to share my work for positive feedback. In 2012, I shared my work with strangers. I uploaded to my MScraps gallery, getting a little thrill when I read the positive comments (Does anyone write a negative comment?). But I realize that while this kind of feedback does motivate me to improve my digiscrapping skills, I am avoiding sharing my work with the subjects of my photography-my family, my friends. There are ways to do that, Facebook or Flickr for example, but I have not done that.

There it is - my goal for my creative life in 2013 is: Share. (Now I am fighting everything inside me not to go sign up for Ali Edwards One Little Word class, because I did that two years ago. Yeah, no project completed from it.) I have signed up for Lain Ehmann's Crafting Your Business class and I can't wait to start putting some of my ideas to the test of possible business ideas. I believe that I am not the only scrapper who is just wanting something more out of their craft and doesn't quite know how to get it. It's all the trend to Project Life and Week in the Life and Project 365, but I just don't want to set myself up for failure. I have so much already, how can I use what I have to SHARE my message of beauty and simplicity and relationships that is life? I am giving up the MScraps challenges. I am going to see what happens when I start posting and printing and putting myself out there. What will it mean for me in 2013 to share???

Journal Your Christmas 2012: Prompt 1 Manifesto

Prompt 1: Manifesto for Journal Your Christmas

I thought this class would be a good place to try to find my Christmas spirit. Years of disappointment and unrealistic expectations have left me empty for a season I loved as a child. Even with two young children (ages 8 and 10), I still feel that it is an effort to complete the rituals and traditions that make the season special and memorable. I feel tremendous guilt for that. I have tried different things over the years, but I feel like my spirit is still unchanged - flatlined and unresponsive. Here's what I hope for 2012:

- I will focus on the memories. This project will be a collection of memories, thoughts, feelings, impressions in an effort to ferret out the feelings of warmth and excitement that were so much a part of my childhood Christmases. I want to make the memories for my children and me.

- I will focus on the feelings. I am not going to worry about presents. I am going to give a feeling. I want my children to feel excited and happy when they get their presences. I want them to experience the joy of picking out or making a special gift and giving it. I want them to feel the joy of the season in the lights, the music, the food! I want them to be slightly sad that it's over when we take the tree down and looking forward to next year.

- I will focus on me and balancing my need for creatively expressing myself through writing and photography. I will use pictures I have taken from various days, some current, some old, but I am not going to get hung up on it. I am going to find the photo that best expresses the feeling I want to convey. When I finish with this journal I want a story to be told or a collection of stories that represent my efforts to Finding My Christmas Spirit.

Crafting Q-T's Glass Ball Ornaments 2012

A Little Challenge from MScraps

With the store still not up and running, this challenge was posted to entice members to create a layout using our stash. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with some beloved, but retired, kits from MScraps.com. This kit was a bloghop freebie I think. I love it, but missed the opportunity to use for challenges because you can't really use a free product to try to earn points toward other products. That makes sense right. This went together in a couple hours because the template made it easy. The template was just named "Template-bloghop" so I can't even credit the designer directly. I am so glad that some consistency in file naming of digisupplies is being promoted by sites like The Digi Files. I would love to check out this designer's other things, but I can't. Oh well. I can still enjoy it!

This also brought back some memories and I can't wait to find pics of when Jacob got this stuffie - a summer project to scan my old photos.

Guest Creative Team Assignment at MScraps.com

Oh boy am I excited to be part of the Guest Creative Team at MScraps.com for the month of June. What that means for my non-scrappy friends is that I get to download digital scrapbooking supplies in exchange for creating layouts and posting them. Frankly, there’s way to many posting requirements for me to think about this as an on-going gig, but for now I can handle it. I am posting to my facebook too.

Heather T is one of my favorite designers at MScraps. I love her artsy, fun kits. This kit, Summer Blast, has so much to offer I can’t stop working with it. Since I am anxiously awaiting the pool water’s arrival later this week, I thought it would be fun to look at last year’s photos. The summer colors of this kit are so inspirational, I found that I didn’t have to recolor anything. Everything fit! Yahoo.

The first two are part of a two-page spread. I created a small grid and foundation that helped tie the pages together. I used blend modes on the paint splotch and the word art, as well as the text, to make them look integrated into the paper. On the second layout I made the 3-flower sticker by adding a 10 pixel stroke to the outside of the rub-on. I love how it came out.  Heather is so clever with her doodles.

The second two pages could stand alone, but I created them to be companion pages. I just love the photos of the girls and their cousin playing at their Aunt Vickie’s. Heather’s stitching is fabulous and so realistic. I used the text tool to make the title art out of this great dragon-fly paper that is part of the kit, although it’s kind of hard to see that that is what it is. The dragonflies on the next page repeat the theme. The title art. Summer Blast, comes directly from the kit except that I applied the Multiply blend mode in PSE. This is my favorite of the four-I really love that photo mask and yellow and gray . . . WOW!

 

January Take Twelve for Ella Publishing

This was digitally crafted using ViVa Artistry's "Life Composition" Kit.

This is one of two photography/scrapbooking projects that I am participating in this year to encourage more scrapbooking. Check out Take Twelve at Ella Publishing.

Letting Go in 2012

Without actually doing the math, I realize that I have spent way too much money, time, and energy on scrapbooking supplies, classes, and software. I am coming to realize that I am spending more time organizing and searching through my stash than actually using it. This has become abundantly clear to me since the passing of National Digital Scrapbooking Day and Black Friday sales that enticed me to spend and download WAY TOO MUCH STUFF that I haven't sorted out or hardly looked at since. I have a calendar project I want to do for Christmas and all I want to do is purge all my scrapbooking supplies. Once again spending time playing with the things, not using them.

I have been thinking a lot about how the blogs I read and the podcasts I listen to are enticing me to buy things and not inspiring me to scrapbook. I think that I want to spend more time and money on buying classes that help me take better pictures and scrapbook in more meaningful ways. I want to spend my money on inspiration and I have realized that inspiration is not in the form of products, but what you do with the products you have. I love looking through my supplies. I love buying supplies, but I want to use them up. Watching them turn old and dated is only ridden with guilt and buyers remorse.

Reflecting on some good things that have happened in 2011 I see that I have made a giant leap in my photo flow with Kayla Lamoureaux's Lightroom class and Finding Photo Flow. I have developed a system that I am working again that feels manageable and fun, not work so much. The digital scrapbooking supplies in Lightroom has bogged me down. I subscribe to two monthly digital kit programs and I have to stop. I am spending time converting and downloading and blah, blah, blah. Not playing with my stuff, but organizing, tagging, converting. I am going to stop that.

So for 2012 this is what I am going to do:

Cancel monthly subscriptions:

• Masterful Scrapbook Design (Cancelled 11/27/2011. I have several months worth of old content to keep me busy for all of 2012.)
• The Daily Digi (How can I support the show in a different way? Take their classes. Use the affiliate link. Email Katie about this. $82.50 per year)
• Little Dreamer Designs (I have this paid until 4/11/12. I am going to try to use these supplies and assess in April whether or not I renew. $50 per year.)
• Paperclipping??? (I have not been watching the videos. I don't participate online, but I do find Noell to be very inspiring and she has a similar philosophy about scrapping without a bunch of stuff. Only $28 a year, so I'll keep it.)

Unsubscribe to emails that are only for promoting product. Subscribe only to emails that promote inspiration, reflection, story telling. Report back here what I have unsubscribed from.

Unfollow blogs that are only for promoting product. Follow only blogs that inspire me to write, to take pictures, to document my life, to reflect, to be creative.

Revisit old class content at:

• Bigpictureclasses.com
• getitscrapped.com
• willowing.ning.com
• Jessicasprague.com

Archive kits I don't want.

• Scrappers Guide
• Stuff to Scrap
• Delete all alphas?

Stop buying Scrapbooks, etc. and Creating Keepsakes Magazine. They make me want to consume. They do their job. All these things are just vehicles for consumerism. I have to stop spending and start doing.

Finally, can I commit to round ups? (Katie's class at Big Picture.)

From Sketch or Template to Layout

I am inspired to scrapbook with some new tools that I got from Wendyzine. It is an action based on Katie the Scrapbook Lady's Power Scrap method. I highly recommend Katie's class at Big Picture. I want to streamline a process working from a sketch to a finished layout. This process will take me through several steps.

Start in PSE8 to create template or find a template in Lightroom. I created a template based on Shimelle's Sketch.

Step 1: In PSE8, create template and save as a TIF file (with LZW compression) in my 2011 Digi Layouts folder (D drive) with a name descriptive of the template.

Go to Lightroom:
Step 1: Synch 2011 Digi Layout folder to I can see the template.
Step 2: Tag Template.
Step 3: Create Quick Collection using the template and then add photos, papers, and embellishments.
Step 4: Create Collection with Layout Name (Select All in Quick Collection and create with selected items.)
Step 5: Export Jpgs to the Digi Layouts folder using a subfolder that has the same name as the layout. (Can rename later if needed.)
Step 6: The tif files have to be dealt with separately. There is no easy way to do this. I have discovered that LR does not preserve transparency on export. The work around is time consuming if you are using elements from a variety of sources. You have to Go To File in Library, then you have to Open File Location. Copy the file and paste it into the layout folder. This is not so bad if you are working with elements from the same kit. Otherwise you can just select the tif files and choose "Edit In Photoshop Elements." You can't use Wendyzine's cool action if you do this, but it works. The action renames the layers with the file names which is helpful if you are posting with credits. Posting with credits makes digi scrapping a total pain in the rear end. I am not doing it anymore. I came up with a quick way to do it. Simply take a screen shot of the elements and papers in your Collection folder in LR. If the files have been named with designer and kit then tracking them should be no problem. Here are the credits.

Go to PSE
Step 1: Using Power Scrap It, create layout.

Handling Metadata Conflicts in Lightroom

There is a strange glitch between the Nikon D60 and Lightroom. Apparently Lightroom does not like the way the D60 writes metadata to the jpeg files and once the files are imported into Lightroom the !Metadata Conflict symbol appears. From researching some of the LR boards I have found a fix that works pretty well and only takes a few minutes. I tried other methods that were more cumbersome and time-consuming.

Here's what I do:

• Upload pictures from card reader as normal using my Steps for Importing into LR for New Photos. If I have uploaded jpegs from the D60, I will wait to see which pics have the conflict. The conflict is random and does not always affect every picture. If the set has conflicts it's easier to do the following to all of them before doing anything else-even purging. 
• Working in my daily folders, I will select all the photos and export them to a folder inside the yearly folder called "Metadata Conflicts." 
• After that it is safe to remove the conflicted pictures from LR. I simply delete them from disk. 
• Then I go to the yearly folder and, right clicking the folder icon, synchronize the folder to "import" the pics back to LR. 

What is weird is that the metadata from the original import is intact-my copyright info shows. This is very weird to me, but it is fixed nonetheless!

Lightroom 3 Photo Workflow: New Photos

I am so excited to have finally received my Lightroom 3 software in the mail. I was using a trial version on this laptop until it expired and then I used a trial version on the old desktop until my software arrived in the mail today!! Yay! Now I am back upstairs with my laptop and my external hard drives in tow to work on getting my photos and scrapbooking supplies in order!!

I finally think I have nailed a good workflow for purging, rating, and keywording my photos. Here are the steps as I have them worked out today!!

FOR PHOTOS THAT ARE NOT IN LIGHTROOM ALREADY:

Step 1: Import from camera card to Lightroom to the annual folder.

• Use "Everyday Photos (jpegs)" or "Everyday Photos (NEF)" import preset which will add my copyright info to the metadata as well as create a separate subfolder by date for each set of photos in the current year folder.

Step 2: By date, work through each set of photos, rejecting, rating, keywording, and captioning the entire contents of the daily folder. Delete from disk any rejected photos.

• Rating System: 0-Stars: Nothing Special, but don't want it gone. 1-Star: Scrapworthy, supporting photos to the story; 2-Star: Focal-Point photos, Personality, or Relationship photos; 3-Star: Stunning, breathtaking, won't every get tired of looking at this one, SPECIAL

Step 3: When I have completed Step 2 for a daily folder (or if I am out of time do this with only the ones I have finished with), I will move them to the Monthly folder.

As I started to complete this process, I realized that not all my photos in my June folder were properly keyworded. I searched for empty keywords using the Text search tool and created daily subfolders inside my annual folder to remind me to process those photos. As of today, July 15th, I have 247 photos in June that need keyword checks. I guess I have should get started.

(PS I am going to track my progress on my iTouch with the "My Stats" app.)

UPDATE: Remember to keyword for "Relationships" when the photo shows that. For example, I have pics of us at the dinner table that should be keyworded with "Family Dinners" from "Everyday Life" and "My Family" from "Relationships."

Questions still lingering:
What's the best way to deal with photos already in the system?
What's the best way to check that my photos have the correct keywords?
What are the criteria I use to determine what photos to keep and what to purge? I have too many photos and want to pare down my collection.
What's the best sharing workflow?
When should I edit my pics? What pics should get edited?

Story Time Photo: "I used to be cool! See!"

SneakUpPhotos.jpg, a photo by croppersister on Flickr.
 Entering this photo story for the "Story Time" Photo Challenge at . . .