My New Photo Process

 Last year - my process was as simple as this: choose and print my pictures once I had a layout and product in mind. This process is no longer working now that my scrap time is mostly on the weekends and sometimes, not even in the comfort of my own home. After a couple scrap dates with Danielle (gosh how I'm loving these times!!), I quickly figured out that I simply just need to have pictures printed and ready to pull and scrap. I can no longer choose and print my pictures when I'm ready to sit down and scrap.

I started by printing the entire month of January that I hadn't scrapped yet - mind you, this is only the photos I chose to upload, not nearly the amount of photos actually TAKEN in the month of January. January's upload was only 25 pictures of the 163 total taken (this total does not include pictures of layouts). Maybe I should take a step back and describe my photo process? Perhaps another post for that...

Anyway - I took the January pictures that hadn't been scrapped and grouped them by possible layouts - sometimes I just had 1 photo and others were 5, Dave's birthday was a good example of having several. I placed each grouping in one photo sleeve.

As I was talking to Danielle and looking through her pictures from 2010 - I realized that with my old method of printing pictures, I had missed several potential layouts and skipped over pictures. So - I went back through my kodak gallery online and submitted an order of photos I didn't think I had scrapped and that I thought I may want to have just in case. Below is the result of those 194 prints! Yikes. I'm not overwhelmed at all - in fact, I'm relieved to have these printed and ready to inspire layouts!


Here's the cool part! I wasn't expecting this or even planned for it - but LOVE the way it turned out! So, I finally decide to call February's Studio Calico kit done for the time being - I created 11 one-pagers and 1 two-page layout - total of 13 12x12 layouts. I got out March's kit and spread it out on the table to see how it inspired me. I didn't know what I wanted to start with, had no layouts in mind or pictures to print (not like last month, gosh I loved that kit!). So, I got my 2010 little photo album out and started flipping through the pages. Instantly, I found a couple groups of photos that really went with the color schemes and feel of the kit in front of me.

TADA! Light bulb! I love how easy this was and that this new system I started to develop actually paid off and well! As you see below, I found 6 layouts to start with, some of those being 2 page layouts even... I stopped pulling picture groups out at 6 because I didn't want to get overwhelmed. And the best part - there are 6 stories there that I have not told yet and that otherwise would have been lost in the files on my computer. And some of these stories really needed told - like how we planted a very small patch of grass in our former side yard in Arizona and my very first scrapbook retreat with my best scrappy pal, Danielle and how Zoe had discovered the joys (?) of Webkinz online and that I learned how to make my very favorite childhood meal for Zoe and that she LOVED it... and these are the reasons I scrapbook.



Thanks for hanging with me and letting me go on about my new photo process!

-Kim