Stories and Albums - The Resolution. Sort of.

Hi All

So after 2 days thought, here is a roundup of my feelings about how I put my albums together.

1) I am not totally wedded to Project Life but I do like having photos in the little pockets
2) I don't like trying to print photos to the small 3x4 size so I'm not going to bother. I have a punch to cut them down with so I shall just use that where I think I can.
3) Most of my thoughts tend to appear as my facebook status's so I need to design some 3x4 cards that I like and get them printed up ready for me to write down my statuses if I like them enough.
4) I need to take more photos. I used to take loads of photos of Pickle Pants when she was a tiny baby and didn't do much. There are loads of her in her bouncer in babygrows, so many that it is difficult to tell which week it was as they all look identical. But now she is an active and bonkers toddler, I seem to hardly take any at all.

5) Some photos don't need scrapping twice. But some do. Just because it is in the Photobook doesn't mean that I can't scrap it in an album. But I will try not to scrap them in more than 1 album, I just need to identify the reason that I am scrapping my story and that will dictate the album that I put it into.

6) I might need to get some more albums which have designated story purposes. Some include My Story, Our Story (just for OH and me), My Family. Happy Campers. This fills the gaps that I think are missing and then when looked at as a whole collection, all the parts I want to scrap are there.
7) I can take photos of my craft/house achievements and put them into my Project Life albums. They are my life at the moment, and I want to record this time when I was very interested in these things.
8) My yearly albums don't have to be the same format every year. A method that works for this year wont work for other years and that is OK. 

Not Einstein or Shakespeare but pretty revealing. Especially point 5. Which seemed to me to be the thing that was really holding me up. So I spent some time on Friday night just pulling out photos to print whether or not I had printed them and had loads more to do. This made me happy.

I also had a quick look at the actual PL site. There is some advice there on how to set up your album, which can be quickly done, especially if you only have design A pocket protectors. You identify the Title 4x6 cards (I didn't realise that's what they were), pop them in with a load of 3x4 cards and then just add photos. I had a go with my Strawberry kit for 2013's album but got a bit annoyed with putting in the 3x4's as I just didn't know what I was going to end up with Photowise. So I took them out. But if you are looking for a really simple solution to getting started then its good advice.

I spent Saturday and Sunday re-organising my craft room (This is not a mandatory step, it just happened as part of the preparations for Freezer Day). I had some photo albums that were taking up space, and as I looked through them I realised that I had a load of photos that needed to go into my Friends PL album. So Sunday evening I spent ages putting photos in page protectors, punching out 3x4's and adding in journalling cards. I haven't written anything down as its the sort of thing that I can do when I'm playing in the Living Room with Pickle Pants. 

My Big Room Change also means that I now have a much more accessible place for all my albums to go which was a bit of a bug bear for me, and now sorted I am much happier. The room is a tip, I have loads of stuff I want to put into my albums and I'm in serious trouble of running out of page protectors but these are problems that I feel that I can overcome, and that the initial roadblock has been removed. 

So, its been a messy struggle but I think that we are there. I'm hoping that this bumbling week of mine has maybe been some help to someone as I don't believe that all crafting and organising problems are dealt with in a very structured and organised fashion in the real world. If you have had a problem that you have solved in a scrappy way (ha ha, pun not intended) then why not share?

I'm going to end with a quick apology as I've offered yet another long post that is just text. I'm going to go back through in the next week or 2 when I'm free to put some photos in and tag my recent posts up so its a bit less heavy and easy to navigate. The reason that I haven't is that I really wanted to get writing and publishing again and so made the decision to take the plunge and start up whilst leaving tarting up till later on. This blog is going to descend into 30 days of #LSNED and I'm going quick and dirty on that so it should leave lots of time! 

See you tomorrow 

Elliefantasy xx