Sunday, January 10, 2016

11 years of photos in 1 year while working full time. Sounds crazy?

Well this is how I did it.

The key products I used were: Project Life, Project Life App (available in Apple iTunes store and in Adroid store February 2016), and DropBox.

STEP ONE: ORGANIZE PHOTOS

One of the great features is how Project Life App links with DropBox. I thankfully have been backing up my pictures in DropBox for a long time. Mine were already organized. I organize by year and then categorize within. I now put the full date instead of just year because I can scroll in order.

I have a "PHOTOS" folder, then I have a folder for each year. Within the year I put "YEAR_MONTH_DAY_EVENT" as the file extension and drop them within.

Thankfully, I have been backing up my photos like this for awhile. I had to go back an organize 2012 because that's when I transitioned to using my phone over a point and shoot camera. I didn't have a great system and all the pictures were just backed up into my camera roll.

STEP TWO: CHOOSE A PATTERN/WORK IN "BATCHES"

What I mean by this is, choose how you are going to go through to make your pages. Are you going to start by year? Or by category? It took me a bit to get this down. My main goal was to create a family scrapbook. If I completed that, I would call it a success. I wanted to give my Mom and Dad a scrapbook by Christmas. To accomplish this, I did it by category. What are the biggest family holidays? Thanksgiving and Christmas. I did all the Christmases. Then Thanksgivings. Then family vacations. Then random holidays. Then random events. That way I tackled the biggest fish first and felt a snowball effect of accomplishment.


STEP THREE: ORDER MONTHLY FROM PROJECT LIFE APP
This project wil be crazy if you don't. I was also doing my own personal pages for 2014 and keeping up with 2015 at the same time. I put in one order a month to spread out the cost.
TIPS:

1. Use your spare time. Don't get on social media. Make a page. I used my spare time while waiting... at the doctor, oil changes, waiting on people, etc. You'll be surprised how much you can accomplish my using those 5-10 min time increments.

2. Done is better than perfect. My 2015 album has waaaaay more detail because I was doing it in real time. On everything in the past, I just wanted to get it done. The events are labled and maybe a sentence or two on journaling. I actually left white space if anyone wanted to add their own thoughts after printing out. Also, I didn't worry about a two page spread. Just made pages and organized later after they were printed out.

3. BACK UP THE IMAGES. O my goodness. I wish I had done this initially. I almost had the project done and then my phone was destroyed via water bottle. I lost everything and had to start over. You can now export your images straight to DropBox. Once you complete a page, click the icon on the bottom right corner to start the process. I always backup in 12x12 so I can print either size.

Stay tuned for a post on what is in each album, and I'll answer further questions on how I did it!

-Jordan


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