Project Shoebox: What 30 minutes can accomplish

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Today I gave myself 30 minutes on a timer to sort my first box of old photos. I chose this particular box because on Monday, when I located and identified all the stashes of memories around my house, I noticed that this box had old pictures of my dad, and as I have mentioned, I want to make him a book for his 80th birthday in June.

I finished today’s mission before the timer beeped. This is what I did in 27 minutes.

Emptied the photos onto the kitchen table.

I tried to find broad themes as I looked through the pile. This is what jumped out at me; photos of my dad from before he was married to my mom, photos from our cottage in Vermont, photos from my childhood home, sailing photos, photos of my brother, photos from a school trip I took in high school (1978!) random shots that didn’t fit one of the bigger themes. In broad categories like “my childhood home”, or “cottage”, the pictures spanned many years and occasions, but I put them all together for the time being.

The biggest challenge was to quickly look at a photo, decide what group it belonged to and move on. It was tempting to reflect and remember, but that’s for later.

I put each category into a large ziplock and labeled it.

Then I neatly arranged the ziplocks in my pretty basket and put it where I will see it daily. Not to induce guilt, but pride that I’m finally tackling this situation.

I found this in the box.

That’s my mom in the beige dress. What a shame the picture is so damaged. It’s been that way since I first saw it years ago. Maybe once it’s scanned I’ll be able to do some repairs on it digitally.

Have you started your own Project Shoebox? Or maybe you’ve been organized for years. I’d love to hear tips and inspiration if you have some to share.

Kim Reynolds

Free Premier weekend is here again!

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A couple of times a year Heritage Makers opens up the Premier Art collection for free, and this weekend is one of those times. Heritage Makers has over 90,000 pieces of art and backgrounds and close to 8000 customizable templates. And when I say customizable I don’t mean little tweaks, I mean you can add or delete anything, increase or decrease the number of photos, or the size of the photos. There is truly nothing like this product on the market.

The timing of this opportunity is great; right before Father’s day and June graduations. We all have so many photos stored in jpeg files and shoeboxes. (New project shoebox update tomorrow!) what a shame they are buried out of sight.

You’re wondering what the catch is? There isn’t a thing. Set up a free account, upload photos and start creating. Experiment with as many templates as you like, there is no obligation to purchase what you create (but you’ll want to!).

HM isn’t just books, although heritage books are the heart of the company. You can make greeting cards, posters, prints to frame, gallery wrapped canvas, playing cards, business cards, booklets, flyers…..

Email me if you want to know more, or would like help getting started kimrey@rogers.com you can sign up for a free account right now and start uploading pictures. The free access to the Premier art will begin 9pm Eastern time Friday May 3rd, and will continue until 2pm Eastern time, Tuesday May 7.To get an account with me as your consultant visit www.memorycandystudio.com

 Kim Reynolds

 

Getting my feet wet

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I invested about 45 minutes today locating the various stashes of photos around my house. I just took a quick peek inside, put a sticky note with a number on the container and wrote a brief note in my notebook.

For example, Box 3 – top shelf hall closet – Mostly pics from the Trenton house, variety of occasions.  Box 4 – my bedroom closet – Michelle’s baptsim, hockey photos of Matt, Charls’ trip to Greece, plus random family shots of the kids from that same time period.

Twenty-two baskets, boxes or old photo albums overall. I even found a briefcase with photos dumped inside. What a way to treat treasured memories!

It’s just a baby step, but if feels good to have a sense of where everything is. If you’re doing your own “Project Shoebox” and have more stashes than you’d get to in about 45 minutes (or you can’t spare 45 minutes), break it down to what feels possible and complete this step over a few days.

In box 11 I found pictures from my childhood and some of my parents early years. So since I’m planning to start a book for my Dad’s 80th birthday,  that’s the box I’ll start step three with tomorrow.

Kim Reynolds

 

Project Shoebox rebooted

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Well that didn’t go so well.

In my last post on February 27 I declared I was going to start organizing my photos. And here I sit on April 27 not even a little bit further along. And even worse, I avoided blogging because that post always made me feel guilty.

I could tell you all the “reasons” why nothing happened; how busy I was, how things are going to settle down after ____ (fill in the blank with any number of events, projects or obligations that are keeping me on the run at the moment). But those “reasons” aren‘t really the issue, because all those events, projects and obligations will be replaced by new events, projects and obligations. The real issue is I haven’t made organizing old photos a real, honest priority.

I’m sincere in my desire to get those pictures organized. So why haven’t I made it a priority? Because it feels too big, too overwhelming. The thought of it drains my energy.

My dad is turning 80 this summer. I want to make a book for him, that honours his life and what he means to our family. The thought of this project also overwhelms me. My heart wants it perfect. But because I kept putting it off, I now only have two months (including shipping time) if I want it for his party. There was always going to be a right time, a less busy time to get started. Except there wasn’t.

So I’ve made what feels like a doable plan. I’d love to have you join me and add your ideas, and hear about what you find when you start dipping into your own shoeboxes of photos.

Day one. Today I gathered supplies: a notebook to use throughout this process, some sticky notes, some large freezer bags and a large basket that I won’t mind having out where I’ll see it everyday. That wasn’t painful, and I justified one of the many decorative baskets I‘m addicted buying.

Kim Reynolds

Project Shoebox

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There’s an expression, “The cobbler’s children have no shoes.” The cobbler is so busy taking care of everyone else’s feet that he forgets what’s most important, his own family. 

I am the cobbler. But my issue isn’t shoes, it’s shoeboxes. I motivate others to get their memories out of shoeboxes, yet my photos are a mess. Not all of them, not the newest ones that I’ve taken since becoming an HM consultant, (although they could use a clean-up too). But the ones I took before I went digital, the shoeboxes of family photos (my kids are now 15 and 18), and older photos from my own childhood, those are not even remotely organized.

This is a public declaration that I will change that situation. And since I know many of you are in the same boat, I will post my progress here, and we can help and motivate each other. At the moment I’m not even sure how to start, but I will devote a bit of time each week, because it really matters.

I hope you’ll join me.

Keeping a project flow

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I’ve been working on the Disney book as I can fit it into my schedule and I soon realized that trying to design every page the way I designed page one would A) be too time consuming and even more importantly B) be a little over the top. Too much of a good thing.

So I didn’t do a design like page one until page seven.  To keep the project looking coheasive I decided that all the photos would be lined up along their edges (the view ruler function makes this simple). I also chose a consistent format for almost all the photos (6 point border, 5 point black drop shadow) I kept all the borders the same colour on facing pages and chose a colour from within the photos.  Keeping this flow allows the book to be bright and colourful without feeling chaotic. It also allows the occasional “wilder” design to stand out more.

It’s a good idea when doing facing pages, to check your preview often to see that the flow works across the two designs, and that the photos are aligned (if a graphic look is what you are shooting for).

The design of page seven is now more of a fun surpise after the linear graphic pages.

The station picture on the right was cropped and given some transparency to make it softer. The soft yellow glow under the other photos is yellow background paper with rounded corners, full blur and partial transparency.  Even though the design on the right was meant to stand out I still chose to use some matching elements, (balloons and clouds) and the same colour border on the photos. I also checked my preview often to ensure that while they were different there was still a flow from page to page.

The “Mickey” balloon was created using two smaller balloons as ears.

If you have any questions about these designs or would like to get started on your own projects email me at kimrey@rogers.com or sign-in or sign-up at www.memorycandystudio.com

Creating a soft edge

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I love the soft edges that can be created in photo programs – but I don’t have a photo program. Everything I do in my designs can be done by you in HM’s studio using the tools available to all of us Heritage Makers. (And have I mentioned lately that Studio accounts are FREE!).

I figured out soon enough that using paste-in-place and layering a photo on a photo I could create somewhat of a soft edge (Check out the video “Quick Photo Layer Technique” on the video page) but the top photo still had a hard edge. So I came up with a way that still isn’t perfect but I’m happy with the effect.

Here’s a visual followed by instructions

Step one: Place my Photo. Lock it.

Step two: Copy the photo, then paste-in-place. Crop the new top pic a little smaller. Lock. Blur the photo in the back at about 30%.
Step Three: Copy the top photo. Paste in place. This time shift the crop bars on the new top photo so it’s just a little strip that partly covers the clear photo and partly covers the blurred photo. Blur this little strip of a pic at about 19%. That little strip now covers the hard edge of the clear photo.

Step Four: Then paste-in-place again and do the same for the other side. Then repeat again for top and bottom. I hope that makes sense! If anyone is unclear email me at kimrey@rogers.com and I’ll help you out.

Setting a project style

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I had a chance to sneak in some more time on my 12 x 12 Disney book. It was so much fun to create the cover, that I’m going to keep the clustering and bright colours going throughout the book. But to avoid it being too over the top, I won’t go crazy on every page. And I’ve decided not to use background papers so the colours will stand out nicely on the white pages.

With a Disney book there is a temptation to let the pictures tell the story but I’d like to capture the story in words as well. This was our second trip to Disney, the kids were five years older than the first trip and we were celebrating the return of my husband from his deployment to Afghanistan.  I hope to be able to remember and capture the feelings and special joy we were sharing.

I created this opening page of the project by choosing photos from my husband’s arrival home. I chose oranges to compliment the tan of his uniform and to symbolize the warmth of Florida, (even though there was snow on the ground outside the airport in Ottawa).

I arranged the photos on the white page to show the progression of his arrival, the anxious kids and the reunion, then looked for fun frames to put around them. I chose three background papers, by putting “orange paper” in the art collection search bar. I made them into circles (put a value of 1000 in the rounded corners function and the circle will remain round as you make it larger or smaller). Then it was a matter of looking through the embellishments I had uploaded to my “Disney Collection” under my favourites tab. I would drag up anything that looked like it may work, then I just fiddled around trying to create a balance that pleased me. I chose blue as the compliment colour for the text becasue I love blue and orange together and because there was a blue square in one of my background papers and my daughter was wearing a blue/green hoodie in the photo. I added the blue button and the blue star to the left of the design to be the balancing counter point to the hoodie on the right.

Only 20 pages to go! If you’d like advice on starting a project email me at kimrey@rogers.com  or visit my Heritage Makers consultant site at Memorycandystudio.com 

Slush

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I just finished mopping up slush from the tile in the entrance to my home. Even if you are reading this two days or two weeks from this moment, I will likely have just finished mopping up slush again. It’s as common a chore as retrieving rogue drinking glasses from all over the house.

When I whined to my mother that no matter how big the floor mat, the boots are always just an inch or two to the left, dripping into the grout, she of course laughed. Because years ago, she had a mat and I had boots and the world had slush.

So that got me thinking about all the things that stay the same. The way sun feels through the window in the spring, the way the air smells almost sweet in April, the crack of thunder, birdsong, the taste of ketchup on a salty fry, the shape of a snow angel, the rich scent of cut grass. All these little things that were the same for our grandparents, even our great, great great grandparents.

I find that very comforting in a world that seems to change overnight. The next “version” or “update” of something is always just around the corner.

I’m warming up to the idea that women (we all know it was the women) have been mopping up slush for hundreds of years. It makes it feel more significant.

Life gets big and loose. We get so far from ourselves, let alone the distance to the generations before us. It’s hard to be clear about our place in the big picture. Maybe slush, sand in a sneaker, the crunch of an apple, the smell of wet mittens; the things that don’t change, are the threads that run through our lives and cinch us all together.

That being said, I’m still going shopping to buy a bigger floor mat.