a day in the life: april

For the longest time, I’ve been feeling a little like I’ve run out of stories to tell. It’s resulted in me not having much inspiration to pick up the camera (or in this case, my phone). I needed to get excited documenting our lives again, especially as at the time, we were also planning our trip to Bangkok.

I found this free class by Ali Edwards where she details some journaling techniques she employs for her storytelling, and her first video suggested doing a “day in the life” type of documenting. I had participated in her Week in the Life back in 2011 (and took photos in 2012, but did not do anything with them). I figured it was worth a shot. So I took some photos, screenshots, etc on April 22. It was a relatively light day for me, though I had been gearing up for a program and beating an article deadline.

THE DETAILS | Woke up to what’s been the general temperatures of Manila these days. It’s definitely summer. Managed to make a dent in my email. Gearing up for work involves playing my Morning Playlist and drooling over Pinterest. Simple breakfast of pan de sal and my sole cup of coffee for the day. Good an awesome surprise in finding out I had won Get It Scrapped’s massive giveaway of a subscription to Masterful Scrapbooking + $50 worth of digi products! I was extra thrilled to see that Debbie had recognized my name and username from Twitter and The Digishow While working, also consuming my first liter of water in the morning. It’s been a habit I’ve formed since January to drink at least 2 liters/day. The hubs leaves for work, around 11AM. Still full from breakfast, so I have a cobbled-together lunch of leftover pasta, steamed broccoli (with butter!) and some Gouda slices. Most of my afternoon is split with preparing for program on Thursday (coordinating with Jennie, fixing my final checklists) and transcribing an interview for an article I have due. The hubs sends me an email asking me to choose from which tours we want for our upcoming trip to Bangkok. Waffling between the Grand Palace or River Cruise. As a treat, the hubs and I did a quick milk tea run just outside our condo’s compound. To wind down the day, I watched (and giggled over) the latest episode of We Got Married: Global Edition.

ON THE PROCESS | I imported all my iPhone photos and screenshots into Adobe Lightroom. I love this program! From there I did some super quick edits and figured out how to make a collage, yay! I didn’t want to spend time wrangling my photos into square templates. Also, these photos are really meant to stand together as part of one day. I’m not really sure I’ll be scrapping them. We’ll see.

OVERALL THOUGHTS | It was nice to get back into a daily documenting format. I didn’t feel pressured, my process was easy and straightforward, and it’s kinda cool seeing my photos in a collage like that. I may end up doing the same for our Bangkok trip. And even better, it’s made me more mindful of the little details that make up my life. It’s pretty easy to fall into the belief that because I’m home most of the time, my life is snoresville. It’s not as bombastic as other people’s, for sure, but I think I’m more conscious of gratitude for my little things. Also, if I *do* want more excitement, I gotta generate it on my own.

it’s WITL time again! :)

SO excited! I had so much fun documenting our week last year and can’t wait to do it again. I know it’ll look different because for about three days during that week I’ll be out on some work. I have a lot of ideas on how to do it–one option is to just use Lynnette’s templates, but I may go even more simple than that–like photos on one page and text on another. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my WITL album last year, but man it was a lot of work!

Are you joining this year? It really is a lot of fun when a bunch of people do it together! For more info, visit Ali Edwards’ blog where she details everything about this project.

spring cleaning update!

Apparently what I need to keep updating this blog is to do more spring cleaning, haha! But seriously, giving myself some organizing goals is working for me so far. I’ve started the merciless purging and am about 80% done. I can’t wait to see how much space I’ve carved out for myself. After this will be the (gulp) getting-layouts-printing-ready phase.

Also, at the end of the month I’m thinking of investing in another EHD solely for my scrapping goodies, and then keep one EHD solely for my photos, and then use Nap for backup. I’m pretty sure I can get a really good deal on one given how prices are dropping as bigger-capacity devices pop up.

Anyway, as part of my cleaning up is fixing up (FINALLY!) two of my 2011 projects and giving them an update. Aaand I’m giddy because I figured out how to create a gallery within a post! (Oh the geeky things that delight me!) So, here are my updated 2011 Faves and Thanx Project posts. Thanks for taking a peek!

yup. still here :)

I’ve had a wicked busy February and March so far, but sooo rewarding, thank goodness! I really feel like I’m MOVING work-wise I’ve done a ton of local travel, but for the rest of this month I’ll be largely home-based, so I decided to jump into this for the week:

Ooooh yeah! It’s time for my yearly purging of scrap supplies I have no intentions of using anymore, and homaighad I’m thinking of FINALLY getting some layouts ready to print. Like maybe 100. I need to figure out how to batch-process. And then hope, once I’ve started it, that my poor laptop doesn’t keel over.

Today I got the ball rolling by backing up some files and deleting about 50GB from the lappie harddrive, woot! Tomorrow I’ll organize some new scrap supplies, then get to purging. I know as of September last year I have about 180GB worth of product. Aaaand I only return to play with about…30% of it? That may even be a way bloated percentage, lol.

So here we go! Is your computer metaphorically bursting at the seams? Wanna see if you can clear some precious harddrive space in your EHD? Wanna laugh at my pathetic attempts at digitally cleaning up and cheer me on anyway? You can join us over at the Nettio Designs blog, where Lynnette’s hosting this awesome Clean-a-thon

OLW + 2012 plans

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On December 31 I looked up and for the first time in a very long while, with the brilliant colors of fireworks right in front of me, I felt full of hope and excitement for the coming year. When the hubs said, “It’s midnight,” and dozens of fireworks punctuated his statement, I smiled and thought: Here we go. It’s 2012.

I think because for the first time, I felt like I had things planned. It wasn’t about getting through the year, it’s about making it as awesome as I possibly can.

My One Little Word for 2012 is MOVE. As in:
> move on from past hurts and damaging, self-sabotaging thoughts;
> move my @ss and become physically stronger by incorporating regular exercise into my days again;
> move forward on plans I’ve thought about, written about, and planned about in the last couple of months;
> move to my own rhythm and beat and focus on what I love, never mind people’s judgements.

For the first time, I feel so ridiculously excited to work on this word in my life. I feel it resonate in me and become a mantra I mutter under my breath when I am faced with choices to make or tasks to do. When my heart settled on this word, as gently and snugly as wrapping an afghan around myself, I felt hope again. I felt like I could do anything. Which is pretty awesome to feel at the beginning of the year.

In fact, I felt it even when I got a bad case of allergic rhinitis (uncontrollable sneezing, eye-watering, sniffles, etc) due to all the gunpowder smoke and residue after all the fireworks. That counts for something, right?

I do have a major project in the works that I’d love to finish and share by end of the quarter. I started work on it in November and took a break in December, but I really want to get back to it. As for life goals for the year, I’m choosing to focus on three major things: this blog–which I am restructuring to be more of a scrapping blog than anything else (with bits of my life thrown in); my overall health–a really scary incident in December drove home the point that my life has gotten too sedentary, and I choose to love myself and take care of myself with regular exercise and a better diet, which I want to document here to hold myself accountable; and celebrating my worth with little projects and tasks that I enjoy doing, which include scrapbooking, taking care of the hubs and our home, and reconnecting with friends. The last bit I am being really flexible with: I do have a list of stuff I’d love to accomplish, but one of my other mantras is to be gentle with myself if I don’t get to do all of them. It’s been a struggle, but I’m learning how to forgive myself and just keep moving forward.

By keeping it simple and streamlined, I know I can create more movement, which is ultimately what I want 2012 to be known for! Now I’d like to know: what do you want your 2012 to be about? What are you aiming for? What are you excited about?

end-of-year project updates

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I’m supposed to be wrapping gifts at the moment–I can’t believe Christmas is two weeks away! I haven’t been in a holiday mood for many years now. I often feel like I’m going through the motions of whatever holiday obligations I have in the last few years (with the exception of going to reunions and Christmas parties, lol). Instead, I was going over my list of projects I’ve been involved in this year and finalizing/fine-tuning what projects I’d like to do for next. I have to admit that it’s largely in part to this week’s topic on The Digishow. 

That said, here’s a quick recap of what I’ve accomplished this year:

- Thanx Project: I’ve been doing this off and on, and am happy with the cards I’ve been able to scrap. It’s easy with a template. I’m going to continue this for 2012, but I’d like to be more regular about it. Maybe posting 10 cards a month would be fun The awesome thing with this project is I never had a set end-date for it. After all, we can’t ever run out of things to be grateful for, right?

- 2011 Faves: Inspired by Lynnette’s own series of faves, I’ve been surprised at myself at being able to keep up with it! I’m in the middle of documenting my December and have scrapped until October. I really enjoyed doing this this year and am thinking of how to take it to the next level. My layouts are posted in respective galleries but I haven’t updated this main one. Once I finish my November layout I can update it, methinks. 

- New52: Sadly, I stopped blogging about what I was doing maybe in February or March! But I kept up with it, and have missed only about three weeks! I kept thinking about how I was going to document them properly (aside from simply listing them down each week) and in the end just got overwhelmed with it. LOL I have no idea what I’m going to do with this list and have a vague idea of putting it together into a double-page layout. 

- A Week In The Life: SO happy that I got to participate in this and scrap the whole thing! It was difficult the last three days and I vowed to make my album simpler for next year. Yep, I think I’d like to do this again next year–it would be awesome to see how similar/different our lives are now, especially as we moved this year. 

- Project Scrap Stash: Tackling the very daunting task of finally organizing my digi supplies terrified me, but Kayla Lamareaux convinced me to do it, lol. I’m SO SO happy I finished it and it’s really made a difference when I am looking for specific items in my stash. Certainly it’s curbed my shopping, haha! However, right now I’m busy syncing/reconnecting my catalog to my stash folders because I moved to a laptop and Windows 7. It’s taking a while, partly because of how I imported my previews and partly because I’m just so overwhelmed with holiday stress, gah! I hope to finish this by end of the year. 

- Goodreads 2011 Reading Challenge: This is definitely one of my favorite accomplishments for the year! I hadn’t been reading regularly at all since…college? So I set myself up with the goal of reading 30 books. Well, in April I ended up doubling my declaration, and at this moment, I’ve finished 76 books (127%)! Not only did this goal get me back into reading and finding new books, but I’ve also found new manga titles to read as well and devoured a fair amount of volumes, lol! 

In an effort to streamline my life and so I have better focus, I’ve been busy mentally “paring down” what i don’t need and what I want. In a way I *am* happy that having an editor’s mindset allows me to be almost merciless in taking away what I don’t need, even when I’m in the iron grip of being sentimental In the meantime, I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished and look forward to a more productive 2012!  

What projects have you finished this year? 

oopsie

Things are gonna look a wee bit wonky for a bit, as I decided to change up my theme. Which of course means mucking up all sorts of settings, lol. I’m reeeeally trying to be good at having a cleaner-looking blog–which is all the better to showcase any layouts I’ll share and whatnot. In the meantime, thanks for letting me make a mess

project scrap stash: the misc stuff

I talked a lot about how I finally buckled down and organized my scrap stash–and my awesome results. I emailed Kayla about them and was so super tickled to see she’d tweeted my post. I have to admit I’ve now become a disciple of her method and cannot talk enough about my love for Adobe Lightroom.

Anyway, I thought I’d do another post tackling other misc things involving organizing my supplies. These came up during and after the process for me, so they may not have any real order.

First off, I talked a lot about my keyword process and how I took a peek at Kayla’s before developing my own. In case anyone needs it, here are my keywords (in Google Docs format). This is entirely based on my thought process and as a result, usually when I tag my previews I can pretty much predict which keywords to use.

Misc tagging: CTs

- I’m part of CT at CatScrap.com, so I created additional keywords for the store. So every designer who sells in CatScrap, I add an additional keyword of “catscrap.” That way, if I click on the “catscrap” keyword I get ALL the product from the store. This makes it way easier to “shop” my stash when I need to do 100% CatScrap layouts. The same can be said for my individual designer CTs.

- CatScrap also has quarterly collaborations, called the CatWalk. To keep these products organized, under my “catscrap” keyword I have the year and season of each collection (“fall 2010″ or “summer 2011″)

(click to enlarge)

Misc tagging: Collabs

I had the hardest time figuring out how to tag collab kits! Finally I decided on the following:

- I added a general “collabs” category, under which are keywords of various stores. I tag store collabs this way.

- For collabs with two to three designers, I would tag the preview with each designer.

- For any collab that doesn’t fall into those classifications (more than three designers, charity kits, mega collabs, etc) I simply tag them as “collab.” Simple and sweet

My purpose for tagging individual designers with collabs is that sometimes I remember only one designer and even the colors or theme of the kit.

Searching my stash: There are two main ways I search my stash–I simply click on the number to the right of each keyword and it pulls up everything I’ve tagged with that keyword. OR I can type out what I need in the text/metadata field above the thumbnails:

(click to enlarge)

What I’ve realized about myself & my stash as I did this:

- I have a LOT of alphas I’d forgotten about

- I have a LOT of date elements I’d forgotten about

- For some bizarre reason, I have a LOT of kits with the color combination of green, orange, and yellow (I like yellow. But green and orange? Hmmm). Lots of purples and neutrals too (but this I understand because I like purple and neutrals).

- I have a whole bunch of spring- and summer-themed kits. I even have loads of fall kits, and we don’t even HAVE fall over here! My stash of winter kits is laughable, obviously.

What happens next:

- As I scrap with my organized stash, I’ll be figuring out a new workflow (slight deviations from before, I expect) and will likely fine-tune my organizing in tandem with it.

- I’m considering organizing my photos through Kayla’s system as well (she has a separate section for photos). Maybe in a month or so, because–we’re moving! Again! LOL Packing has been hellish because I honestly cannot believe how much crap I’ve managed to accumulate in a year and a half, but then again, forced purging oftentimes for me is the best way I can stay organized.

If you want to learn more about Kayla’s organization system using Lightroom, visit her site here.  

project scrap stash: i’m organized!

It’s inevitable that an issue digiscrappers come across is how to organize their stash of products. I’ve long envied those scrappers who obviously work with some kind of system of organization, and sometimes it’s evidenced by the pages they do. Cindy Schneider is one example–she has the mutant ability to pull items out of various kits and put them together into cohesive, beautiful layouts.

YEARS of starting and restarting organizing methods has only shown me how glaringly “messy” I am with my stash. Thus, I decided to finally overhaul my organizing.

Pre-project:

The problem: I keep forgetting what OTHER designers (outside of my CTs) I had in my stash and whose kits I’d bought but wasn’t using.

Two, I’d also bought various element packs that had never seen the light of day on a layout. One example is my collection of daters. I LOVE date elements. But if you look at my pages there’s nary a one used. More often than not I end up scribbling the date in a tiny font somewhere. Of course, this reality doesn’t prevent me from buying more date elements. :S I can say the same as well for brushes and stamps.

Three, my scrapping style is eclectic. I like all kinds of styles and will try various techniques on my layouts. Which means that often I get into a “mood” when I go shopping. I’ll buy a slew of bright, happy, cutesy kits, or suddenly go all vintage. I often ended up buying kits that looked similar.

Enter Project Scrap Stash. My objective is to clearly see what I have and armed with that knowledge, scrap layouts that utilize my stash and then direct my future purchases to product I actually don’t have. Bottom line, I need to find what I need when I need it, and I need to save money!

What I’ve done in the past: When I first started back in 2006, I was scrapping entirely with freebies. I broke kits apart into papers and elements. This was well and good with a stash of about 300 items, but once I started getting into CTs and actively posting in the galleries, this became cumbersome and frustrating. (At one point, I had 200 unzipped kits/element packs!)

 I’d read a LOT of reviews and tutorials on using ACDSee Photo Manager, so I started tagging my stash with it. Shortly after I started, I got really overwhelmed. I then resolved to only tag my previews.

What didn’t work: I got lazy tagging in ACDSee. :S Also, tagging using someone else’s keywords (or organizational method) got tedious and boring. I realized I wasn’t tagging according to how I think when I scrap. As a result, it would take me ages to tag a single designer’s products, even if all I tagged were the previews.

As I was beginning to think an organized stash would be nothing but a pipe dream, I listened to Episode 5 of The Digishow, where Kayla Lamoreaux guested and told of her own organization process. This class was free until the end of August.

Why I like Kayla’s system:

- I am a kit scrapper. I currently have my stash “organized” according to designer and in that folder the various products I’ve bought from them. With Kayla’s system, I can keep that structure in my EHD, and use Lightroom to access them directly in Windows Explorer. I suppose the same can be said for ACDSee, but I like LR’s interface more (it seems faster somehow, AND it doesn’t randomly crash on me). Seeing as I use LR anyhow to edit my photos, I ended up uninstalling ACDSee and saving up on RAM and harddrive space. Woot!

- Importing and tagging only my previews shrank my catalog considerably. (Kayla’s system includes converting any PNG files you have to TIF) I work on a 7-year-old PC still running on XP, so I appreciated the extra space and RAM.

PROJECT SCRAP STASH

Pre-tagging to-do’s:

- I went through my entire stash and purged what I didn’t need or hadn’t used/had no intentions of using. I whittled it down to a “modest” size of about 150GB.

- Created my “pre-nup”–basically an identical backup of how I physically organize my stash (folder-tree system in Windows Explorer with folders for each designer)

- Sat down and thought about what inspires me to scrap and scribbled a process chart for how I think when I scrap (there’s a peek of what it looks like in the photo above). Kayla says it better. I can’t stress how much this helped me when I was coming up with my own keywords (though I did take a peek at hers). When I eventually started tagging it went by quicker than when I was tagging in ACDSee, because I already knew what was important to me: having everything by designer, by color, and by theme. While I was tagging one preview at a time, I could already mentally figure out which keywords to use for each.

(click to zoom in)

My workflow: 

1. Import previews of kits, element packs, templates, etc per designer. I chose to do previews because (1) it’s far less overwhelming, and (2) I’m a kit scrapper and rarely pull stuff from other kits.

2. Delete any imports that AREN’T previews (this was the only bleh part of the project because I was doing it manually and I didn’t know how to speed up this process)

3. Keyword previews. The least I could do was keyword the designer, the color, and theme of each kit

(This is modified from Steph’s method. I adapted hers because like me, she only wanted to tag her previews and not every bit of product she owns)

My workflow as I keep downloading new product: 

- Just to keep things straight in my head, all new downloads (whether bought or used for CT assignments) go into a Tag Me! folder. This is so I know immediately what I haven’t tagged yet.

- I move these to their corresponding designer folders.

- I look for the preview of each kit/element pack and tag them accordingly.

Results so far: I’m DONE. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve tagged my entire stash of scrapbooking products and photo editing things (LR presets, photo actions, overlays, etc) I was able to finish everything in about six days, averaging about three hours a day. Considering I work on a dinosaur of a computer, this was nothing compared to the most-likely months-long process it would take me to tag everything in ACDSee.

What was so amazing for me is once I started, I was like a woman tag-possessed until I was done. Every time I sat in front of the computer I would plug in my EHD and start tagging, even if it was only a few folders at a time. Something about this whole process just got me so excited!

I’ll do another post on some other bits and pieces, like how I add in CT products, how I can search in LR, and what I’ve discovered about myself and my stash. I’m just giddy with glee that for the first time in YEARS, I’m all caught up organizing. I’m sure I’ll need to fine-tune things as I scrap, but for the most part I am thrilled with being able to actively search my stash for what I need! Thank you SO much for introducing this system, Kayla!

For more information on Kayla’s system (and she explains it SO well!) have a listen at Episode 5 of The Digishow and check out her site, where she still has her class posts up.

week in the life: the process

 

Okay, okay, I promise, this’ll be my last Week in the Life post for the project! As a sort of summary of doing the project I thought I’d also share the process I went through to get my album.

First off, here’s my completed album (again) in slideshow:

Week in the Life 2011

And this was my workflow:

WITL Documentation:  Spent the week taking photos and documenting thoughts and events. I used Ali’s PDF printouts and thought I would use my OhLife account, but turns out I quite liked scribbling things down instead of typing it. At night before sleep when Mark and I talk a lot, I type a quick note on my phone and record it on the paper sheets the next morning.

The PDF sheets are always on top of my desk. I clipped them together using a tiny alligator clip and every so often I would scribble down thoughts or events as they happened. I especially loved how Ali had boxes that indicate thoughts I had, conversations, things to be grateful for (since it is my theme for the whole project), and favorite moments. It helped to organize my thoughts as I had them. It also helped me figure out how to put together my journaling.

During the day, since I spend the majority of my time in front of the computer, I took a lot of screenshots using Paint! I made a folder on my desktop and stick the shots in there. I had shots of work I was doing, sites I was visiting, tweets, etc. Majority of the time I was at home by myself so aside from just doing the same chores, what varied was my work and the places I visited online.

The next day, I would download my photos from my camera to the folder I created on my desktop (where my screenshots are).

WITL Album Preparation: Products to use: I’d determined beforehand which kits and other materials I would use. And I’m just a wee bit OCD in that I figured out which fonts I wanted to use as well (about three fonts, tops) and the color to use.

Product list & links

Papers (some blended) and elements from:

Kismet by Creashens

Everyday Flair by Creashens

Everyday by SSD designers (scroll down the post)

10080 Minutes by Traci Reed

Dog-eared by Traci Reed and Meghan Mullens

Painted Words by Designs by Lili (retired)

You Mini Line stacks by Ali Edwards

You Wordart by Ali Edwards

Templates from:

Scallop template from Template Toolbox 3 by Gina Miller

Bracket template from Birchwood: Clipped by Zinnias & Swallowtails

Misc:

Fonts: Clarendon Lt Light, District Thin, Marydale, LaCarte Pen

B&W action used: Florabella B/W Vanilla

Photo-editing: I use Lightroom 2 SOLELY to edit photos, not to organize them. My computer harddrive is so small that most of my stash and photos are on an EHD, so I don’t bother. I LOVE Lightroom–it makes photo editing SO freaking easy! It is photo editing for lazy people. Anyway, I started collections/folders for each day and edited the photos there (at this point I’d already chosen which ones I wanted) and exported the edits back to their original folders on my harddrive. I scrap using Windows Explorer open so to have everything there works for me.

WITL Album Scrapping

a. For each spread, I ended up using a mix of the 10080 Minutes Slip-Ins and the Templates of Traci Reed. I resized everything to 11.5 inches all around, so I could have a border of my kraft paper background.

b. First, I’d determine how much journaling I had, where to put it, and then choose papers and journal mats to use.

c. Then I’d figure out where to put the photos and which photos to use and clip them to the canvas.

d. Then I’d add little bits and details, such as the date, day, weather, what I ate, etc. I’d cluster elements in some spaces.

e. Lastly I’d fill in the journaling–I followed Ali’s organization in her PDF printout so I had spaces for “grateful for,” “overheard,” and “notable events.”

What Worked

- Editing photos as soon as I could, so it didn’t seem overwhelming to me

- Determining beforehand what materials to use. I ended up putting EVERYTHING in one go-to folder for easier access (since I scrap using Windows Explorer) during the process. I did end up not using some products and adding some, but it was very minimal.

- Determining my “pre-formats:” this meant what fonts to use (I didn’t want to use too many), color of my journaling, measurements of background papers, B&W photo action to use, etc. I wanted everything more or less uniform in the overall look.

- Ali’s documentation sheets–they provided a structure for my journaling and random thoughts I had during the day

- Scrapping as soon as the documentation process was over! While everything was still fresh and my enthusiasm high, I did an average of a spread a day. I did falter mid-way for my last three days, but I think I would’ve procrastinated for much longer if I hadn’t done this earlier.

- Making time to scrap this–I also had CT assignments, work assignments, offline obligations, so while I ended up doing less aimless Internet surfing, I got to finish this album. YAY!

What Could’ve Worked Better

- It took a lot of time (too much!) to figure out where to put my photos and journaling in the templates I used! I think next time I should just put all photos in one page and all journaling in another. Not as visually appealing, but mid-way through the project I was so freaked at how much time it was taking and I didn’t scrap for three or four days!

- I was dealing with HUGE layered files with all the papers and photos I was clipping unto templates. Definitely need to upgrade my PC to handle the load.

- using Paint for my screenshots–I needed more hi-res ones and I neglected to check the resolution of the ones I was getting. Next time I should just save screenshots on Photoshop.