Scrapbook Saturday

Scrapbook Saturday # 9 – Organization Part 3

, 16 Comments

No layout again this week owing to the fact that my computer has crashed and has possibly even been burned too. Rather than spending time setting up my digi-stash on either Alfred’s or my mom’s laptop, and installing my software on either of the two devices, I decided I’d endure a weekend of no new downloads or actual scrapping. I just don’t want to spend all that time setting up and then when I’ve got me a better PC I’d be setting up on that again and taking things off of theirs.

Besides, not having the option to scrap on either of the two laptops will likely force me into action sooner than if I find that I can work on other people’s laptops comfortably. And truly, the sooner that I get new PC parts, the better.

But you all are not here to listen to me rant about my sleeping baby of a computer, are you? Nah, I didn’t think so.

Scrapbook SaturdayĀ 

This edition (thank you lord!) of Scrapbook Saturday is the final installment on my Organization series. If you haven’t read them yet, parts one and two are just clicks away. šŸ˜‰

So what is the organization method that I’ve found to work for me now?

It has to start from the time you download the files. Taking care of your stash then is so much easier, but I am first to admit that I don’t organize them that soon myself. Anyway, when you download your digiscrapping files, you must dedicate a folder for that – it just makes it all easier for them to be in one place.

I named a folder Scrapbooking – this was where my new downloads would go. In that folder, I create a new folder every week – using the start of the week as the date. So I have July 13, June 22, etcetera.

Remember my Digital Scrap Supply Store mega folder? When I’m ready to unzip files, I go to that folder and create a new folder with the same name as the folders I am getting the zipped files from (so I would also have July 13, June 22 and so on).Ā  These “dated” folders are only created as a guide for when I make backups of my files. It’s like a marker to remind me that a certain folder’s contents haven’t been backed up yet.

In the beginning, I organized the files with a folder for each designer – so in my Store you’ll see folders with designer names alongside folders with dates – but it was a nightmare to remember which files have backups already. Specially if you had something new to add to each designer’s folder every week or every couple of days. Now backing upĀ is an entirely different story and I know there’s a more hassle free option for that. But until I decide to spend money on Carbonite, I would have to rely on manually backing up my stuff. I only back up the week’s folder when all the downloads have been unzipped.

Next comes the fun part. As soon as I unzip a download, I open the folder and add it to Windows Live Photo Gallery (my current free software of choice). I’ve used Picasa too and it is also a good one for this next purpose. Once the contents of the freshly unzipped folder show up in Gallery, I start tagging. I batch tag the designer name and kit name onto all the files that came from the same folder. Then I tag the individual files. Remember some of the folder names I came up with from my post number 2? Well most of those I use as tags now.

Samples of tags I’ve used: background, solid, grunge, alpha, acrylic, pink, blue, violet, yellow, christmas, hearts, kids, floral, flower, frame, glitter, doodle

I’ve used so many I’ve lost count. I don’t necessarily have to remember what I used to tag all those stuff because in Windows Live Photo Gallery (unlike in Picasa), your tags are conveniently listed on the menu to the left hand side. So if I needed to pull up only stash from a particular designer, all I need is to key in the name, or click on the tag and the thumbnails will be filtered accordingly. If I want to use predominantly blue for a layout, I key in that color tag.

Having the files zipped in their own folders as the zipped downloads makes it convenient for crediting too. If I use a file, I just right click the thumbnail and choose to open containing folder. I open the TOU file that is likely to be in that folder and take note of designer name/website.

This system is workig for me but it may not work for everyone. I know I’ll tire of this system someday or I may find a better one. You can rest assured I’ll be sharing that with you too.

So how do you organize your digital scrapbooking files?

Scrapbook Saturday – Feet!

, , , , 10 Comments

It is still Saturday in the US and some other countries right? šŸ˜‰

So instead of speedwriting to make it before Saturday 11:59 PM Manila time last night, I slept. So here I am with a late SS post, and not even the third installment to my Organization series that I thought I’d be writing. Nonetheless, I have something even better! I have a new layout for the mini-album! Take a lookie:

All the photos were taken by my god-daughter Iskra, Chelle’s daughter, the same one with her tongue and kilikili exposed in a previous SS layout :).

I can’t wait to finish this project and start scrapping our vacation photos.

Don’t forget to visit Scrapbook Saturday HQ for the Blogroll! Go on and start with MammaDawg!

Edit: I forgot to include a link to the credits. Find them here: http://www.snapandscrap.tv/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=11732&cat=500&ppuser=946

Skipping Saturday!

, , , 2 Comments

Okay, I think I actually just skipped a whole day.

No, I wasn’t asleep all day nor was I tied up in one humongous task. I had about four hours’ sleep so I could get to work earlier than usual (thanks Debbie for swapping schedules with me today). But the one agent I was hoping to coach that early did not come in. I had about six hours to kill until my other agents had to report to work, so I cleaned out my mailbox and did various little tasks that for the life of me I just can’t remember right now. Remember what I said about skipping the entire day?

Back at home before 10PM, Alfred is here and is ready to sleep. His bag is packed, he gave Zune a bath, and he even managed to wash my slippers. So we now he didn’t skip the day.

I had dinner (yummy shrimps), and then started to setup my day bag.

After this post, I shall start to pack.

We are off to Bohol in a few hours people! I gotta pack in 30 minutes so I can still get sum shut eye. My parents are taking us to the airport at 6AM and we’ll be flying by 8.

This is going to be Alfred’s first plane ride, by the way, so you can be sure that I am going to document it well. Haha. I wonder how pale he’s gonna be at takeoff?

Anyways, it’s going to be four days of just the two of us in a strange province. We’ll see how it goes.

To those expecting my usual Scrapbook Saturday post, I hate to disappoint, in my excitement for the trip I couldn’t focus my mind on Part 3 of my Organization series. But do visit the other Scrapbook Saturday ladies, starting with MammaDawg, who’s back from her road trip. From there, make your way to the rest of the gang. If you aren’t participating yet, then now’s a good time to do so!

There’s Wifi access at the hotel we’ll be staying at, and we’ll be bringing a laptop. I’m not sure though how much time I’d get to hog this baby so I can’t promise I’ll go visiting or posting updates over the weekend. But know that I will try. šŸ™‚

Wow, it seems like ages ago since this post.

Wish us a safe trip, and pray for good weather!


Scrapbook Saturday #7- Organization Part 2

, , 12 Comments

Last week, we talked about organizing our photo stash. Today, I’d like to share one way for organizing your digital scrapbooking stash.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t anything new, and I’m even positive that I got the idea from a Scrap Girls tutorial for beginning digiscrappers. But since this was the first method I used to organize my stash, I’d like to share it with everyone tonight. šŸ™‚

There are two key assumptions to this method though:

  1. The designers name and package their files/kits with a certain way that includes the designer name/initials, and the kit name.
  2. That you organize your stash as soon as you download and unzip.

Now, because not all kits I downloaded conformed to assumption #1, and I didn’t always unzip the same day I download, I admit that this method proved to be quite tedious and took away from actual scrapping time.

Despite that, I still believe that it could be a great way to organize stuff. In fact, when I got down to do some actual scrapping, it was actually not that difficult to shop around my own stash and find things that would go well with my layout.

So what to do?

Set up your folder structure. Yes. This means that you need to prepare the folders in your hard drive in which you’ll be dumping stuff after you unzip. I’ve got a sample here:

I created a new folder inside My Documents, and labeled it SCRAP. Of course you can create your own folder elsewhere in your hard drive if you want. My real stash is actually in a secondary HD, and the folder name is Digi Scrap Store (because I think of my shop as a big store!).

Inside the SCRAP folder, I created FIVE basic subfolders that you can see in the screen shot:Ā BACKGROUNDS – or Papers,Ā ELEMENTS,Ā FRAMES, PREVIEWS, and TOUs (Terms of Use).

The next levelĀ of folders is where the fun begins. You can have as many sub-foldersĀ that you can think of within the five basic ones mentioned above.

For BACKGROUNDS, you may have subfolders perĀ COLOR or HUE. At home, I haveĀ a PINK-RED, BLUE-VIOLET, EARTH-BROWN, GREEN, YELLOW-ORANGE subfolders. I did have a separate folder for THEMED PAPERS though. That’s where papers for specific occasions would go (halloween, Christmas, etc.).

The same subfolders ofĀ color and hue follow for my ELEMENTS folder. Within each folder for a color, would be even more subfolders for the many types of elements/embellishments that exist! For example:

Ā Coming up with categories for your elements can be fun, but also sometimes confusing. Haha. Aside from these three, I have GLITTER, DOODLES, JOURNALLING MATS, and many others I can’t particularly remember right now!

With this particular method, it is quite easy to find papers and elements that would match the colors of the photos you are scrapping.

One thing that was a challenge though, is the fact that, going back to assumption #1, not all designers would put their name and the kit name in the file name for each paper and element in the pack. So, after unzipping, you would need to find time to rename everything to include the information. Of course, when I started organizing stuff, I wasn’t very diligent yet. So what happened was, I would use a paper or an element, and have a tough time identifying who made it or from what site/kit I took it from.

Next week, I’ll share another organization tip with you all.

In the meantime, don’t forget to visit the rest of the participants to Scrapbook Saturday. Start with this week’s host at Nothing but Purple.

I hope you find this post useful šŸ™‚


Scrapbook Saturday #6: Organizing

, 43 Comments

In nearly all digiscrapping sites and forums, you will find talk about organizing the digi-stash. With designers coming out with multiple new kits every couple of days, and freebies galore, the newbie digiscrapper easily finds herself not only out of hard drive space, but also at a loss as to which paper or element to use first!

If you’re just starting out with this hobby, then there’s no better time to start organizing your stash than now. Take it from me, I must have been in acquiring and organizing mode for a long time it actually took up the time I could have spent on actual scrapbooking.

For this edition of Scrapbook Saturday, I’d like to talk about Organizing our Photos

For me, the photos are still the star of any layout. Unless of course there is no actual photo to scrap.

We always had photos of special occassions in the family, all of which went to our numerous photo albums. There was a time though, that we didn’t have rolls of film developed. For some reason, we just put them in a shelf and we all seemed to have forgot about them.

In the days pre-digi, one could be budget conscious and would only take a few precious shots because there’s only one or two rolls of film. Sharing prints was also difficult because of the costs. Most of the time, we’d only print once and then share the negatives to those who would like to have reprints.

With digital cameras, we are now only limited to the size of storage we carry. Sharing is a snap too.

Photos are the number one digiscrapping ingredient that needs to be organized properly.

The My Pictures folder in my PC serves as my main dumping ground for photos. In the past, I never really thought about organizing photos. Each time I import photos from the camera to the PC, it just goes to one folder which I later rename (or not).

With my computer having crashed and reloaded several times through the years, I have lost some pictures (and videos) of important milestones. When I bought an external hard drive (EHD) and started organizing the files that I was to dump in there for safekeeping, I realized that I had so many picture folders all over the place. I had a hard time keeping track of them all!

From the scattered folders in the EHD, I used the My Pictures folder on my secondary drive as the root directory for all my photos. The ones I could easily group and identify, I placed in sub-folders with the event and year as titles.

There’s also a folder for my nephew Esban, within it are sub-folders depending on the occasions the pictures were taken.

Now, for newer photos, I have folders for each month. In them are sub-folders for each batch of photos taken.

Though we still have one more week in August, I already have a folder filled with this month’s photos – August 2008. It’s sub folders include Mama’s North Trip and Trinoma-UP friends; on the main folder itself are a number of random photos I’ve taken of our pets, the kids, and whatever else caught my fancy.

If you thought I’d actually have a tip here or a structure you could follow for organizing your photos, I’m sorry to disappoint. Ultimately, you gotta go with what will work for you.

I’ve been using Google’s Picasa for some time now but the last time I imported photos, I was disappointed with it. I am seriously considering finally using Windows Live Photo Gallery at home. I mentioned these two applications because they are both free, and have a functionality that will make even the least organized person, have organized photos.

TAGS

It doesn’t matter in which folder you saved your photos, if you tag them properly, it will be easy to track them down.

Tags are keywords or categories you can attach to your photos to easily identify them. These are saved on the photo’s metadata. In Picasa, or WLPG, you can run a search for specific tags, and the photos bearing them will be shown to you.

Say for example that I wanted to scrap a layout of each kid in our family opening their Christmas presents. I can run a search on my software for the following tags: Christmas, gifts, kids, plus the name of one kid. After I pick the photo, I can change the name in my string, run the search, and choose another.

Tagging will also help us organize the rest of the contents our digi-stash. More on that next time. šŸ™‚


EDITED:

Here are the pages I’ve made so far for my mini-album:

At the flower shop...

At the flower shop...

Iskra

Iskra

1 2 3

ARCHIVES

© Stitches & Words 2024
Powered by WordPress • Themify WordPress Themes
%d bloggers like this: