Scrapbooking and the Adventure of Travel

POSTED ON June 13, 2011 IN Memory Keeping

I have been eagerly anticipating June this year for one reason and one reason alone – vacation time!

Adam finally had a rare lull in his job earlier this month so we decided to make the most of it with a nine-day trip to New York City. Although Adam had been to NYC before as a teen, this was my first ever trip to the Big Apple. As a city girl at heart, I could NOT have been more excited!

I have to say I absolutely LOVED New York. Yes LOVED, in all caps. If I could have stayed there forever, I would have. It was everything I expected it would be and oh-so-much more.

Our week-long vacation was jammed packed full of awesomeness including a taping of The Daily Show, the hot award-winning Broadway show The Book of Mormon and even a Yankees vs Red Sox game. (Be on the lookout for a NYC highlights post coming later this week!)

The only downside to the trip? Having to come back home.

Of course I know all good things must come to an end and now that we have returned home, the scrapbooker in me is thinking about only one thing: how I want to document our trip.

As I mentioned during my 5th Scrap-i-versary, one of my scrapbooking goals this year is to document more of our traveling adventures.

I LOVE to travel but these stories very rarely make it into my scrapbooks.

Why?

Because I find the idea of whittling down hundreds of photos and memorabilia into a cohesive album that somehow captures the overall amazingness of our trip completely overwhelming.

Please tell me I’m not the only one.

But I made the decision before we headed to New York that this trip would be my starting point for this goal and I’m going to stick with it. Hooray for goal setting leading to action!

Introducing From Adventure to Album: How To Document Your Trips, Travels and Adventures

Today marks the first post in a new series here on the blog which I’m calling From Adventure to Album: How To Document Your Trips, Travels and Adventures.

I’ll be sharing my process for how I plan to go from travel adventure to completed travel album and breaking down how I deal with photos and memorablia, album design and journaling as well as sharing any other fun things that happen along this album-creating journey.

Since this is my first attempt at an album of this nature, you can guarantee there will be some hits, misses and most likely a few laughs at my expense, haha, and of course I’ll be sharing it all here with you.

To get things started, I thought today I’d share a little bit about what scrapbooking-related gear I take with me when I travel.

My Scrapbooking-Related Gear When I Travel

I will be the first to admit I am a notorious over-packer. I am always struggling to find the balance between packing what I need with what I think I might need.

(Note to self: A heavy winter coat is a NEED in January…even in Florida. Learned that lesson the hard way, haha.)

But when it comes to packing my camera and scrapbooking-related gear, I like to think I’ve gotten it down to an art. Whether I’m driving or flying, traveling by myself or with Adam, what I take with me rarely changes from trip to trip and for the most part I use the majority of what I bring.

Here’s a quick photo I snapped as I was packing for our trip:

Let’s break it down a bit more, shall we?

1) My trusty 5 Million Dollar Crumpler Camera Bag:

I’ve used this bag as my camera bag for five years now and I love it just as much as when I first bought it. The thick strap and light weight make it super comfy to wear around and the padding provides just enough protection without being too bulky. This baby even kept my camera dry in a typhoon in Japan!

If you have a ton of camera gear, the 5 Million Crumpler may be a bit small for your needs but I’m able to fit my Canon Rebel XT, two lenses (one on the body), an extra battery, camera cards and remote as well as my wallet, keys and phone. It’s a tight squeeze but perfect for my needs most of the time.

2) Kelly Moore b-hobo bag:

The Kelly Moore b-hobo bag is a new addition to my travel gang.

I’ll write a longer review about it eventually (I wanted to wait until after this trip) but in short, I don’t find it to be nearly as comfortable as my Crumpler, especially when using the messenger-style strap.

But it was perfect for those situations where I was dressed up and wanted to carry something more purse-like rather than a camera bag. I also used it while traveling through the airport and it worked great.

3) Canon Digital Rebel XT:

Almost five years old and this beauty is still going strong.

(Well other than a slight snafu when Adam attempted to clean off the inside of the viewfinder with a linty shirt, haha.)

I’m definitely feeling ready for an upgrade but the great thing about this camera is it’s small and light – perfect for when I’m on the go.

Not that that stopped me from ogling the beefier Canon cameras at the B&H Photo Superstore in NYC, haha.

4) Sigma 30mm 1.4 prime lens:

When I’m home, this lens rarely leaves my camera. I love it!

I’ve used it for entire Disneyland trips before in the past but I didn’t use it as much on this trip because the 30mm wasn’t really wide enough for a lot of city shots. It did come in handy indoors, especially in restaurants and at night.

Before we left, I debated about renting a second wider prime lens but I ultimately decided I didn’t want the weight of the extra lens. I think it was the right choice since I wouldn’t have needed it that often and it would have been one more thing to carry around everyday.

5) Canon EF-S 17-85mm 4-5.6 IS zoom lens:

I don’t use this lens at home very much but it is my go-to lens when I travel.

It’s not the fastest or sharpest lens out there but the focal length is hard to beat as a walkaround lens on a crop body like the Rebel XT.

I’d say I used this lens at least half of this trip, maybe more. The wide end was especially useful for capturing buildings and such.

6) Six Compact Flash cards – two 2GB cards and four 1GB cards:

I’m sure I could replace these cards for larger ones at a lot lower cost than what I paid for them five years ago, haha, but I like the small cards because in the event something happened to one of them (like they break or I lose one), at most I’m only loosing a day or half a day’s worth of photos.

The taped numbers were Adam’s doing as a way to help me keep track of which cards I’ve used. Mostly because he got tired of me hunting in my bag for an unused card, haha.

I like to use the 2GB cards first (#5 & 6) so I know if I get to card #4, I know I need to unload my cards before too long. I also now keep the unused cards in a ziploc baggie so when I need to grab a new card on the go, I can easily find one that is empty. (Adam gets a lot less grumpy about my photography this way, haha.)

A bit of camera card advice:

If you’re unsure about how many cards you need for an upcoming trip, I’ve found a good rule of thumb for me is to figure an average of 100 photos per day of the trip.

Of course, your shooting style may be different than mine, but since some days I take more photos than others, it seems to work out about right.

I shoot in RAW so I’m able to get about 100 photos on a 1GB card with my 8 megapixel Rebel XT. 8GB=8 days. Since we were gone 9 days, I ended up clearing one 2GB card off (I used about half of it) to get me through the end of the trip.

7) Camera battery charger and extra battery:

I kept my charger plugged at all times into the base of the lamp so I would see it everyday as we left. No forgotten batteries here!

8 ) Seagate EHD:

When I clear photos off a camera card, I like to back them up to this drive as well so they are in two places – my laptop and the EHD. Just a little bit of extra insurance in case my compy goes wacky.

9) GorillaPod Tripod:

We didn’t use this much this trip since we didn’t want to carry it around but it can be a useful tool in the right situation. I’d like to use it more in the future.

10) Mini Three-Ring Binder

I got this at The Container Store (found here) and I love it because it’s small – just 7×9. It’s great for having a place to right down notes or thoughts as you travel.

11) Plastic pocket for holding papers and memorabilia:

Another item I picked up at The Container Store. It’s 8.5×11 which is perfect for holding any printed papers (we had a lot of e-tickets we purchased ahead of time) as well as being a storage place for any memorabilia picked up through the trip. It was pretty full by the end of the week with all the stuff I collected!

12) FujiFilm Instax Mini 25:

This is a new toy so I’d only used it a few times before our trip but I’m glad I took it with us. The photos aren’t amazing or anything but they have a cool vintage vibe to them that’s pretty fun. I only wish I would have remembered to pull it out more often. Oh well, next time!

13) Canon Wireless camera remote:

Handy for getting shots of both Adam and I together.

14) Hoya Polarizer filter for my 17-85mm lens:

For making sunny skies pretty and blue.

15) Compact Flash card reader:

For emptying my Compact Flash cards since my MacBookPro doesn’t have any card slots. There’s a cord for it too, it’s just not in the picture. I usually keep this in the pocket of the laptop bag along with the EHD and laptop power cord.

A few other items not pictured:

Nikon Coolpix S4000:

My point and shoot camera. We didn’t use the P&S at all this trip but we love it for those times when we don’t want to take a lot of equipment like when we went to the beach in Hawaii.

Apple MacbookPro 15″ notebook:

I was really tempted to not bring my laptop this trip since I’ve found since getting my iPhone, I don’t use my computer as much anymore when I travel. But Adam wanted to bring it so he could look stuff up (he doesn’t like the small iPhone screen as much).

It did come in handy for the one occasion when I needed to clear off my camera card.

iPhone 3GS:

This may be my favorite travel tool ever. We used it for a ton of stuff on this trip: checking into the airline, making reservations, checking subway maps (we used the Kick Lite map), looking up near-by restaurants and reviews.

I also used the Evernote app for keeping track of our schedule, food and activity ideas as well as jotting down journaling throughout the trip (I’ll talk more about this in another post.)

All this really makes me wonder how people traveled before smart phones – it certainly makes things a lot easier!

The only downside to this plan? Adam asking to see my phone every five seconds. I even told him at one point that “Let me see your phone” had become my least favorite phrase ever. I’m thinking I was a bit grouchy in that moment. LOL!

CamelBak Backpack:

This isn’t necessarily a scrapbooking or camera-related tool but I wanted to mention our CamelBak backpack because it’s a favorite travel item of ours.

If you’ve never heard of CamelBak, they’re basically backpacks for outdoor activities – hiking, biking, etc that have a built in container you can fill up with water.

I like ours because it’s large enough that I can fit my Crumpler bag in it (great for consolidating carry-on items) and it’s a great way to carry water around especially in the summer. WAY better than buying $5 water bottles at places like Disney and baseball games!

My last piece of travel advice: don’t assume running shoes make for good walking shoes. I made this mistake on our trip and I paid for it dearly. With my feet. By day 4 I wanted to cry my feet hurt so bad.

If only I’d packed my old time-tested pair of running shoes as a backup like I wanted too before I talked my over-packing self out of it…

So there you have it! A little sneak peek into what I take with me when I travel. Looking at this list it seems like a lot of stuff but in reality it all fits into a couple of carry-ons.

Now It’s Your Turn

So now I want to hear from you! Anyone else excited for June to finally be here? Do you have any fun trips or adventures planned for this summer? What are your scrapbooking must-haves for when you travel? Are you an over-packer or under-packer when you travel? Let me know in the comments!

Psst…paper and elements for the Adventure to Album graphic came from Jenn Barrette and Laura Banasiak’s awesome Leavin’ On A Jet Plane kit. Check it out here.

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And I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane…

POSTED ON June 1, 2011 IN Announcements, Life Adventures, Travels

Happy June 1st everyone! Woohoo for June finally being here! The hubby and I are off for a week long vacation to New York City. My first ever trip to the Big Apple! I’m SO excited!

If you need a little bit of Nettio goodness while I’m gone, haha, be sure to check out the Paperclipping Digi Show later this week! We’re chatting about tricks for making your digital pages look like paper pages. Fun times!

See you all when we get back!

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Five Personal Goals for the Big Two Nine

POSTED ON May 26, 2011 IN Goal Setting, Life Adventures

I hate New Year’s Resolutions.

For one, what exactly is a “resolution” anyway?

To me, “resolution” roughly translates to “something you think you should be doing but have no concrete plans to actually do.” Like the always popular “eat healthier,” “lose weight.”

Or you know, exactly like the items I put on this 2011 “Goals” layouts I made back in January:

Psst…like the look of this layout? You can buy the template here or here in the Shoppe.

Nothing like big, vague resolutions to start off the new year, right? Haha.

My other big issue with New Year’s Resolutions? Timing.

I don’t know about you but by the time I get through Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year finally rolls around, I’m a bit burnt out. While I love the idea of the New Year and a fresh start, often the last thing I’m motivated to do at that point is start off on some big new life-changing goal journey.

This is why I love making Birthday Goals.

I am lucky that my May 24th birthday is right around the half-point of the year which means in the event I did make some sort of New Years goal or resolution, it’s the perfect time to re-evaulate what is and isn’t working, free from the holiday stress and cold, winter weather.

I already shared five of my scrapbooking goals for the next year during my 5th Scrap-i-versary Celebration, but since my twenty-ninth birthday was on Tuesday (you can read more about my thoughts on turning the big Two-Nine here), I thought today would be a good day to share a little bit about my personal goals for my twenty-ninth year.

1. Become a Time Management Guru

Ok so, guru may be a bit of a stretch, haha, but I would like this to be the year where I at least start to feel like I’m actually on top of things.

Taking action. Getting things done.

Or at least not forgetting things.

I feel like I’ve made some good progress in the last year or two but as a big idea person who tends to get bogged downed by planning and details, I still have room for improvement. Ideally, I’d like to get to a point where I feel good about how I’m spending my time because I know it’s exactly what I should be doing right then, whether it’s working, scrapbooking or just hanging out with the hubby.

2. Be More Eco-Concious

Having grown up in California, I’m no stranger to the idea of green living. We’re currently living in a high-performance green home which is a great start but I am definitely looking for more simple, easy ways Adam and I can do our part to help out Mother Earth. Things like using reusable bags and water bottles, reducing our overall use of paper, limiting the amount of toxins and chemicals we bring into our homes and bodies and just overall being more aware and smart about the choices we make. I’m not about to go all tree-hugging hippie, haha, but I would definitely like to do more than we are right now.

3. Make Each Photo Count

My Canon Rebel XT turns 5 this year and while I love it to bits, I am definitely feeling ready for an upgrade. While I’m hoping this may happen in the next year or two, what I’m really looking to focus on with this goal is intention.

Rather than snapping lots of pictures in hopes of getting a good one, I want to slow down and take the time to really think about the photos before I take them. Be more aware of lighting and composition with the goal of taking less photos overall but getting more photos I LOVE.

4. Turn Our Rental House into a Home

As most people know, military life involves moving. We’ve lived in 4 different homes, two different states and two countries in less than 6 years, which I suppose is kind of a lot now that I think about it. (That doesn’t even include the three other countries Adam lived in while deployed.)

Although we owned our last home in Colorado, when we moved here to San Antonio, TX, we made the decision for a number of reasons to rent instead.

I’ll admit, making the adjustment from owning a home we LOVED to renting a house we like has been a bit of an adjustment. We’ve been here about eight months now and other than a bit of paint, some shelving and some Ikea purchases, we haven’t done a whole lot in the way of home design.

Enter what I’m lovingly referring to as: Operation Home Sweet Home, haha.

We’re going to be tackling lots of projects this year in an effort to really make this place feel like our own. Here’s to taking action and being more bold and adventurous in our design choices. If you like my use of bold color and pattern in my layouts, I think you’ll like what I have in store for my home as well. Should be an interesting adventure for sure!

5. Document my 29th Year

I already wrote more about this goal in my Big Two Nine birthday post over at Sweet Shoppe Designs but the plan here is to document my twenty-ninth year in an awesome way. Whether that will be a daily, weekly, monthly project I haven’t quite decided but I am definitely leaning towards the idea of a Project Life type album. Guess we’ll see where I end up!

So those are the five main things I’m focusing on for my twenty-ninth year. Anyone else working on some big goals? Or even some awesome little goals? Are you a fan of New Years resolutions or do you, like me, think making a resolution with the plan to break it is silly? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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The Big Two Nine

POSTED ON May 24, 2011 IN Life Adventures

Happy Birthday to me…happy birthday to me…

Today I am officially turning the big Two Nine and in honor of my birthday, I am guest blogging over at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

Go check it out!

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Stuff I Love: Persnickety Prints

POSTED ON May 20, 2011 IN Memory Keeping, Stuff I Love

Happy Friday everyone! I am back with another edition of Friday Faves!

After last week’s foray into reality tv, I’m keeping things techy this week with a digital scrapbooking pick, none other than the fabulous…

Persnickety Prints!

For those who haven’t heard of Persnickety Prints before, Persnickety Prints is a professional photo lab that specializes in printing full-bleed digital scrapbooking layouts.

For the first four and half years I’d been digital scrapbooking, I was a loyal Scrapbook Pictures fan. I’d printed numerous layouts through them and had always been very pleased. On the one occasion I had some issues with a few of the prints I received, their customer service team took care of it right away and reprinted my layouts with no cost to me. As far as I was concerned, they were the printer for me.

But for months and months and months, I’d been hearing rave reviews about a new printer on the scene, Persnickety Prints. So back in October I decided to give them a try. I was impressed.

A few weeks ago when Persnickety Prints had a sale in honor of National Scrapbooking Day, I decided to try them out again. And I have to say, I was even MORE impressed the second time around.

Impressed probably isn’t even the right word. LOVE is more like it. Yes, in caps.

Why I Love Persnickety Prints

1. Amazing Quality

O.M.G the colors of these prints are SO rich and more importantly, dead-on true to the colors I see on my screen. It’s like my digital scrapbooking pages leaped off my screen and into the real world.

As a scrapbooker who loves to place thin symmetrical borders around her pages, I tend to be pretty picky when it comes to bleed (aka the amount of the edges that gets trimmed off in the printing process).

Persnickety Prints boasts their trim is less than 1/16 inch (you can read more about that here) and I have to say, comparing my printed layouts to my actual size layouts on my screen, you really can’t see any difference. Considering this border is only like an 1/8 of an inch that’s pretty awesome.

2. Lightning Fast Speed

I placed my order around noon on National Scrapbooking Day in the midst of their big NSD sale and received notice that my order had ship by that night. That’s what I call a fast turnaround.

3. Super Reasonable Pricing

At $0.99 ($0.79 during the sale) for an 8×8 print, they are one of the most reasonably priced photo printers in town.

Now with all this raving, is there anything I didn’t love about my Persnickety Prints experience?

What I Didn’t Love

1. The photo paper is pretty thin, thinner and less sturdy than ScrapbookPictures’ photo paper. Since the pages will be in page protectors anyway it’s not really an issue but it does make me a little nervous about them getting bent prior to making it into my albums (since we all know they’ll sit around for months before that happens, haha).

2. While the prints come in a nice strong box, I don’t like the way they tape the plastic sleeve down to the inside of the box. Now I know this is done so the pages don’t move around in shipping and get bent but it makes them a hassle to remove. Scissors are definitely required.

The first time I printed with them I had both 8x8s and 12x12s and I found it difficult to remove the package of 8x8s without worrying about damaging the 12×12 because of the way they were taped together. Including a stiffer piece of cardboard or cardstock in the sleeve with the prints would probably help with this as well as providing a bit more protection for the prints while they’re stored in the sleeve.

Persnickety Prints is a Fave

All that being said, the few negatives don’t outweigh the amazing quality, fast speed and reasonable pricing. It’s safe to say that I will be using Persnickety Prints again in the future. They are definitely a new FAVE of mine.

*Disclaimer: I was not perked anything in exchange for this review. I’m just a big fan and customer. 🙂

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The Top Five Struggles of Digital Scrapbookers

POSTED ON May 19, 2011 IN Memory Keeping

Once again a big huge THANK YOU to everyone who stopped by my Goals post a few weeks ago and shared their digital scrapbooking struggles. After taking some time to digest all your comments (which I LOVED reading by the way), I am back to share my thoughts on your responses to this question:

What do you struggle with when it comes to digital scrapbooking?

As I’ve mentioned before I am a bit of a numbers nerd, haha, so in an effort to make sense of all the awesome responses I received from all of you, I decided I would get back to my economics-lovin’ roots and put together a lovely little chart representing the top responses.

Here were the top five struggles of digital scrapbookers based on your responses:

As you can see, Time Management comes in at the number one spot followed very closely by Design in spot number two. Rounding out the top five are Inspiration, Titles and Organization.

Let’s chat a bit more about each of these, starting with number one…

#1 Time Management

Does it really surprise anyone to see Time Management sitting in the number one spot?

I’m not surprised one bit considering I too would put this as my number one struggle not only in digital scrapbooking, but in life in general. To be honest, I think you’d be hard-pressed to any digital scrapbooker let alone any person who never struggles with time. (And if there’s a digital scrapbooker out there who falls into that category, please come teach us your ways, Obi-Wan Scrapobi!)

The simple fact is time is a finite resource. We each get the exact same 24 hours in a day and that’s it. I know, some days this makes me want to cry too.

But the one thing we do have control over when it comes to time is our CHOICES. And this is where I believe the struggle for digital scrapbookers begins.

One of the amazing things about this hobby of ours (and really our world in general) is thanks to the magic of the internet, we have access to an infinite number of possibilities available to us anywhere, at any time of the day.

Need a new kit to go with those photos you just took? Easy-peasy.

Want to ask fellow scrapbookers for advice on your most recent layout? Post in the forums.

Looking for some design inspiration? Hundreds of thousands of scrapbooking layouts are out there for your viewing pleasure.

Unlike traditional paper scrapbookers we don’t have to drive to the store when we need a new sheet of cardstock or stop by a weekend crop to hang out with friends. This is one of the many awesome advantages of digital scrapbooking.

But when you start thinking about everything we have to juggle as part of this hobby – Creative Teams, forums, galleries, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, oh yeah, and scrapbooking somewhere in there too, it’s easy to see why so many of you struggling with getting and staying focused.

The answer you often hear from time management gurus is to just turn the internet off. Turn it off. Focus on the task at hand.

But when the digital scrapbooking world exists online how do you manage this? And more importantly how do you filter out the never ending stream of new information and inspiration that is coming in?

That’s the question we as digital scrapbookers need to be .

Now obviously I am not a time management guru by any stretch of the imagination. And I’m not about to pretend I have all the answers because I most certainly don’t. Not even close.

But I do have ideas on how we as scrapbookers can manage are time better and I’m hoping we can work together to figure out a solution that works not only for our industry but for our individual lives as well. Because I don’t know about you but I think the digiscrap world would be a pretty sad place if everyone managed their time simply by turning off the internet.

#2 Design

Coming in at the number two spot was Design which I think we can all agree is a big struggle for many digital scrapbookers.

Design encompasses so much of what we do as scrapbookers: composition, photo placement, kit choice, color scheme, patterned papers, clustering and element placement, dropshadowing, typography & title design. It’s easy to see why design is so overwhelming for so many scrapbookers.

Many of you commented that this is why you love scrapbooking with templates because it takes the guess-work out of scrapbooking. As a template designer, I say GREAT! I can save you a ton of time and energy by thinking up complicated, layered paper-lovin’ designs for you. And I love doing that.

But as strictly a scrapbooker, I have mixed feelings about this. Because sometimes I worry that we’ve lost a little bit of that unique design spark that existed back in the early days of digital scrapbooking out of fear. Fear we don’t have enough design talent. Fear our pages will never be as good without the safety net of a template.

In digi-land there’s often this assumption that good design is an innate ability. That all talented scrapbookers were born with this magical ability to craft amazing page after amazing page.

I have news for you. They weren’t. And if you don’t believe me, go back to page one of any one of the galleries from those scrapbookers you admire. I guarantee their pages will tell you a different story. I have done this since I was a newbie scrapbooker and I have yet to find a scrapbooker for whom this wasn’t true.

The simple fact is all good design is built on a foundation of solid design principles. When someone says they have an innate sense of good design, all they’re really saying is they don’t actively think about these design principles as they’re designing.

But if you actually look for these elements of design – like symmetry, balance, unity, repetition – I guarantee you will find them in their layouts. I know they exist in mine.

And that’s great news for you.

Because these design principles can absolutely 100% be learned.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You are the exception to the rule. Design is HARD. You’ll never get it. Templates are SO much easier.

If you’re the kind of scrapbooker who LOVES scrapbooking with templates, that’s AWESOME. Templates are a fantastic tool for making amazing pages. And I will definitely be working hard at providing you with awesome templates here at NettioDesigns.

But if you’re the kind of scrapbooker who would love to learn more about design,

I will definitely be chatting more about design here at NettioDesigns as well as sharing more about my personal design process when I scrapbook. It’s going to be fun.

#3 Inspiration

Inspiration is a funny thing. We tend to look at inspiration as this mystical power that bestows itself upon us.

“Oh great gods of mojo, send me some scrapbooking inspiration so I may complete this layout of awesomeness.”

Far and away the number one comment I received with regards to inspiration was a variation on this:

“I feel like I’m making the same page over and over again.”

Time and time again it is drilled into us as scrapbookers that we need to find our style.

But as a scrapbooker who very much has a defined style, there are days when I too start feeling like maybe my all pages are starting to look the same.

It’s a fine line to walk.

The key is getting to place where we are confident with our style but not so comfortable with our style that we become afraid to push outside those boundaries and mix it up from time to time.

Try an unexpected color scheme. Mix up pages sizes. Do a mini album. Scrapbook with a kit outside our normal style.

We will definitely be talking more about inspiration around here: how to get it, how to keep it and most importantly how to find your style while still keeping things fresh and exciting.

#4 Titles

So I’ll admit, the number of people who listed titles as one of their major struggles took me by surprise. Journaling and storytelling I expected but titles specifically, not as much.

But this is exactly why I wanted to hear directly from YOU because I knew there would be some things you struggle with that I don’t necessarily think about and that’s actually a good thing. Because it means I can help.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why titles are a struggle for so many of you and I have a few questions for you:

What kind of stories are you telling?

Are you telling deep and meaningful stories? Are you telling stories from a wide range of perspectives?

Or are do often find yourself telling the same story over and over again?

Obviously only you can answer these questions for you because your definition of deep and meaningful is going to be different than mine.

But I ask this because for me personally, titles, journaling and storytelling are all very interrelated.

The richer the story I’m telling, the more opportunity I have to create a rich, meaningful title. Where as in comparison, the pages I’ve done with a cute photo and a quote don’t exactly leave me a lot of options when it comes to creating an interesting title. Those tend to be the pages that get slapped with a “love” or “sisters” title, which I think we can all agree is a bit boring for sure.

Now it’s possible this isn’t your problem at all and if that’s the case, please feel free to let me know in the comments! I will definitely be sharing more about how I specifically come up with my titles but any details you want to provide about why titles are a struggle for you are always welcome too.

#5 Organization

We have made it to number five. At first I was a bit surprised to see Organization all the way down in the number five slot given the number of forum threads around digi-land devoted to it. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s probably a good thing because it means we haven’t lost sight on what’s important when it comes to scrapbooking.

In a lot of ways it’s fitting that organization comes in at the number five spot because organization provides us the foundation on which to build all of the things mentioned above in numbers 1-4.

When your fonts and alphas are organized, you can be more creative with your titles.

When your photos are organized you can be inspired to document all those meaningful stories without fear you won’t be able to find the “right” photo.

When your supplies are organized in a way that works for how you scrap, you will have more freedom in your design choices.

When your photos and supplies are organized, you’ll stop wasting time trying to find exactly what you need. It’ll just be right there.

Perhaps even more importantly, as I found out during The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-thon, when you’re supplies and photos are out of control, it can seriously kill your mojo.

Often as digital scrapbookers we tend to get too wrapped up in the technology of organizing (myself included).

ACDSee vs Finder/Windows Explorer?

Lightroom vs Aperture?

To tag or not to tag?

But the key to organizing is finding a system that works for you and the way you scrap.

The question we need to be asking ourselves is not which tool is right for me but how do I want to be able to find my supplies and photos? When I go hunting for a photo or scrapbooking supply, what am I usually looking for?

Obviously I don’t have all the organizing answers just yet. But as I mentioned in my Goals post, organization is a big priority for me because I know it’s holding me back from being a fully organized and inspired scrapbooker. So you can be sure there will be more posts on this topic in the future.

Now It’s Your Turn

And with that, we have completed our journey through the top five digital struggles as told by you. What do you think? Any struggles you thought would rank higher? Any struggles you were surprised to see? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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