Thursday, August 1, 2013

My photo stash strategy

Hello & Happy August!
Can you believe it is already August!?! In only one week the kids will be back to day care and we have raspberries in the garden, typically late summer happenings. It is raining like crazy and feels like autumn so I guess it is hard to convince myself it is beginning of summer any longer. Soon it will get darker and colder. I only wish the kids could have some warm summer days at home before the "grey normal" starts.
 
I've been having trouble finding my scrapbooking mojo the last couple of days. It is not a scrapbook block in any way, just a boring kind of tiredness at the end of the day that makes me want to sit in the sofa rather than by the scrap table.
 
During the weekend I went through my small photo box and took out all photos that wasn't interesting anylonger (I only left about 10 sets) and replaced them with the new paper copies I ordered using that coupon code that was to expire on July 24th. It was fun to sort the new photos and it gave alot of inspiration. But I had already decide to save them for when I start the next round of the Facebook challenge "50 layouts before shopping". At the same time I decided to "un-plan" all my planned layouts that I had in page protectors as small kits of papers and photos. I realized that if they hadn't inspired me uptil now I wasn't likely to use them any time soon. Instead I made 8 new kits with the photos I had saved from the last photo box and I immediately felt more inspiration.
 
This far I've made two layouts from those plans.
 
The photots of the layout today are grey and the colors aren't showing up properly and I blame the weather! It is so grey and boring it was impossible to get good light. It was this or a massive glare in the photos. I need to get a better photo set up for my projects.
 
This first layout is from earlier this summer. My son and I were home alone one day and we packed a picnic basket and had a snack in the play house in the garden. I've used grungeboard again, colored with fluid chalk. The foundation of the page is white with random aqua splashes.
 
 
These photos are so old now we can't even understand she actually looked like this in 2008 :) It was really hard for me to use this strawberry paper because I think it is so beautiful and I covered up almost all of it and I only got a tiny strip left over! I need to stop being this clingy to papers that are pretty! Now when it is done I think it fits perfectly with the photos so now I'm happy I used it. The foundation is a light pink cardstock.    
 
 
These are layouts #46-47 of the Facebook challenge round 2. Soon it's time for shopping again! Fun fun fun! I keep updating My Shopping List!
 
My photo stash system
 
In case you're wondering what I do with the photos I take out of my small photo box when I do these photo box cleanings that I described earlier - I'd like to tell you about my system.
 
As you already know I have a limited space for my scrapbooking and I challenge myself to stay in that space and not grow out of my boxes and cabinets. Therefore I don't order too many paper copies from every occasion, it is hard but I try to be good. The new photos I keep in a small photo box on my desk. It holds about three inches of photos and I use small cardstock dividers to sort them roughly. Most of the time I only care about these photos.
 
But then when I get that feeling that I have no interesting photos left to scrap, no paper copy orders coming in anytime soon and all I do is flip and flip and flip and nothing sparks my creativity, then I go to my big box!
 
I have a larger photo box in my stash where I store photos that didn't make the cut when I have been cleaning out my small box. At these times of photo dispair I go through the big box and I always seem to find a large bunch of photos that I'd love to work with and can't understand why I haven't already used them. Usually I get a big spark of creativity and everything feels new and fresh again!
 
So when I clean out photos that seem boring at the time, I know they will be perfect for another day's projects. So this is why I might seem to scrap only new photos and then suddenly there is a photo from way back in 2008, like today.
 
I hope, hope, hope that I'll be able to scrap some more this evening! If I do, I'll post tomorrow again! Have a nice day!
// Åsa
 

4 comments:

  1. These are lovely, I love the little clusters of embellishments in the second one. So pretty.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gorgeous pages! But 50 layouts before shopping...eeek! That's a challenge!

    ReplyDelete
  3. what awesome layouts!
    good luck on your challenge. i took 8 months off from shopping and now i am purging a ton of paper because i am dying to get some new papers!!

    ReplyDelete