My name is Noell Hyman.
I love scrapbooking.
You can read about me here.
So many of you have been asking for tutorials on Photoshop, especially for digital techniques for photos, so today’s episode is one version of a technique I use all the time.
This one is for Premium Subscribers. You can learn more about the Premium Subscription by visiting the Membership Information Page.
This week and next we are turning photos and memories of one of our trips into a visual memoir using my step-by-step process to keep it meaningful and prevent overwhelm. If you missed the first three steps, you’ll want to start there first:
This is where we get to the bare bones of the story. We are going to eliminate unnecessary photos.
*Which photos do you really need to tell each story?
*Which photos can tell a totally different story that is unrelated to the trip and can better express itself in a different album?
I have a few piles of stories and photos from Disneyland that will make more sense as part of a different story, or album. For example, Israel took this series of photos of Blake and Trinity while waiting in line:
After Trinity’s had her hundredth picture taken, Blake can’t stand it anymore–he’s got to get in on it…If nothing else, he should give her some rabbit ears.
Trinity tries to push him away while posing at the same time (#3), but quickly decides that rabbit ears for him would make a good shot, too.
I love watching them play like this.
This story is more about Blake and Trinity and how they play and less about our time at Disneyland. I decided to pull this group of photos out of our Disney stack and make it a page for our This Is Us album–an album with stories about who we are–and how we are–as a family.
It’s easy to eliminate the blurry or bad shots. It’s harder when there are so many good ones. It’s a lot like the state of our children’s bedrooms and the amount of stuff they have. When there is too much stuff, they can’t keep it under control, and they can’t enjoy their things as much as they could if they weren’t surrounded by so much chaos.
One great photo can often have more impact than three similar ones unless the others contribute to the story in a meaningful way. Think of this as getting rid of the clutter so you can enjoy the best of it.
And remember, you’re not actually eliminating those extra photos from your life. You’re just eliminating them from this album. You can still view them on your computer or somewhere else.
If you’ve kept up with us so far, you should have stacks of photos and note cards with a brief description of each story. Your assignment today is to go through each stack and decide which photos you can eliminate by asking yourself the two bolded questions above.
This will make you better able to begin assembling the album, which we will start doing very soon!
This week and next we are turning photos and memories of one of our trips into a visual memoir using my step-by-step process to keep it meaningful and prevent overwhelm. If you missed Step 1, be sure to go back and read that first.
This step is not about organizing. It is about connecting and catching the vision.
Take this time to go through each photo so you can put yourself back into the vacation frame of mind. What did it feel like to be there?
Your photos are probably already in the chronological order of the trip and grouped by smaller events and activities. As you do go through the photos to lay them on your table, proceed with these steps:
1. Keep groups of photos together in loose piles so you can still see at least a part of each photo.
2. Lay piles close together so that you have a choice of seeing them in their various groupings or seeing them as a part of a whole.
Doing it this way allows you to keep the artistic, story-connecting part of your brain working, as opposed to the linear, organizing part. By seeing all the pictures together, you will be able to identify stories that go beyond the events.
For example, seeing pictures of my sister with her family and different points in the trip led me to the idea of telling the story of being at Disneyland with my big sister and little brother again. Had I kept my photos in a linear and organized manner, I might never have thought of that angle, which is part of the most important aspect of this trip for me.
1. While looking at your photos scattered all over the table, identify the stories that pop into your head and begin writing the dominant idea of each story onto a note card. My note cards say things like, “Family & Faces–who we were with,” “Enjoying the scenery–just as enjoyable as the rides,” “Mom & Me,” “Splash Mountain-The big people and tiny little Sidney.”
Make sure you jot down a note for all the stories that come to mind, even if you have no photos to support them.
2. Match stories to photos. Sometimes this means pulling photos out of their event grouping to use it for a different subject.
At this point, we are only partially turning ourselves over to the organizational parts of our brains. There is no need to put these into a fixed order yet. You can still leave the piles in a haphazard manner on the table, allowing your mind to stay within it’s artistic play area of the brain. Or if you need to put them away, you can stack them in any order with your story note cards in between each stack of supporting photos.
You’ve now written down the individual stories. You’ve connected with your memories and made connections between photos you might have separated before. Is there an overall story or theme that is starting to creep out?
If there are any words or ideas running through your mind, begin writing them down. You can brainstorm or make a word map. However you do it, have a place to collect these thoughts so you don’t lose them. If you’re able to solidify a theme at this point, that is great! If you’re still trying to work it out, that’s okay, too. The next step might help you out…
Stay tuned for Step 4 as we proceed to turn our memories into memoirs.
* * *
Your assignment for today is to complete the two bolded instructions under each of the steps above.
You’ve come back from vacation and you’re thrilled at the pictures you got from your exciting adventure. You can’t wait to scrapbook them, but when you pull out those photos, a haze of confusion and overwhelm takes over. What should be a pleasurable visit with your memories is becoming a dreaded “obligation.”
Do you feel this way? I’m working on an album right now for our Disney vacation and I have a method for assembling this type of project that coincides with my philosophy of scrapbookers as story-tellers and scrapbooks as visual memoirs. It will also simplify the process and keep your mind clear.
Over the next week and a half I’ll share my step-by-step process with you, using my Disney vacation as the example. If you have a stack of photos and memories from a vacation that you need to scrap, I hope you’ll pull them out and follow along with each step. You can even give us a report of your progress by leaving a comment.
1. What are the stories I want to remember from my vacation?
The funny things someone said * The thoughts and feelings you had at various times * The way a relationship developed * The things you did you did, saw, or experienced.
2. What is the overall story or underlying theme that encapsulates all of the smaller individual stories?
This is a deeper question that requires some thought. Each vacation has its own meaning. If you take some time to identify this early in the process, you’ll be able to create a complete and cohesive story out of the many pages, pictures, and smaller stories.
You don’t have to answer all of these questions now before moving onto step number two. Having the questions on your mind while you proceed to the next step is just fine. Have a pencil and some note cards next to you on the table so you can jot down each thought, story, or theme idea as they come. Having each story on its own note card will allow you to place them with their coinciding photos.
While I’ve been working on the next steps, I’ve been thinking about the word, “present,” in all of its senses, for my Disney album. Here is what I mean:
1. One of our days at Disneyland was a present from my parents. The other day and the rest of the trip was Izzy’s and my own Christmas present to our kids.
2. It was an awesome experience to be present with my parents and the two siblings closest to me in age, at a place that holds so many childhood memories with them. I had such pleasurable moments, enjoying my sister and brother as if we were kids again.
3. Together we relived some wonderful times from our past, while mixing them with the present. It is such a joy to give to my children the happy experiences that my parents gave to me.
1. Sometimes having a theme will provide you some visual images, icons, embellishment ideas, or colors. The story of Disney as a part of my childhood that I am gifting to my children gave me the idea to capitalize on a classic Disney icon that identifies Disney from any time period: the Mickey Mouse ears silhouette. I decided to use that icon as the major embellishment throughout my album, rather than buy new Disney products.
I may also use some clock and time images, and perhaps classic gift images.
2. Sometimes having a theme will provide you with title ideas. Titles of different pages in my album could be…
A present to us.
A present to you.
Present And In The Moment.
Present Again With You.
Step number one isn’t a step you can easily do when you’re cropping with friends. For most every project, I like to take some quiet time to dig deep and relive moments–to gain from those times all over again. I do it best with a pencil in my hand so I can solidify my thoughts and give them some life. My notes tend to be organic and unstructured, just like my thoughts.
Tomorrow we’ll cover the next couple of steps, having to do with sorting the photos. You’ll want to print up your photos if you’re following along and you haven’t done so already.
Don’t worry about whether you’ll want enlargements unless you already know which ones you’ll enlarge and in what size. I printed all my photos to 4×6, knowing that I will later want to enlarge some of them. Since I don’t know which ones I want larger yet, it’s easier to just print them all up front so I have something physical to work with in my hands while I plan the structure and size of my album.
Your assignments:
1. Get some note cards, a pencil, and write down the following questions:
*What are the stories I want to remember from my vacation?
*What is the overall story or underlying theme that encapsulates all of the smaller individual stories?
2. Print up all of the photos you might put in your vacation scrapbook. Don’t worry about sizes or whether you have an album or not. That’ll come later.
I’m looking forward to following these steps with you.
* * *
This is part one of a series, Stories From Our Vacations.
Would you like to save money by making your own embellishments? Today’s episode for Premium Subscribers should give you some ideas.
If you want to learn more about the premium membership so you can have access to all of the videos, click here.
Since so many of you like to watch the recorded videos of Paperclipping Live, I decided to embed them right into the Paperclipping blog so you don’t have to go hunting for them.
Here is last night’s show, where we used a previous scrapbook page that was great for using scraps as a template for a new one.
Today we have an awesome video for the Premium Subscribers. In this tutorial I take inspiration from a very old layout, but make key changes on my new one using my understanding of design.
Make sure you stick around for the outtakes at the end of the video!
If you want to learn more about the premium membership so you can have access to all of the videos, click here.
Most of my scrapbooking inspiration comes from the mood or feelings I associate with the subject of my layout. I try create a visual expression of how I feel. When I think of the outdoors, I often think of relaxation, play, and whimsy. Below are two techniques for adding details that evoke those three characteristics.
What you need: Floral patterned paper, a transparent glue like Diamond Glaze or Glossy Accents, two different colors of beads.
1. Working in small stretches at a time, apply a line of glue about half an inch long along the inside of a petal. Using a pen, pencil, or other pointed tip, pick up one bead at a time and place them in the glue, just inside the outline of the petal.
2. As you place each bead, press it into place with your fingernail. If you use your fingertip it will get sticky and the beads will stick to it.
3. Continue alternating between glue and beads until you’ve outlined the petal.
4. Fill the bud in with a small amount of glue and add beads until they fill the bud.
If you feel like you have some weak spots (perhaps the glue was almost dry when you added a couple of the beads), you can add some glue to the sides of the beads to make them stable.
What you need: A decorative tag, two colors of wire, glue dots, wire tool (optional).
1. Cut two pieces of wire to about 4 inches each.
2. Feed wire through hole of tag and bend wires in half so they straight out from the top of the tag. You’ll have 4 ends.
3. Twist the wires around themselves a couple of times at the top of the tag.
4. Working with one end at a time, twist the wire with a tool or with your finger so that you get a fun spiral. For a playful look, don’t try to make the spirals perfect.
5. Place a glue dot on the bottom side of the top of the tag so it holds the wire in place.
6. After adding the tag to your page, arrange the wire so they stick up in different directions for a totally fun and carefree look.
Here is another example of the same two techniques together. Don’t they feel happy?
Spin & Be Merry
Two-page 12×12 Layout
Below are two sets of instructions for layering embellishments the way they are on the layout above. You don’t need to have the same products. Look through your own stash to find items with similar characteristics. If you don’t have a lot of embellishments, look for designs you can cut out of patterned paper.
I used this pair of birds on a branch as a way to pull attention to my focal point photo.
1. Nestle the bird duo with a word that supports the layouts’ story.
2. Highlight the word with a circular embellishment.
3. Apply foam dots to the back of your bird embellishment to raise it on the page.
4. Place the entire set on top of an area of patterned paper that you’ve lined with a ribbon (like rik-rak).
I cut this trio of flowers from the K.I. Memory Lace Cardstock.
1. Highlight your “bouquet” with half of a circular shape, like this screen-printed transparency by Hambly.
2. Add three-dimensional buds to your flowers with brads or epoxy stickers.
3. You can extend the plant-life on your page by adding a subtle transparent grouping of leaves. Mine are a soft orange and come from My Mind’s Eye.
When layering embellishments, start with a focal point piece, like the birds or the flowers. This doesn’t mean the embellishment will be the focal point of the page–just the focal point of that cluster. Find smaller pieces like words or buttons to gather around the focal point, and a shape, such as a circle, to act as a frame.
Are you a flower lover? Do you need something new to do with your flowers? Try these two ideas I share in this episode for our Premium Subscribers.
If you’d like to learn more about the premium membership so you can have access to all of the videos, click here.
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