Hold on to your paper trimmers, folks -- this will be a long one.
It’s amazing to me how many people have come to me, asking me questions about
Library of Memories, since
I started posting about my own journey in this blog last summer.
I can give you
my answers to questions, but they may not apply to you. My answers might also not be exactly
Stacy Julian's answers, since her perspective is different from mine. I can give you my own understanding, but just know, that I have myself needed Stacy's help and advice in many areas, even areas I thought I had a grip on.
Here are some recent questions and my answers. (Keep in mind, if I say “according to Stacy” or “Stacy says,” I mean, this is my understanding of what Stacy has said or written -- I don’t speak for her.)
I. Don’t You Need to Date Photos in Category Drawers?
So I understand that I get my photos, put them in storage binders and then scrap events as I'm led and in doing so put photos that I notice I don't need for that scrap into category drawers, BUT...once they are in the drawers, don't I still need to know the date sometimes? Let's say that I've scrapped our vacation and pulled out some of those photos and put them into category drawers. Let's say that I pulled out a photo of my son walking through the grass. I didn't feel that I needed it in the "Places We Go" as a part of our vacation so I'm filing it away in the "All About Us" section. Do I not need to know the date/time frame of the photo. Even though I may choose to scrap that photo in a relational way, don't I want to know when it was taken, how old he was, etc.? How would I keep track of that?
According to Stacy, no. Having the date attached to the photos is actually detrimental to using those photos to document "connections," and connections is the reason you put photos into category drawers. In the LOM class materials Stacy talks a lot about "inspiration" and "flow" and how the two connect, but she is not as explicit in
Photo Freedom as she could be because the book is mainly about nuts and bolts of the system. Stacy has 5 children and seems to have no need or desire to date individual photos. She does scrapbook "events" from her Storage Binders, and those layouts and thus photos are dated.
According to Stacy, the point of category drawers is to allow you to scrapbook a "cross section" of life and go deep. Removing the photos completely out of chronology allows this to happen. Drawers are intended to let you "age" photos, which leads to connections and also to inspiration. It takes time for this to happen.
The way I see it -- there are many ways you can possibly scrapbook photos, and LOM has a place for all of these methods. Stacy does a School of Life album for each her children, and these albums are created chronologically. Therefore, she has no need or desire to use the rest of her photos that same way. Photos are first put into Storage Binders, where they are available for event-based or chronological scrapbook projects. Category Drawers are for using photos in an entirely different way. If you have some kind of chronological scrapbooking done for your children, and you are creating event-based pages from Storage Binders, there’s no reason to treat Category Drawer photos the same way.
In
Photo Freedom, Stacy also has instructions for making a worksheet which is a personal time line, in which you write down years and then events, kids ages, etc. If you have that worksheet done, then if you need to date a photo later you can compare it to the worksheet, which will help you figure out how old your child was in the photo and thus, the year. Again, that date would be a ballpark figure.
That said, some people do claim they just can't deal with undated photos. In that case, you can jot the date of the photo on the back with a photo pencil, or, some people have a date stamp and Stayz On ink and they stamp the backs. If you order prints from Shutterfly.com, they offer the option of having the backs of your prints imprinted with the photo date.
I am undecided on this issue myself.
But the short answer is, the whole point of the drawers is to completely remove photos from chronology. This allows inspiration to come, and, allows you to act on inspiration. The timeframe of a photo will trip you up.
II. What Adaptations Have I Had to Make?Also, I understand that many people follow Stacy's system but make it work for themselves individuals. What do you do a bit differently from the plan as she has laid it out?
So very many things. SO MANY!
1. I Don’t Use the All About Us Album. I am single and have no children. I do not need an “All About Us” album. This creates a lot of issues for me, because a lot of Stacy's system is based on 4s -- 4 albums, 4 colors, 4 main categories. Additionally, this issue has made it difficult to create my categories, because I have pictures of ME -- where do they go? Stacy’s photos of herself go in “All About Us.” Pictures of me and others? Where do those go? I do scrapbook "All About Us" types of pages about my godchildren and nephews, so where do those pictures go?
Let's take "eating" for example. Say I have a subcategory, or tab, for Eating. In Stacy’s system, the "eating" tab is used for photos of her family or her children actually eating, foods they like, etc. If she has pictures of other people eating, she will put those pictures in their subcategory in “People.” If I did that, I would have a ton of pictures in “People,” and very few pictures in my other two main categories. And, “People” is about those other people and Stacy’s family. Her scrapbooking doesn’t seem to include what other people “do” (such as, eat), only who they are and their relationships to her immediate family.
2. Extended Family and Friends Are Bigger Drives in My Scrapbooking. Stacy appears (I think) to live far away from her extended family. They are not a part of her daily life. Yet my whole life, and thus my scrapbooking, revolves around what others consider “extended” family. Thus, Stacy's system can be set up to focus primarily on her children and immediate family, because she is just not going to have or take a zillion pictures of every aunt and uncle and their kids as well. But when I have a category for Eating, I don't want photos of just ME eating. I have nephews and siblings and uncles and aunts and my friends' kids all eating. So how do I deal with that? Do I even need an “eating” subcategory then? Do my categories focus only on ME, with pictures of other people -- no matter what they are doing -- only going behind their own subcategory in “People”? I have yet to figure it out.
3. Birthday Pages -- An Unsolved Dillemma. I have created pages on my own birthday, but also siblings and parents' birthdays. I am not sure that Stacy regularly attends or scrapbooks birthday parties for her siblings' spouses or their children, so for her, “birthdays” focuses on her children. Since “All About Us” is primarily about growth and “personalities,” then for Stacy, “birthdays” is a tab under “Things We Do.” But for me, sometimes a birthday spread is the only layout I have done about someone who should go in my scrapbook story -- like a brother-in-law, or a friend's spouse who is a part of my life. For me, sometimes “birthday” is a whole party, and the journaling and photos also document where someone lived or a place we would go or a fun event I attended. Sometimes birthday pictures are just photos of someone (like my goddaughter) opening her gifts on the day, and is not a party or event.
I have not resolved this to my own satisfaction, and it is bothering me a lot. So how Stacy uses categories is very different than mine.
4. My Scrapbooking Is Not Driven by Capturing What is Current. Stacy's reason for scrapbooking is different from mine. Though scrapbooking in general is a hobby intended to celebrate life, what that means is different to different people. Stacy has said her primary scrapbooking goal is to celebrate her children and family life, and to show her children's growth and development as people. Obviously, I don't need to do that. I want to scrapbook to tell my own stories, particularly my distant past like my childhood, high school and college.
Stacy's system is set up to capture current life and development of children and family. My own scrapbooking is driven very differently and so I do have to adjust and adapt a lot. Stacy's system is devoted to what is "current" and that is how she is organized. But, my most urgent scrapbooking need is related to my old family photos and our family history, because people who can tell the stories are dying, one by one. Stacy's system is not intended to deal with the past or with heritage photos or older memorabilia. Or with her own high school or college experiences. Yet I have so very many stories I really want to tell in those areas. Those are my priority, and are also the most difficult projects for me.
Also, while Stacy does scrapbook her friends and her kids' friends, this is not as big a part of her personal story as it is of mine. I have friends that are a part of my daily life and their family traditions are a part of my traditions too. Stacy doesn't really seem to address this. With 5 kids she has plenty else to scrapbook.
5. Memorabilia. Stacy has a very different approach to memorabilia than I do. When I save something I want to keep it. I want it on a scrapbook page if I can use it. To me, the real thing is
extremely important. “The Real Thing” connects me directly to a time and place and slice of life. Yet Stacy will be very judicious in what she keeps and will throw out what she cannot fit or use on a page. I can't do that.
I also want the page to fit the memorabilia, not vice versa. I find it really annoying when people create scrapbook pages on a topic or theme and they have to hide the story itself because it interferes with the page design. Or when people make pictures black and white in order to use a certain paper design, and thus delete all this important data that is in that photo. COME ON. I personally cannot stand the idea of deleting important data because that information conflicts with a design. So I hate the idea of not using memorabilia -- or scanning it and then manipulating it digitally -- because the colors or shapes of the items conflict with some design scheme. I know every scrapbooker is different, but this trend pushed by the hobby magazines really irritates me.
One place this comes into play is in Photo Album Scrapbooking, or PAS. PAS is not in
Photo Freedom, but is a big part of our class. We were to buy some photo albums and convert them to scrapbooks and use them for events where we have a lot of photos, like a vacation or a wedding. But whenever I have a big event like this, I have memorabilia, and photo albums, with their small pockets, are not designed to accommodate brochures and flyers and whatever else I pick up. If I have it, I want it in there, the real thing, and intact. I think it is an absolutely vital part of the story. So I really want to do the PAS for some stuff, but the memorabilia issue really trips me up. How can I create a PAS for Mardi Gras and NOT include all the fantastic memorabilia I picked up while there?
6. Stacy "Scatters" Memories and I Don't. Stacy has a huge house with many rooms and many people living there. She has one whole room devoted to "memories and music" where her various projects can live and be enjoyed. What does this have to do with anything? LOM is not about only creating big scrapbook pages and putting them in books.
Stacy doesn't restrict her scrapbooking to just scrapbook layouts in an album. She has talked several times about her love of “planting seeds” and scattering little treasures around to be stumbled over later. She can create photo album scrapbooks and mini books and photo boxes and more. These items can then be scattered all around her house so that her 5 kids can pick them up and enjoy them, so her guests see them, and so on. I live in a 625 sq ft. condo with no guest parking. I do not have room to put scrapbooking projects all over my house. No one is going to visit me and see those items. I do not have room to make home decor items on a scrapbooking theme and display them. So many of her “solutions” are just not applicable to me and my life.
Here is one example of how Stacy works. Stacy goes to London and takes 800 photos. She prints a selection and puts them in her Storage Binders. She creates a few pages on various parts of London and puts them in various albums. Then she creates a few more projects and puts the rest of her prints in a photo album scrapbook. In this way, her photos and memories are scattered and can be interacted with on many different levels by different people.
But
I am the only person who really interacts with my own scrapbooking. I do color copy certain pages and give them to some people, and I enjoy taking individual pages to various events and sharing them with the people who are featured in them. But other than that, scrapbooking for me is a way to corral my memories and memorabilia and stories and pictures into one place. So I have not really been able to get behind the whole scattering memories around. I kind of want everything in one place and have it be complete, so that story is
over and I can move on to the next one. I do enjoy the few mini books I have created, but I have to be very careful about the topics and pictures I use in those projects.
7. LOM Is Focused on Hundreds or Thousands of Pictures. Stacy will go on a trip and take 800 photos. I won't. LOM is designed to process a large number of photos. Check
this entry out in her blog to see how she deals with a lot of photos.
Because Stacy’s system focuses processing hundreds, thousands, of photos per year, and mine doesn’t, my process of scrapbooking cannot fully embrace hers. I personally would never take 100 photos of any birthday party, not even my own. I might take 40 pictures of a really important birthday. A whole weekend I spent at Mardi Gras generated 125 photos and that is a lot for me. I am usually the one with the camera, so there might be only one photo of me in the whole bunch or one photo of me with certain people at an event. Thus I want to scrapbook the event with that one photo or those 5 photos included. So if I use those photos on one project because I am “inspired,” then I don't have those photos to use to scrapbook the entire story. Stacy will have 10 photos of the same person to choose from and I won't. So this affects how I scrapbook.
LOM is set up to help someone who has or takes that many photos and has all that raw material to choose from. If you see 2 pictures you like, scrapbook them immediately when you feel the urge. But if I do that.... then I don't have that
one photo of me and my sister or my friend that we got someone else to take. And if I scrapbook an event without that
one photo I feel the story is incomplete and it bothers me.
Stacy and other scrapbookers -- I am thinking of
Ali Edwards specifically here -- are primarily focused on scrapbooking current issues, like a child's developing personality or family life. Those are "on going" stories. Stacy can scrapbook each child's development again and again because the story is ongoing. But when I scrapbook a story or event, that is the only time I scrapbook it. I have very few ongoing stories (I actually cannot think of any at all off hand). So I feel more internal pressure to do it completely the first time.
Those are some issues I have to struggle with.
III. Storing Photos in Storage Binders in Chronological OrderSo when I get film developed and then stick it in the storage binders, I know I'm grouping them by season but beyond that am I not concerned with timeframe and chronological sequence?
By season or quarterly is your timeframe. According to Stacy, knowing a photo was taken in Spring of 2009 is almost always good enough for scrapbooking. If you really want to know the exact date, like for a wedding, there are ways to indicate that. I personally use a post it note with the date written on it and slap it on the 1st photo from an event in the binder.
I personally do stick pictures in the binders according to events, and in somewhat of chronological order. I also organize photos from an event in a natural storytelling progression. For instance, I recently printed 125 pictures of Mardi Gras 2008. I know know that weekend was Feb 5-7, but really, how important is that? Isn't it enough to know it was Feb 2008? Or just, first quarter (Jan- Mar) 2008? However, in the storage binder, I do put those pics in after Jan 2008 photos and before March 2008 photos. I also sorted the pictures before putting them in. Thus New Orleans trip general pics -- including pics of me and the people I went with - are first. Then Garden District
architecture because that's the first thing I saw. Then photos for each parade I saw and then photos taken at a local cemetary since that's the last place I visited.
III. Using iPhoto and TagginDo you use iPhoto? How do you use tags? Do you tag each person in a photo?
I am a huge Mac fan and normally I have nothing but good to say but ...
iPHOTO IS ANNOYING ANNOYING ANNOYING.I refused to use it for years because I had more than a sneaking suspicion it would annoy me. The I read
Photo Freedom, got excited, started trying to use it. I spent 2 months, working every day, sometimes for hours, individually organizing and tagging all my thousands of photos. I found if I wanted to continue to use iPhoto, it was going to mess me up severely. Oh I could go on and on and
on! I wasted 6 months on iPhoto.
iPhoto is a program for people who are organizationally challenged. Digital file mamangement and archiving is part of my job description. So as a pro, iPhoto made me want to tear my hair out.
Here's how iPhoto works. You get your pictures off your camera and dump them into this "Pictures" area in iPhoto, all in a mess.
In iPhoto, you sort and organize and name and whatever. Meanwhile, your original files are untouched. I cannot handle that.
You can only email photos from iPhoto out if you have the mac email account, or a non-web based email account. I do not use that type of account. I have gmail. How do I attach that photo I have only in iPhoto to an email in gmail to send to my mom or a friend? I can't.
So I have a photo in iPhoto and I put it in there and I rotated it and cropped it and fixed it and it is just right. But it is only adjusted....
in iPhoto. Now -- how are you going to get that photo that you have adjusted how you want it, from iPhoto, into a print? You can print it at home -- but only if you have a photo printer. iPhoto connects to Shutterfly.com so you can get it that way -- but only if you choose to use Shutterfly!
What if you want to send those pictures to Walgreens.com? Costco? WalMart? Snapfish? How do you do that? You can email it -- only
if you have the right kind of email account.
Can I just grab a photo from inside iPhoto, and drag it to my desktop as a copy, and then use that photo? Not in the iPhoto I had. If there is a way to do it, I cannot figure it out. Can I double click on a photo and go directly to the original file? NO.
This all seemed hugely restrictive to me. I cannot figure out how to use iPhoto with Adobe products at all! I wanted to take my laptop and beat it over someone's head for this boneheaded set up.
Here's what I want to do, I want to load my photos onto my external HD. Then sort them into folders by event and date, and label them there. Open them all up in PhotoShop, fix and rotate them as I want, then resave and have my original files fixed as I want them. Can I do this with iPhoto? NO. Then I want to rename them according to my own naming conventions.
Then I want to pull them into iPhoto. Which is what I originally did.
But then... I want to add photos to a folder I have already organized. Maybe my mom has found a stash of old family photos and I have scanned them. Or I found some old prints and I want a digital negative, so I scan them. Or I find a CD of more pictures from the same event, and I want to add them. If I add those photos to a folder and then try and import those photos to iPhoto, mayhem ensues. If I realize I have put a lo-res version of a photo into iPhoto and want to replace it with a new file, mayhem ensues.
What iPhoto does is create a "link" to your original files. From working extensively in Quark and InDesign, I am used to working with this and it is no big deal --
except in iPhoto!. If I move those files around at all, the link is broken. Again -- I am used to this. In InDesign you can go to a Link Manager palette, see what links are broken, and relink files individually or as an entire folder. You can do similar in Quark. I mean, this is a very common workflow issue, which everyone else seems to have solved --
except iPhoto. In iPhoto you won't know there’s a broken link, because iPhoto still gives you the thumbnail as if the photo is there, and I could not find an option to manage links. I would find out the hard way -- by clicking on the thumbnail and having 10, 15, sometimes 20 error messages pop up over and over and over. The error message claims by clicking on it I can relink the file... but it never, never did so.
Seriously -- what bonehead designed this program?
I was so so so sick and tired of trying to keep track of what photos were in iPhoto, which ones had been updated, which ones needed to be relinked. I hated it.
For all those reasons, I switched to a program called Shoebox. I bought it for $30 and so far it is simple and it works great. I can organize my photos on my hard drive, name them how I want, create folders, and import those folders into Shoebox. If I need to adjust or move the folders, Shoebox knows where the photos went. If I disconnect my external hard drive from my laptop, I can still work in Shoebox, using the thumbnails, and no error messages pop up to tell me a link is broken and then not allow me to relink. I can use as many categories I want, and unlike iPhoto where the categories are an undifferentiated mess, I can organize categories by People, Places, Things, etc. The only negative I can see is that iPhoto allowed me to assign keyboard shortcuts to my most used tags and I cannot see that Shoebox has that option.
So, in short, I hate iPhoto, and that is why.
I do tag all my photos with the names of almost everyone in the photo. I restrict this naming to family members and close friends. I have a tag for uncles, one of aunts, one for cousins, so if I don't want to tag some aunt I see once every 5 years and barely know as in individual, I can just use "aunts." I have a general tag for friends and certain individual friends have their own tags. I have a tag for High School Friends and College Friends. I have a tag for each of the homes I lived in. I have a tag for heritage. I have tags for various locations.
IV. Using iPhoto and Tagging, Part 2On the illustration of page 54 of the book, I see where stacy has created albums for her seasons, but below that she has also created folders for her categories (things we do, etc). I don't think I've read anything in her book about digital organization of this manner. Do you know anything?
Stacy does do that but it's not a big part of her organizing and she hasn't really talked about it. She mainly organizes based on what she will scrapbook and what she will print.
None of these issues I have with iPhoto would be important to Stacy because it appears she does almost no organizing of her photos on her computer, just the bare minimum. She uploads her photos into a digital archive, and they automatically go in chronological order. This only works, by the way, if your camera always has the correct date and time setting when you use it. If you have a cheaper digital camera that requires you to reset the date and time every single time you replace the batteries, and you are not diligent about resetting it accurately when you do so, you’ll find your photos go into iPhoto in a huuuuuuuuge mess. I spent a
lot of time sorting this out, which was the first of many annoyances. I had spent much time and effort renaming my files and organizing them into date order, but once I imported to iPhoto it all went straight to hell. I had to manually redate every single photo. 6000 photos. Just imagine that.
Stacy’s only form of digital organization is based on whether she will scrapbook a photo or not, and, if she will print a photo or not. Stacy pulls her photos into seasonal highlights folders and then prints the folder and archives those pictures online. I don’t know that she even renames her digital files, indicates the dates or events for the files, or anything at all. So iPhoto works for the little amount of organizing she does. I want to do a lot of digital file management, and iPhoto just gets in my way.
V. Section Pages and TabsHow do you make the section pages and add divider pages tabs?
If you are using 3 ring albums that is pretty easy -- open rings and pop them in. Everyone has different designs and styles for what they do. I am holding off on making mine. I really want to include a range of photos applicable to the range of events or people or places in the album or section so I am going to wait until the sections are more full and the categories in my drawers are more full of photos so I have lots to choose from.
Most people buy cardstock in the colors of their albums they have chosen to use. They create a grouping of photos that illustrates the section or title and use cardstock that matches that album color. They include tabs or squares of the other colors there as well. They might include a quote. And they put a label on the page. Very simple. Many people create pages with no pictures and will add the photos after the album is full.
To make “tabs” that stick up.... I have seen samples where people cut wide strips of the coordinating cardstock, and on the top (narrow) edge, put 2 metal-rimmed tags back-to-back, sticking half up beyond the paper edge, and label those; I have also seen people punching tabs using a McGill tab punch, and attaching those to long strips of cardstock. The long strips are slipped into the page protector in between the pages inserted (so, behind the page).
VI. How Do I Keep Track of What I’ve Printed or Scrapbooked?As I'm getting started in getting caught up with my printing (once I got my digital camera I just stopped printing), do I print in order from a time frame standpoint? If I jump around, how do I efficiently keep up with what has been scrapbooked or not.
We started the class with directions to print 5 years. They can be any 5 years, not necessarily 5 years in a row. You can jump around. Print the 5 most important years you want to scrapbook. Your Storage Binders then become the record of what you have scrapbooked and what not, because as you scrapbook events you will have empty spaces and empty pages in the Binders.
Now. The point here is that you will not scrapbook all those pictures and all those events. You will print one season of photos and then another and then another, until you have a whole year printed, and you fill up your Storage Binders with those prints. Then do it for another year, and another and so on. You should limit your number of binders. You don't want
all your photos printed and in binders. No! You want a selection. A small selection -- hence, 5 years. If you have fewer photos, maybe 10 years. if a lot more, maybe 3 years.
What will happen? -- see that post of Stacy's I linked to. About a month after a season has passed, you will want to print those most recent 3 months of pictures. Maybe it's every 6 months or every month. Whatever works for you. The question is -- when you send that print order, do you have space in your Storage Binders for those prints? This is an extremely important point many people miss. You
do not want to have storage space for every single photo. LOM is a system which requires FLOW. Photos come in and photos go out. They don't just sit there forever.
So when you have more pictures coming in and you do not have an empty binder... this is where FLOW is important. You go through your storage binders and you must empty photo slots and pages in order to make room. How do you do this:
- you scrapbook pictures -- you create a mini book, a photo album scrapbook, a page or two or ten
- you triage pictures and put them into categories
- you put photos into cold storage
- you throw photos out
- you consolidate what's left -- stack multiples in the same slot, consolidate pages in the binders, empty pages, move them around.
This process is the FLOW. Through this process you are automatically prioritizing your scrapbooking. When seeking to consolidate and empty binder space, Stacy goes to her oldest binder first. Not the one with the oldest images, necessarily -- the one with the oldest
prints. Not the same thing. If you just printed photos of the year your adult child was born, those images may be your oldest, but the prints are new. You go to the binders with prints that have been there the longest. That is when you have to decide: "This print has been in here for 3 years, 5 years, however long... and I have never scrapbooked this event/picture. Do I still think it's that important?"
You have the old prints on the one hand... on the other the new stuff you just printed and are excited about. It's like cleaning out your closet. If your shoe rack is full and you buy 6 new pairs at a great sale and you can't buy a new shoe rack, that's when you look at your old shoes and think, "I haven't worn these in 4 years... am I ever going to wear them again?"
At that point you might decide you will never wear them and either donate them, give them away or throw them out. Or you might decide you still want them but won't wear them that often. Then those shoes get put into cold storage, like a box in the basement, to make room for the new shoes.
A lot of people think "buy new shoe racks" but we know what happens when clutter takes over your house. How many shoes can you wear on a daily basis? How much closet space do you really have? Shoe racks are for shoes that you wear. Your closet is not going to work as a shoe museum of every shoe you have ever bought or worn.
If you are concerned with remembering what you have printed you can create a tag that indicates "this has been printed."
VI. Photo ServicesWhich online upload service do you use?
I have used snapfish.com, shutterfly.com., and walgreens.com. Right now I am using Shutterfly a lot, but they are seriously irritating me by cutting off part of my images to fit the pictures onto the paper. This is ticking me off --
especially since I digitally make sure those images are 4 x 6. It ends up cutting off important parts and making the print unusable about 5% of the time.
Right now, when I get that, I make a note of the image, go find it and open it in PhotoShop (which I can do very easily since
I do not use iPhoto!), reduce the image size a small bit and create a bigger canvas. This gives the photo a white border, which hopefully is what will get cut off when I reprint. I am also trying to pay attention to images I have scanned and make sure nothing is too close to the edge.
I am trying to decide if this makes Shutterfly too much of a PITA -- these are mainly important pictures of people that I really want as I shot them.
If you don't have a service, try ordering a sample of the same 5-10 images from a few places and compare them -- cost and quality.
VII. The Gap in the D-Ring AlbumsDoes the D-ring bother you with two pages layout and having the "gap" in the middle?
Yes. Keep in mind I am not a CM user so I have been used to some gap in my post bound albums. I really like having a photo stretch across the gutter of my spread. The only time the gap bothers me is when I do that. I am not sure the few times I use this technique is enough of a reason to not use the D-ring albums, though. In every other way using the rings is far better than post bound albums.
Also, these albums hold way more pages. Filling up the 12 x 12 albums makes them bulky and really too heavy for children to handle, especially small children, but I don't have that issue. I really like that I can store more pages and thus buy less albums.
VIII. Category Drawer DividersWhere do you get the category dividers from? The photo boxes I buy always come with some but I would definitely need more with Stacy's system!
You will need to order those from Highsmith.com. I looked everywhere else and they have the best price and the lowest shipping.
Link to category divider cards.
I bought two packages to start and have plenty left. When we started creating categories, I made the mistake of getting to detailed and too specific. So right now I have the drawers (I am using plastic shoe drawers by Sterlite, by the way -- they are less than $4.00 each at WalMart and fit photos perfectly), and they have the main subcategories, and only a few subcategories.
People----->Me
----->Family
(subcategories for each of my “immediate” family --- parents, siblings, their children)
----->Extended Family
(subcategories for grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins)
----->Friends
(some subcategories for specific close friends and their families -- everyone else just goes behind “friends”)
----->Other
(people I admire, coworkers, anyone else)
Places----->Home
(subcategories for the various places I have lived, my home town, my current house and current town)
----->Travel
Things----->Everyday Life
----->Hobbies
----->Spirit (this happens to be a big one for me)
----->Holidays and Celebrations
I had a real problem with creating the categories, surprisingly. Stacy had us do an exercise with a bubble chart. First we made extensive lists of any and everything we could think of under the main categories of People, Places, Things, and Us. Then we created bubble charts with main subcategories. Then we set up the dividers.
Whew! That was a lot! Now you know why the class is so valuable. You can get all your answers there right from the source.
