I love when print orders arrive. I try to send a print order out at the end of each quarter, but it doesn’t always happen that way. This was one of those times as I had 7 months worth of prints arrive, as well as some reprints of some older photos.
I generally print in 4 sizes. For very special photos I’ll print a 5×7 or 6×9 inch enlargement, but I don’t do that very often anymore. I will for some travel photos, and the odd ‘oh my, I adore that photo’ photo if I think that my layouts will benefit from the larger size.
Most of my prints arrive as a 4×6. My best photos are printed as a full 4×6, supporting photos are print as 4×3 (2 photos on a 4×6), and I also print some photos as 2×3 (4 photos on a 4×6) for photos I’d like to have but aren’t essential to a story or for layouts that are destined to have a lot of photos.
I’ve come to realise over the last year or two that I really like working with smaller photos. It is all about real-estate. I want the most impact in the least amount of space. I used to print my best photos as 5×7 and supporting photos as 4×6s, making a double page 12×12 spread (or two or three) to accommodate the photos. I eventually realised that all those layouts took up a lot of space whilst not necessarily saying a lot. I’ve size scaled down my scrapping, and I’m enjoying my albums much more as a result. More substance, less real estate. It’s something that is working for me.
I still have some prints that were sized for those 12×12 double page spreads, and they just don’t work with my current style. Some of them I’ll be able to crop, but some of them simply needed to be printed smaller to work. I’m hoping now that I’ve done that I’ll be able to get some of those photos into my scrapbook albums. My goal over the course of this year is to clear out all of my digital photos from 2008 or earlier from my photo storage binders. That still gives me 4 years worth of photos in my binders, plus all my non-digi photos and whatever photos I’ve stuffed into my category drawers (where I place non-event, non-story driven photos).
When I receive a print order, I put the prints into rough date order (this is much easier if I print every quarter as I should), group like photos together, and place them in my storage binders. I use Kenro photo pages that hold 4×6 photos in a lever arch file. I’m able to place in the odd 5×7 in there easily enough, though I do have some 6×8 photo pages that I often use for travel photos.
I love this photo binder system. It is part of Stacy Julian’s Library of Memories system which I took as a class at Big Picture Classes (though the class is now called Photo Freedom, as is her book which describes the same system). I can easily browse through photos and pull out whatever I’m inspired to scrap that day, and because I can easily see my photos, I’m more likely to be inspired by them.
And boy, have I been inspired this week. When I receive a print order I often feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of new photos, so I always scraplift my first layout. I pulled 3 photos I printed which helped support a story I had to tell and used this layout as my starting point.
After that, things just seemed to fall into place and I just kept making layouts. Some started with stories, some are recent photos, some are made using older photos I reprinted as a smaller size.
I did this layout as a challenge to use pattern paper to make your embellishments:
Happy scrapping. :)