2012 Instagram Mini Album

It's always fun finishing a project, especially one that's been hanging around a bit longer than it should have. I started this Instagram Mini album back in January and just finished it on Wednesday. I'm happy it's done and happy its found its place on the shelf of all my other albums.

I decided to make this album because I wanted some sort of record of my first full year of sharing photos on Instagram. Sure some, if not many are in my Project Life album but I wanted a place to see some of my favorites all in one place.

I really didn't like the idea of hunting and pecking through my icloud feed to pull the photos so I opted to use this utility that Persnickety Prints has on their website.  It grabs all of your photos from Instagram, (you can even specify a date range if you like) and sends it to you in a nice .zip file. The beauty of this utility is it also gives you the date you uploaded the photo to Instagram. Because I planned to date each of my photos this bit of info was key for me

Once I got the .zip file and extracted all the data I decided to divide my photos into folders by month so it would be easier to weed out the photos I wasn't going to use. I limited myself to 16 shots from each month because that's what would fit nicely on the page size I had planned.  I went thru each folder deleting what I knew I wasn't going to use and kept editing down until I had 16 photos. Some months were definitely harder to edit than others.  I did save the original zip folder so I wouldn't actually loose any of the deleted photos so if that's of concern to you, you may want to do the same.

Because I was pressed for time and heading to a crop in two days to start working on this album I opted to print my photos at Costco. I made myself a 12 x 12 template and sized the photos to 2.5" square. This allowed me to easily fit all 16 on one sheet for each month. It might have been more cost effective to have 4x6 prints done but I didn't want to risk any cropping issues so that's why I did the large size. I had them printed on the glossy paper and I was really pleased with how they turned out. The template I made is available for download here.

I also created a small 4x6 contact sheet of each folder by using the print screen function. This way I had all the date information for each shot in one spot. Here's a picture so you can see what I mean.

For the actual album I used a really old 8x8 chipboard album that I had on hand. I have no idea who's it is or where I got it but you could certainly use any album for this project.  I opted to keep the album in its natural chipboard state and just decorated the spine of the album. I cut little strips of colored paper to mimic the color strips on the Instagram Logo and attached a 2012 piece of flair I had in my stash, nice and simple.

 

I made the title page using a piece of Dear Lizzy 5th and Frolic paper, I loved the aqua colored arrows. I laid down two rows of pink striped washi tape, this tape came in a set of four from Target. I cut the Instagram on my Cameo, using the free font Billabong which is the same font they use based on my Internet search. The 2012 is Studio Calico Darling Dear wood veneer alpha's, and the arrow is from Freckled Fawn. I embossed the 2012 veneer pieces with Zing Neon Pink embossing powder and the arrow was embossed with Zing White Opaque embossing powder.  The 'my year in' alpha is Jillibean Soup Alphabeans in Tart Teal.

On the back of the title page I added a cute saying I had seen online, I just typed it up using a typewriter font and added the IG logo. I printed this out at home on a piece of 36 lb. white vellum.  I also decided it would be fun to include the number of photos I uploaded each month so before I deleted any I got a count.  On a PC you can do this by selecting the first photo, right clicking with your mouse and then select the last photo making sure all of them are highlighted and if you look down at the bottom of your screen in the detail window it should give you a count.  I made myself another template and listed all of that info and printed it on the same 36 lb. white vellum and I left the back of this page is blank.

I opted to make this album the same throughout simply to make the process easier.  I went with 8x8" square pages and cut tabs out on my cameo using a aqua triangle printed paper. I stamped each tab with the month and a little dashed line using this set of Cocoa Daisy stamps. The pink dashed line was stamped using the Hero Arts Neon Pink ink pad. I attached all of the tabs and then decided to mist my pages. I used Heidi Swapp's Mint Green color shine spray and misted both sides of every page, masking off the tab each time so they didn't get misted. I spritzed about 3 pumps on each page and didn't worry much about any sort of uniformity.

 

For the date labels of each photo I cut cream textured cardstock into strips and then cut each piece down to roughly 2.5'x1.5'.  I rounded two of the corners and inked the edge of each card using the Hero Arts Neon Pink ink. I stamped each date with a rolling date stamp and black ink.

I laid down strips of the same washi that I used on the title page along the middle of each page and attached my photo and date cards in a grid pattern overlapping on to the washi tape strip.

The most time consuming part of this project was misting each page, and making the date cards. I ended up cutting one piece of the 12 x 12 cream paper at a time and making all the date cards that I could.  I rounded the corners, inked the edges, stamped the dates and laid it all down. When I ran out I cut another sheet of paper and did all the steps again. I found if I worked this way it kind of broke up the nasty parts a bit.

I won't show the inside of the whole album but at least wanted to give you and idea of how the whole thing looks. 2 pages front and back for each month and two extra pages at the beginning and it filled up the album nicely.

All in all it was a fun project to do and its fun to look back on the photos from that year. I'm sure I'll do something similar for my 2013 photos, I'm just not sure yet if it will be the same idea. I might try a photo book or something digital, who knows.

Note: I just want to add that all the links I shared above are for informational purposes only, they are not affiliate links.

Project Life 2013 - week 18

Its 'go big or go home' week this week. I haven't done a large scale photo since the end of last year and this week it was more out of necessity than aesthetics.  My photos were crap. Being sick showed in my photo stream. A whole lot of nothing. I sat and stared for hours trying to make something out of nothing and then I went big and the rest just fell into place.

I enlarged three photos vertically to fill the three strips on the left side of my spread and I love how it turned out. Simone loved meeting the baby and loved even more that she was wearing one of her old outfits. A shot of me and my shoes that I love and Simone loving that the water has been turned on at the spray parks.

The right side was filled with the photos and bits that I did have for the week.  The title card is a Cameo cut file of a library pocket. I just enlarged it to fit the space that I needed. The little card inside pulls out and has my journaling for the large photos on the left side. I used washi to decorate the outside and used a piece of flair that was just the right color.

I made myself a color chart of my new watercolors and its hanging on the wall right by my work area. These bright colors make me super happy! I lost my voice last week, super fun! Simone had a great time at a play date on Monday with one of her school friends (no school that day). She made him a drawing and wanted to mail it proper so she did. A new obsession, so good! Larry and his popcorn, he loves it! I loved that Simone's friends mom thought to send me a photo of him with the letter when it arrived, she's a keeper! Simone's latest and greatest pool toy, so rad! A photo collage I made of my scrappy friends for NSD that I posted on my Instagram feed and my mess from two days of scrapping this past weekend.

 

Here is the little pull out of the title card so you can see it better.

 

Here's hoping for more photos this week otherwise you just might see a repeat of this layout!

 

This is Me album, continued

If your not a scrapbooker you might not know that this past Saturday was (inter)National Scrapbooking Day.  While plans to get together with my scrapping buddies didn't work out I still managed to stay up late and get some stuff done.

I started the day by scanning a ridiculous amount of old photos and getting things mapped out for how I wanted to tackle the first section.  I think I explained in the last post that I'm doing four sections for this album, it just made sense to break things up because my mind works best that way.

The first section is all about 'the early years' and its going to take the longest which is why I hadn't really started anything yet.

I scanned the front page of my baby book because it was just so cute. I have to commend my Mom, she did a great job of keeping up with it for me being number two. Lots of gems of information in there for sure like the day each of my teeth appeared. Way to go Mom!

I made this spread to talk a bit about my childhood. The writing for this project is what's taking me so long. Digging that deep into the memory bank is hard! Remembering to tell all the stories I want to tell is hard, making it sound good is hard. Hopefully it makes sense and hopefully it will tell my story.

The clipboard is a Cameo cut file and I love it, that torn paper edge makes me so happy. The photo collage is all digital. Oh, the seventies, they weren't good to anyone!

I took a few breaks here and there and after I put Simone to bed I started my second layout. As you can see below its a work in progress at a late hour.

 

It still looked the same in the light of day. I sat and stewed a bit unsure and all and took a break and went and dug through my hope chest for some graduation stuff and found a gold mine of things to include. This project may just need two volumes.

 

I made a few changes and this is what I ended up with. I broke the photos down by school so I could get some of that info down. I knew I wanted to journal a lot but didn't really have room so I opted to have the photo blocks flip out so I could hide it there which you can see in the photo below. Too much needed to be blocked out but suffice it to say it took me most of Sunday to write it. I could have written so much more.  On a funny note, Simone asked who the boy was second row on the left. Yeah, nothing like a 5 year old to remind you of how bad that cut was!

 Have a great week!

Project Life 213 - week 17

The fact that I got this post done yesterday was a small miracle. The allergies here are insane and I've got a super mean case of viral laryngitis.  I was worried it was something worse but thankfully with time it will go away.  I hope you don't mind if I keep this post brief and just hit the high points.

Here is the full spread

I think I need to start listing blue as one of my favorite colors because I sure end up using it a lot!  The photo of Simone sunning herself was taken by Larry while I was upstairs working last week, he emailed it to me and I started laughing.  I have no words really.  We took a trip to Ikea for a small list of things which meant Larry and Simone had to assemble her new bed frame.  Since its warming up time to get on the Bruschetta not sure if should really be paired with Mexican beer.  Simone painting, a new family member, a eco friendly coffee cup and some hate for our allergies.

So this photo happened at Trader Joe's last week and of course as I'm scolding her for climbing up into the cases of wine I snapped a picture, mixed signals anyone...!  A little love for the city prompted by a new piece of art we got, my favorite comfy outfit, a breakfast for me and Larry, a field trip for Simone, a day of scrapping for me (this flips out), and welcome to pool season! Check out the form on that dive, way to go Simone.

Here is a look at the flip out for my scrapbooking day.

Thanks so much for stopping by, sorry my post is so brief.  Hoping I'm feeling more myself quickly for sure.