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lmccandless

lmccandless

The Force is strong with this one.
Joined
Mar 9, 2009
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Due to work and a packed personal life last year, I was running very far behind on my pocket scrapping. I went to a scrap retreat and finally finished my 2015 album yesterday! Finally! Now, I need to come up with a super fast way to compete 2016 so I can start fresh and current with 2017. I thought about skipping 2016 entirely but too many important things have happened that need to be documented, such as my daughter's senior year, the death of my grandma and then my daughter starting college. Any thoughts on how to get up to speed with 2016? I've *never* been this far behind before. I usually scrap about a month behind current, so I need a strategy for this!
 
I know recently when I got behind, I just started taking photos and tickets/menus/souvenirs/blank notes with prompts for photos I have not printed yet - placing them in as markers in my album - to come back too. I have all the things in my album - digi, paper, pocketpages, even cards with holes punched I can add photos or journal too - just no rules. I think it helped when I looked back and said ' oh yeah, this goes here"

It really helped me to reduce my "over thinking". hahaha!
 
Start with the big events? Then they are done and saved.
Then like Danyale said arrange photos (love your idea of putting notes where pics go).
For me doing a daily or PL page I get lost in the embellishing so having the photos done. Then I can embellish away.
Or what if you did it by month instead of week?
 
I had the same problem last year.
I am still scrapping the second half of 2015 and in order to get caught up I decided to use Just Jaimee's RTG templates for 2016. I make a 2-page layout every week and am totally caught as far as 2016 goes. At first the idea of using ready made templates didn't appeal to me but it really helped me to get stuff done. I am honestly not changing a thing to those templates, just remove a few items that don't fit and maybe change a card, but other than that, plop photos on it, add journaling, change the fonts - done!

2016 will look super cohesive and I am very happy that I can start new in 2017 and make something completely different - probably pocket scrapping. I consider 2016 a transitional year as my annual album will not really be my creation but it will be done in the first week of January 2017 and that is what counts for me.

Thanks to @justjaimee for making those awesome templates.
 
Maybe just take it easy on the decoration? I'm thinking photos and journal cards only - and maybe not even decorative cards, just space for your journaling, so that it's more like a photo book. This way you get things recorded and you're caught up and can do more of the fun embellishing in 2017. Also, do you scrap by week? I think maybe if I were far behind I would readjust to just focus on the events you really want recorded rather than going week by week.
 
Also there is another thread that several have suggested working on a current week and then work on a week from earlier in the year. So that you are seeing the gap close.
 
I would start with the big events. When you get those weeks done you'll be reminded of the days around them. I also like @carilyne 's idea of working current and a week in the past. It seems the goal is to start somewhere. Good luck!
 
You do hybrid, right? So this might not work for you. When I decided to go back and "project life" a previous year, I just sat down and quickly put photos onto templates. It was pretty mindless and I could do it while watching tv. Before I knew it, I had 6 months on templates, ready to go. Then, as I had time, or fun new kits I wanted to play with were released, I finished up the pages with the fun stuff. Since everything was already on templates and labeled by week, I could even work out of order which was fun. I kept them fairly simple and they came together quickly. There was just something very overwhelming for me with thinking about doing week after week, start to finish, but doing one step at a time kept things manageable for me.
 
Laura...ditto what they've said above. Do those big events and then dil in the ordinary weeks/months.

I've seen lots of designers put the photos in the pocket and then leave spaces with a couple of sticky notes for the journaling or journal cards. (Ali Edwards was the first I saw who said...do what you can when you can and don't stress!!!)I often do what Tracie does with templates though PL is one project I've never been really behind. For me it's the travel albums which I like to do in a totally different style...unless I'm doing one for dh (his Alaska fishing trips) or grandchildren (Josie's trip to Alaska with Dick or her school trip to London & Paris). Then I use a very simple PL style template, large white border and no decoration at all and usually two or 4 photos per page. I've made mix books like this in a day or two. Because they are for someone else's trip I don't have to worry about the journaling since I have no reason to comment on their photos.

I put a trip of mine to the SW in PL by just printing the photos and leaving those spaces for some cards, esp when I had blank spaces in the pocket protectors. This was a 2014 trip and I still haven't done the cards...but I will because I hate those empty pockets. The rest of the album is in 12" prints.
 
That's awesome that you finished 2015! Congrats! I am in the same boat right now. Life has seriously gotten in the way of scrapping, so I'm the furthest behind that I've ever been since starting digi 10 years ago. I have a scrap weekend planned for Sept, Oct and Nov, so I'm really hoping that will help me get caught up. I know when I do a weekend that I get in the groove and can really do a tons of pages, especially if I'm organized ahead of time. Kinda like Tracie's suggestion above, I will create a folder for each page I want to do and then I'll sort through the mass of pictures and just pick the best ones that I want to scrap and I'll copy those into that folder. I will even go through my kits and templates and pick out what I want to use and create links to the proper folders inside the "page folder". That way when I finally get time to scrap the hard stuff is already done and I can just sit down and scrap without having to hunt for anything.
 
Hooray for getting 2015 done!!! That has to feel great!
I'm in the same boat with 2016. I basically have the last 3 quarters to finish, so I'm not much further ahead than you are. I wish I had some fabulous advice for you... if I did, I'd share it with myself as well!! Maybe we'll just be in it together. ;)
I did go through my photos and make a list of the pages I thought I would need based off of what photos I have. Sadly, there are a LOT of pages... and like you, it's a lot of stuff I don't want to skip. I know for sure my plan is going to involve keeping it SUPER SIMPLE. No other choice at this point.
 
That's a HUGE accomplishment to have 2015 done - congrats!!

There are so many great suggestions here that mine will probably sound like echoes of them, but here goes...

I totally second @Rikki 's suggestion to use Jaimee's Ready-To-Go pocket pages if you want to just get your album done fast. They're already set up and embellished, you just have to add your photos and words. Someone earlier mentioned that you do hybrid pages, so if you need a space to stick "real life" stuff like graduation programs, I've found that using a pretty 8.5x11 binder (Target has some lovely ones) with a page protector for each month corrals the stuff rather nicely.

@klee73010 and @carilyne 's suggestion is what I'm doing (I'm behind on way more than just 2016...and we'll leave it at that). I'm trying to work on multiple weeks per week, though first I need to get all of my photos culled (just finished last night) and at least some of them edited (working on that now!) for this to work. Since we're heading into the last quarter of the year, you'd need to do 4 PL weeks per week to be caught up by the end of the year.

Going through and just putting in the photos (+ words if you want to do those at the same time) and then catching up with filler cards and embellishments later (as @cookingmylife suggested) is also a fab idea. I like batch processing in general, so I've been doing some other tasks ahead of time that will help make things faster now that I have time to scrap again. I decided to use just one template for each week (it's similar to Project Life's Design A) so that I don't have to spend time deciding which template to use for every layout. I've also gone ahead and made enough copies of that template for the entire year and labeled the copies with the date for each week. Then I can just drop stuff in as needed. I'm limiting myself to just ONE double-page spread per week. No extra "inserts" allowed for me! If I think an event needs an insert, then it goes into the stash of photos to scrap as a regular layout. I'm also limiting things to just one kit/series as I scrap. For 2015 catch-up I'm using MPM (combining the 2015 and 2016 kits), and for 2016 I'm using Jaimee's Storyteller subscription. Another thing that helps speed up the process is to just use one font, or just one font for journaling and another for titles.

I used to only scrap a month or two behind, as well, but I find if something "big" happens (for me its usually a vacation with TONS of photos) I get way behind. Lots of little (and big) things have piled up for me for the last 2-3 years that have made me get more behind than usual, and I'm looking forward to getting caught up, too!
 
Congrats Laura on getting 2015 done! Everyone already has listed lots of great ideas - I would only add to really get it caught up maybe just focus on the pictures and stories- add a little word art and voila! pages done :) Good luck - hope you'll share some of your completed pages!
 
Thanks for all of the terrific advice! It really helped me to distill what I want to do. I just finished my Smart Collections in Lightroom and I am culling my photos down. I am going to do a spread for each month with some inserts for those big events. I've done a hybrid PL since 2011 but I am going all-digital using MPM for 2016. Then, I will send everything to Persnickety. I think that I can power through it the fastest that way.
 
lmccandless said:
Thanks for all of the terrific advice! It really helped me to distill what I want to do. I just finished my Smart Collections in Lightroom and I am culling my photos down. I am going to do a spread for each month with some inserts for those big events. I've done a hybrid PL since 2011 but I am going all-digital using MPM for 2016. Then, I will send everything to Persnickety. I think that I can power through it the fastest that way.
Click to expand...

You can do it! #jentellsherselfaswell
 
lmccandless said:
Thanks for all of the terrific advice! It really helped me to distill what I want to do. I just finished my Smart Collections in Lightroom and I am culling my photos down.
Click to expand...

That and getting photos edited are always my hangups- sounds like a great place to start!
 
@lmccandless How are you creating your smart collections? I mean, I know how to create smart collections in LR, but what are your parameters for yours please? I just keep my photos by week as that's how I do my pages and am curious about your smart collections for PL.
 
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