My Library of Memories System

LOM - Photo Printing / Storage:

After ‘going digital’ a few years ago I began only printing photos when I needed them and as a result saw my creativity decline…so I love that Stacy encourages printing up the photos and having them in a place where we can enjoy and share them with others even without scrapbooking them. She advocates putting these photos in three-up binders in chronological order. The photos are readily available when you’re ready to scrapbook and can easily be used for scrapping those chronological events in our lives. She states [and I agree] that looking through printed photos helps ignite the creativity that brought us to this hobby to begin with – the need to tell our stories…

1] Every so often [usually when Walgreens has a 10c sale] I go through a monthly folder on my computer and send my favorite photos to print. Usually order a few 5x7s of my favorites as well. I have NEVER printed every single digital photo I’ve taken. [And yes, there are times when I go back to that same folder and print different shots for different projects…]

2] I have to admit that I’m not much on the three-up binders; I prefer to have my photos filed in a little folder that sets on my desk. They are filed chronologically – and I scrap the chronological events from this folder. However, I no longer scrap chronologically – meaning, I may do a page or two from an event in July before I’ve scrapped everything from March….make sense?

3] Once I’ve scrapped a ‘section’ chronologically the left-over photos go into little plastic envelopes on a shelf above my scrap space. These are labeled with LOM sub-topic suggestions: “Oh Brother,” Places We Go,” etc. This is where most of my ‘memory’ scrapping photos come from. It’s nice and handy and photos move easily between the two areas.

4] When the envelopes are full the photos are moved to my LOM storage boxes. [Very few go to ‘cold storage' at this point because I almost never print a photo I consider to be awful [non-scrap-worthy.] You’ll notice that I really do like for my photos to hang out in this area [see how each son has an entire box of their own?] I started taking photos in my pre-teen years [remember those flash bulbs we put on our little instamatic cameras? And how cool we thought the little 110 cameras with the flash built in were?!] so I have A LOT of photos. Still. These boxes hold those I’ve determined to be the ‘best of the best’ and I enjoy going backwards with my scrapbooking and finding a few to tell a special [or silly] memory that comes to mind. Photos in these boxes are not divided by date, but instead, by person, place, or everyday activities.

5] I also have another little hand-made file where I keep all of my heritage photos. These are divided by family name [parents and grandparents] with corresponding family members’ photos going into the appropriate section. I almost never scrap a photo directly from this file, but instead scan the photos I want to use for different projects.