LOM Project

After a request for my LOM progress, I realized I must have deleted my previous posts. Well, for those of you that don't remember, earlier this year, I started adopting the Library of Memories approach to scrapbooking and organizing my photos. This is a system invented by Stacy Julian and detailed in her Photo Freedom book. Since I was an event based scrapper, I felt I was losing a lot of the every day moments. I also felt there were lots of photos sitting in boxes around the house that I probably love to scrap someday, but with no idea where to start with organizing them, I had no idea what treasures even lurked in those boxes. So along comes Photo Freedom and the book reinvents my thought process and totaly reinvigorates my scraping desire.

I liked it so much, I started a Yahoo Group for other fanatics like myself. I immersed myself head first into this system and here is some of the outcome.

First of all, I started printing my photos and housing them in these pioneer 3-up albums.



This was a stretch for me since I have previously kept everything digital and only printed as I went. But I decided to give it a go and adopt the whole system. I must say I love that I have printed photos to flip through now. Digital photos tend to get lost in computer wonderland for me and having a tangible print in front of me inspires my imagination. Even though I still end up reprinting it to a size I prefer for the specific layout I use it on, I still don't see it as wasted material since it ends up in my category drawer for possible future use.




Speaking of category drawers, I bought two sets of the 5x8 size from Staples but there have been a lot of reviews from other members of the Yahoo Group who have purchased sets from other vendors or substituted for cost effectiveness.

I used the Stampin' Up "'08 In Color" color palette for my categories and am still digging it.


My main categories ended up being:



If you can't read them, they are "All About Us," "People We Love," "Enjoy the Journey," and "Events Worth Celebrating." Since I take pictures at far more events then I do of traveling, and travels usually end up in mini albums anyway, I combined Stacey's "Places We Go" into my Enjoy the Journey drawer and made a whole drawer dedicated to Events. I made the color divider cards inside myself from the In Color papers and then had sub-categories made from dividers I got at Staples.



My only regret is making them 4x6 so they don't stick out very high above the photos and some are even blocked by photos that are a little bigger, but it's not a big enough deal to me to make them over again.

On to the albums. I was strictly a post-bound albums girl since most of my layouts were double sided. But again, I put my whole heart into this system and decided to try D-Ring albums. The result... LOVE IT! It totally opens up the possibility of scrap sizes. If I feel like creating a one pager, a two-pager, a 12 by 12, 8 1/2 by 11, even an odd size, I am not limited now, I can just insert it in the D-Ring. I went with American Crafts All Black Cloth Albums and got them at a discount from the awesome owner of the LSS in my area Green Tangerines.





I used the same color scheme as the drawers for the tabs on the outside of the albums. I still have to order some of the Stampin' Up ribbon to match the remaining albums, but I am waiting for their new catalog to come out first.

I also added two specialty albums - "Year in Review" where I ultimately plan to do a page or two-pager a month to keep my chronological bug going, and a "12-of12" album where my layouts for the 12-of-12 challenge will be housed. These albums are sadly low on the layouts right now, but I figure this whole system will build over time.


The albums are housed here in my living room (excuse my hubby's new X-Box playing on the TV, it's still new so he's a little obsessed. Happy Anni/Birthday honey!)
They are visible to visitors and I hope they will get more attention that way. I like the idea, but I am not sure I will keep it this way. Things get really dusty in this area because of the doggy and I don't want my layouts to end up damaged because of it. Plus, I figured it kind of sucks to have to show visitors six different albums just to show them what you've recelty made. So I might eventually change to a single album housing everything I most recently made and once that gets full, start transferring them to their permanent home in the main albums... But no decision on that yet.

I did decide to sort my layouts that I previously made into the new album system.


















As you might be able to tell from the photo on the right, the layouts are sadly out of balance and there's very little in the All About Us album. It definitely inspired me to start scrapping a little more about me!

My latest challenge has been to start digital tagging of my digital photos. But my fingers are tired so maybe I will post a little more about that at another time!

Hope you enjoyed my commentary!

=)
Lynne