Take Photo

Although my pal, Sarah, is queen of crafting and scrapbooking, it doesn't mean her ideas stop there.  I love that what she brings here not only applies to her personal passions, but could also be incorporated within other hobbies and lifestyles as well.  Today she is stopping by to share her process for displaying her recent projects within her craft room, but the idea could also be used in a kitchen or office for important memos and reminders.  Versatile options are great options!  Here she is now!



About this time last year, I shared with you my new system for organizing all the bits and bobs I use for creating scrapbook pages and cards. Since then, the wall above these delightful mason jars has been blank, awaiting some sort of display.


I knew I wanted to hang an empty frame, preferably with some cool detailing. The stars aligned and I managed to snag this frame for half price. I loved the frames bevel and the carved flower detail.



But I was torn: should I fill the center of the open frame with an assortment of smaller frames? Or should I create a kind of open weave memo board on which I could display finished pages and cards? I ultimately opted for the latter, though I plan to display the collage of colorful frames elsewhere in my craft room.

Decision made, I could finally paint the frame. I selected a lovely, sunny yellow, to pick up the dominant accent color in my room. I purchased a can of spray-paint at Michaels, using a 40% off coupon, of course. I also picked up some white and turquoise ribbon to create the grid. I chose two different widths of ribbon – 3/8 inch for the white and 1/4 inch for the turquoise – for added visual interest. I originally planned to get some fun patterned ribbon, but decided that might compete with the craft projects I plan to display.


I started by removing everything from the frame, which included peeling the black paper off the back {my husband’s friend claimed all the pieces I wasn’t using, so luckily nothing went to waste}.


I had initially planned to use my manual staple gun to adhere the ribbon to the back of the frame, but I discovered that the staples used to hold the picture in place would do the job instead. They were evenly spaced and there were enough of them to let me choose exactly the design I wanted for the ribbon, plus they sat high enough to let me thread the ribbon under but not so high that they would prevent the frame from sitting flush to the wall when hung.


Don’t you love it when things work out like that?! But of course I didn’t know about the staples until I removed the backing, so this is a difficult option to plan for. To get the frame ready for painting, I gave it a really good cleaning and a light sanding. Then it was time to paint. My knees aren’t such a fan of squatting on the garage floor, so I placed the frame on a card table, protecting the surface with some pieces of cardboard covered with an old sheet.


I {and by “I” I mean my sweet helper of a husband} gave the frame 5 light layers of paint, which helped avoid drips, holding the can about 12” away from the frame and letting it dry about 10 minutes between layers.



I am absolutely in love with the finish. It has just the sheen I was hoping for and I love the color. And the paint highlighted the flower detail even better than expected. Because the wood frame did have some imperfections, the coverage isn’t 100% perfect. I could have added more layers of paint, but with each layer the flower details because less and less defined. So I decided to embrace the imperfections {I think the experts call it “character”…}. But if you really want that flawless finish, make sure to look for a frame without gouges and run your hand over it to make sure the surface is smooth.

Now it was time for the ribbon grid. I played around with the configuration a bit to see what I liked best. I used a piece of painter’s tape to hold the ribbon in place while I tried different options. If you use ribbon like I did, as opposed to twine or wire, notice that the ribbon has a tendency to twist, so make sure before you permanently adhere it that it’s laying the way you want it to.


For my first attempt, I played around with crossing the ribbon and overlapping it. My original plan was just to use one long length of ribbon, to conserve ribbon. However, had I decided to keep this really random design, I would have actually cut smaller lengths of ribbon for each pass across the frame. It was just too hard to use one length, because I I had to undo all the ribbon just to change one pass. This was definitely an instance of the project determining the process.

But alas, the random design and I weren’t meant to be. I thought I would love it – and it is fun – but I decided I couldn’t handle looking at anything this asymmetrical on a daily basis. One problem {for me} with the random option was I didn’t care for having ribbon strung vertically. So for my next design I wove the white ribbon back and forth through the evenly spaced staples, every other one. Then I did the same with the turquoise ribbon.


And yet… It just felt a little too perfect… After all, this space is all about crafty creativity. So I thought I would give it one more a try. And it was juuuust right.


I actually just left the white ribbon where I had placed it for option #2, woven back and forth through evenly spaced staples. For the turquoise ribbon, I still laced it back and forth, I just chose more random spacing. Because this design was more predictable, I was able to use just one length of white and one length of turquoise.

Once I was happy with the placement of everything, I adhered the ribbon to the frame. I started by tying one end of each ribbon in a tight double knot around the first staple. Then I followed my selected pattern, making sure to pull the ribbon taut as I wove back and forth through the staples, since the ribbon will need to bear the weight of scrapbook pages and cards. Had the frame not already had staples, I would have stapled it in place each time I passed back and forth across the frame. You could also use small finishing nails. When I got to the end of the line, I secured the end with a quick staple, which allowed me to pull the ribbon tighter than I could with just a knot. A couple of quick taps with a hammer and everything was secure. Then I repeated the process for the other ribbon.


Now it was time to hang it on the wall. Since the frame is really light without a picture or glass, I just used regular nails to attach it. If your frame doesn’t already have hangers installed, like mine did, I recommend attaching two hanging brackets along the top backside of the frame. This way you don’t have to worry if items hanging on one side are heavier than the other. I really hit the jackpot with this bargain item!



Now the only thing left to do was hang some of my recently completed projects on my lovely new frame.



To hold the projects in place, I used these colorful magnetic clips I picked up in the office supplies section at Target and small clothes pins from Michael’s craft department. The magnet clips are nice because they won’t damage the paper, which is very important. An added feature that I hadn’t anticipated is that I can use the bottom lip of the frame to bear the weight of lower items. Yet another happy accident.



The frame turned out even better than I hoped for and I’m so excited to finally have a place to display newly finished projects.

I would love to hear from you brilliant I Heart readers: How do you display your finished projects so you can admire them?


"My name is Sarah and I live in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN with my husband of almost two years, Eric, and our two adorable Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Hermes and Brontë. I am a Communications Consultant by day and by night/weekend/any spare moment, I indulge in my passion for writing, crafting and organizing. I am honored to share with all you dedicated iHeart fans my tips, tricks and secrets for organized crafting, which will not only help you get control of your craft clutter but also allow you to make more efficient and productive use of your precious crafting time. While I am blessed with an entire craft room, I promise to explain how all the solutions I share can be tailored to your specific situation, whether it be a dedicated room, a small storage space or mobile crafting. In the meantime, Happy Crafting!"

I used to love to create scrapbooks and photo journals years ago, and to be honest, I slowly gave up on it because there was one factor I couldn't keep up on.  I have since realized that it is not just my scrapbooking life that was impacted, it was much bigger than that.  Thanks to Instagram and Project Life, I am slowly getting back into journaling and keeping our favorite memories documented with photographs, but I think we can all agree that the process of organizing and doing something with all of those digital photos can quickly become overwhelming!  Sarah has been stopping by as a contributor sharing her strategies and tips for scrapbooking, and today she is here to focus on the key ingredient of it all; the photos!  What I love most is that her tips can be applied to anyone looking to organize and print digital photos, whether for scrapbooking, using Project Life, creating family albums or printing for your hallway gallery wall.  Here she is now to share more about her photo organizing process.


About 4 years ago I decided to take my scrapbooking to the next level and splurged on a DSLR camera and a great telephoto lens.  And it was love at first click.


I take tons of photos.  One of the joys of digital photography is that I am able to take as many pictures as required to achieve the perfect photo and tell the story of my experience.  But it can be overwhelming to arrive home with hundreds or {gulp} thousands of beautiful pictures and have to decide which ones I should print to use in my scrapbook.  It would be too costly and environmentally irresponsible to print all those photos and I would never finish a scrapbook if I had to work with that many pictures.

So how do I take all those pictures and scale them down to a reasonable number of must print photos?  I’m so glad you asked!  And the answer: I use organization, of course!  This process doesn’t offer as much eye candy as a pretty room makeover, but I promise the results are lovely.


SET UP MY COMPUTER FILES

My first step is to get my computer set up for the photo selection and editing process.  On our home network I have a folder called Pictures, which is where I save and process all my photos.  Each time I have a new set of pictures from a trip, season or event, I create a subfolder within the Pictures folder and label it accordingly.  For example, following a brief California Coastal cruise my husband and I took over the Thanksgiving holiday, I created a folder called “Cali 2013.”  Then within that trip folder, I created my standard set of three subfolders: Taken, Edit and Print.  This step took less than 5 minutes.



DOWNLOAD THE PICTURES

Once I have the folders set up, I download all my pictures into the “Taken” folder, which is where the originals will permanently live.  We have a secure, backed up network in our house, which avoids the risk inherent in saving to my computer’s hard drive.  However, I do always save a backup of every set of photos on a USB drive {I just copy the trip or event folder to the USB, which allows me to copy both the photos and the organizational structure}.  And I never, never delete pictures from my camera until I have received the printed photos.

Before I start working with my pictures, I think about the end product I want to achieve with my album, so I can evaluate my photos through that lens {no pun intended}.  I think about whether I want to give an overview of the experience and select a couple of key photos that really convey the feeling I’m trying to create or if I want to tell a detailed story, delving into each experience and punctuating it with a lot of photos.  I often look at any journaling notes at this point, to refresh my memory of the experience, which is especially helpful if I’m not processing my pictures right after I return home.  My Year in Review scrapbooks tend to fall into the “overview” category, while my vacation albums are much more detailed.

My California Coastal cruise is somewhat of a hybrid between the two.  We’ve been on a number of cruises, so I don’t really need to explore the cruise experience.  And the length of the trip does not call for a scrapbook of its own, so the finished pages will be included in my 2013 Year in Review book.  That being said, my husband and I had a number of special experiences on this trip that I want to remember in detail, so some of the events deserve an entire layout.


INITIAL PHOTO REVIEW

In my initial review of my photos, I open them to full size on my computer screen so I can see the photos in detail.  This sometimes reveals a story that I didn’t realize I captured or inspires a unique spin on the story.  It also helps me see which photos can be further enhanced by cropping or other photo-editing techniques.  At this stage, I go through the photos fairly quickly with the objective of mentally grouping them into categories or sets of layouts.  My review of my California Coastal cruise photos helped me initially identify about 9 groupings of layouts.  This initial run through of the photos took me about 10 minutes.



SELECT THE KEEPERS

My second review of the photos is to make my initial selection of the keepers, i.e. the ones I want to print for scrapbooking.  I say initial because I’m likely to further reduce the pile before I begin the photo-editing process.  I review each grouping of photos, evaluating them based on the layout categories I identified and selecting the ones that best tell the story for each category.  If I took several versions of the same subject {and let’s be honest, I did}, I select the best version.  For example, I took about 30 pictures of this sweetheart.


How could I resist? She was literally eating out of our hand!  But printing every photo would be far less powerful than picking the most striking images of the beautiful Kiziwanda and our amazing interaction with her.

As I go through the photos, I jot done the number label of each photo I want to keep {at this point, the photos still have the number they’ve been assigned by my camera; I don’t name them until later in the process, to make the best use of my time}.  I find that writing down the numbers is a lot more efficient than moving them to the “Edit” folder as I select them. If I choose a picture and then later come across a better version of the subject, I just cross off the reject and replace it with the number of the better photo.  This is much easier than moving photos back and forth.

This winnowing down to the essentials took me about 30 minutes for my California Coastal trip, but those events and vacations that warrant thousands of pictures typically take me an hour or two since there are so many photos to look through and evaluate.  After photo editing, this selection step is the most time consuming part of the process.


MOVE THE KEEPERS TO THE "EDIT" FOLDER

Once I’ve reviewed all the pictures and selected my keepers, I reference my list of photos and copy them from my “Taken” into my “Edit” folder.
Here’s what I’ve found to be the easiest approach:

1.  Hold down the ctrl key and then click on each photo separately {holding down the shift key selects all the photos between the first and second one you click on, so if you want to randomly select photos throughout the file, you must use ctrl}.
2. Once all the photos are selected, hit ctrl + c {for copy} on the keyboard.
3. Click into the “Edit” folder.
4. Hit ctrl + v {for paste} on the keyboard. The pictures will paste into the folder.

Remember to copy, not move. I want the original versions of my photos to always live in the “Taken” folder.  Because I’m not going to print the photos that didn’t make the cut to the “Edit” folder, I don’t {spoiler alert!} edit them.  This is a huge time saver, and I can always go back and edit from the original if I decide to print an unedited picture at a later date.


NAME THE PHOTOS

Once the photos are all in the “Edit” folder, I name each one according to the photo group/layout it will be part of, giving each group of photos the same name but distinguishing them by number.  For example, all of the Giraffe pictures were called Giraffe_1, Giraffe_2, etc.


I personally don’t give each photo a unique name that identifies the subjects, locations, etc.  Because of my file organization system, I find it super easy when I’m looking for a specific photo to just click into the appropriate folder.  But if it’s really important for your system to have those specifics, I recommend starting with the general subject/layout label and then adding the details on the end.  For example: Giraffe_1_Eric & Kiziwanda_San Diego Zoo Safari_2013.


REALLY SELECT THE KEEPERS

Using a naming structure that identifies the layout topic first really helps with this photo selection process, because it allows me to sort and quickly review the photos that will be part of the final layout.  And that, in turn, allows me to see if I’ve selected too many photos.

For example, despite the fact that I winnowed down all my fabulous giraffe pictures to 17, that was still just too many.  Because they were named as a group, I was able to quickly look through the giraffe pictures again and it was immediately obvious that I still had a number of duplicates, so I was able to remove 5 photos that I didn’t need.  Because the versions in the “Edit” folder are copies, all I need to do is delete the photos I don’t want to use.  No moving necessary.  Using this process on my California Coastal pictures allowed me to reduce the number from a total of 303 pictures taken to start with to just 70 to print.  I was able to reduce by number of photos by over 75%!  And 12 of those photos will be printed as a photo collage rather than full size, so I consider that a success.

The name groupings also helped me plan my final scrapbook.  I realized as I looked through my giraffe pictures that I had a couple of different layouts in the mix.  I had some pictures that supported an overall story of our visit to the San Diego Park Zoo and the variety of animals we saw.  It was also important to highlight the Caravan Safari experience we had and to put particular emphasis on our time feeding the park’s beautiful Uganda giraffe Kiziwanda, including this great “photo bomb” moment.


I went through the rest of the pictures, following this same process:

1. Name the photos.
2. Look through them to identify any duplicate or unnecessary photos that can be deleted.
3. Identify the layouts that are emerging from the remaining photos and modify my layout list as needed.
4. Rename the photos to be more specific to what layout they will be part out.

MAKE DESIGN DECISIONS

At this point I’m still not ready to actually edit, because making great edits requires a general idea of the design each set of photos will become part of.  This may mean picking a layout design from my Inspiration Binder, determining a color story by selecting the perfect papers for the subject matter, or even just deciding what the title and journaling will look like.  For example, for my Kiziwanda layout, I knew I wanted to scraplift Latrice Murphy’s design from the April 2014 edition of Paper Crafts & Scrapbooking.

{Source: Paper Crafts & Scrapbooking}

I love the design: the natural wood accents lend themselves nicely to my nature themed layout and I think it will be adorable to replace the dinosaur accents with some giraffes.  Plus, it can be easily modified to extend over two pages and include the 5X7 photos I want to use.

This design decision step isn’t always necessary, but it helps me determine if any of the pictures need special treatment beyond cropping and color correction, such as adding journaling or title text to the “white space” on the photo, printing in black & white or sepia or printing in larger than the standard 4X6 size.  For example, I decided the giraffe photo bomb deserved a bit of embellishment.


Leaving the layout decision until after I print the photos doesn’t mean the photos won’t result in a great final design, but it does mean I may spend more time, money and wasted paper on reprinting photos in the future.  Plus, making these design decisions as part of my photo selection process means that once my pictures arrive in the mail and I get my project organized, I can get down to the fun of creating!


ADD PHOTO SIZES TO PICTURE NAME

Once I make my design decisions, I update each of the photos in my “Edit” file by including the size in the photo name.  So Kiziwanda _1 becomes Kiziwanda_1_5X7 to indicate I want this photo to be a larger print.
I have found adding this step to my process unbelievably helpful. Rather than wasting time once I upload my photos for printing trying to recollect what size I intended to print each photo in, it’s 100% obvious.  Once everything is in my cart, I can quickly update the photo sizes before submitting my order.  The timing for this step will obviously vary based on how many photos you have.  For my 70 California Coastal photos, it took me about 20 minutes.


FINALLY EDIT THE PHOTOS

Now, at last it is finally time to actually do the photo editing.  I know that this may seem like a lot of organizing steps before you get to the fun of editing.  As with any organizational endeavor, though, I find that if I do all the planning and organizing work first really, I don’t waste time editing unnecessary photos and trying to figure out what edits I need to make.

Even though I have an amazing camera that takes lovely photos and allows me to get my artistic on, I still edit almost every photo I print {note print, not take}.  My tool of choice is Photoshop Elements 8.  I often use one of the Enhance features, such as Auto Sharpen or Auto Contrast, which compensate for any lighting challenges at the time I took the photo.  I also use the straighten tool if I {or more often, the kind stranger I handed my camera too} misaligned the shot with the horizon.  Finally, I crop the picture to make sure my final photo follows the rule of thirds and to cut out any unnecessary or distracting elements.

For example, this original was pretty good…


But I like to think this slightly tweaked version is better.


I typically save my editing changes right in the version I copied into my “Editing” folder.  Since I have the original safely saved in the “Taken” folder and backed up on my USB, I don’t have to worry about ruining the original in case my creative editing gets out of hand. ☺

I find the editing process is the most time-consuming part, even more so than selecting the photos.  This means for projects where I am editing hundreds of photos — like a two week vacation abroad or an entire season’s worth — I may spend a few hours on photo editing.  For me it’s time well spent to ensure my printed photos are real stunners.  For this project, with its 70 final photos, it took me about an hour and a half to complete my editing.

 
MOVE THE EDITED PICTURES TO THE "PRINT" FOLDER

As I noted earlier, the final subfolder in my trifecta is “Print.”  While it might seem obvious to print once you’re done editing, having these designated folders helps me keep track of where I am in the process.  Moving the photos to the “Print” folder indicates to me that I have completed the editing and these are ready to be uploaded to my photo processing website for printing.  If items are still in my “Edit” folder, I know I’m not ready to print just yet.



SEND PHOTOS FROM PRINTING

My final step is to upload the pictures to my photo printing website.  Once they’re uploaded I add them to my cart, select the desired print size —made easy by the size indicator in my photo name! — and await their arrival so the fun can begin!

While I shared the multiple steps I follow in my quest for organized and beautifully finished photos, you could incorporate any of the steps into your photos organization process.  If you aren’t into scrapbooking, you can still use the photo winnowing and naming process to help you decide which photos to print.  Even the step of adding the photo size to your naming could help if you sometimes like to print larger sizes for framing or giving to family as a gift.  Hope you found a helpful tip or two in the mix and feel energized to go tackle your pile of photos.

What do you find to be the most stressful part of selecting which photos to print?  Have you come up with a great solution for sifting through all your digital pictures to decide on those must have pictures?  Do you have any secrets for turning a pile of photos into a finished scrapbook?


"My name is Sarah Eelkema and I live in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN with my husband of almost two years, Eric, and our two adorable Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Hermes and Brontë.  I am a Communications Consultant by day and by night/weekend/any spare moment, I indulge in my passion for writing, crafting and organizing. I am honored to share with all you dedicated iHeart fans my tips, tricks and secrets for organized crafting, which will not only help you get control of your craft clutter but also allow you to make more efficient and productive use of your precious crafting time.  While I am blessed with an entire craft room, I promise to explain how all the solutions I share can be tailored to your specific situation, whether it be a dedicated room, a small storage space or mobile crafting.  In the meantime, Happy Crafting!" 


* Header image source found here.

Although we have discussed picking up and moving a few times over the years, it has just never felt right to leave our abode.  Sure, we can never predict where the road will lead us and know that things can change in an instant (never say never right?), however, we are content staying put for quite awhile.

Yet one of the hottest email topics I receive on a frequent basis, is more cowbell moving tips!  And being that I haven't personally moved in 14+ years, prior to the days of documenting and blogging, I don't have any posts to share.  But my friend Sarah recently moved, and she did document her tips for us today.  And for that, I am extremely excited and grateful.  So thank you Sarah for saving the organized moving day!  Here she is now.



Fall greetings, iHeart Organizing friends. As always, I’m over-the-moon delighted to be back on Jen’s corner of the blogosphere, which always feels like a home away from home. Speaking of homes, my husband and I were fortunate enough this year to build and move into our dream home.



For those of you who have built your own home, you know that this can be a prolonged process. We were fortunate that it only took about 5 months from initial planning to closing, and it would have taken longer if we hadn’t managed to sell our house in 3 days. I attribute this success to doing our homework when it came to prepping and staging our home.

I spent hours combing the internet for the best tips on staging a home for sale. I’m sure you’ve heard some or all of these:

• CLEAN - We gave our house a good deep clean from top to bottom, and made sure to keep it clean during the showing process.
• DEPERSONALIZE - I wanted potential buyers to be able to image themselves in our home. So while I love my ceramic cats and collection of tea pots, these are the kind of personal items that really turn off home buyers. But even beyond kicking out the kichy, depersonalizing extends to things like swapping out family photos to neutral subjects like lovely landscapes.
• DECLUTTER - We have pretty big living room and dining room furniture (inherited from my husband’s single days), and in reality the scale was just too large for the size of our town home. So we rented a fairly good size storage locker and moved our large sectional couch, a couple of dining room chairs, a small cabinet and a TON of boxes. Luckily my lovely sofa from my single days was still upstairs in my husband’s office and looked great in our living room, making it much easier to move around the space.
• GIVE IT THE SPA TREATMENT - White linens work amazing magic, making a space feel clean, calm and clutter free. I purchased some inexpensive white towels and shower curtains for staging our bathrooms (the towels were only put out on showing days) and our dark comforter was covered with a white blanket.
• HIGH QUALITY PHOTOS - If possible, you want your listing photos to look like an amazing lifestyle blog or after shots from a Property Brother’s re-do. If you don’t like the realtor’s photos, find someone in your life with a DSLR camera and a knack for great photos. Potential buyers will decide whether or not to check out your house based on those photos, so make sure your home looks like a must see.

When I packed the 20 or so boxes we put in storage before listing our home, there were a lot of unknowns: how long would it take to sell our house, how long would it take to finish the new house, would we have to stay somewhere temporarily, was I going to lose my mind? I knew some of our stuff might be in storage for a long time and many boxes would remain packed for a while even after we moved into the new house. So I knew I needed an excellent system for packing and moving that would enable me to keep track of where things were during this prolonged process and allow me to quickly locate exactly what I needed after we had finally moved into our house.

In the end, I landed on a three-pronged system: color-coding, a numbering system and a packing manifest.

STEP ONE: COLORED DUCT TAPE

The first part of the system was marking each box with a piece of colored duct tape. Every room in the new house was assigned its own color of tape. After I was finished packing a box, I would grab the appropriate color of tape and stick a piece on the top and on two sides. If you pick up nothing else let it be this: don’t just place the tap on the top of the box. You know what happens with boxes? You stack ‘em.


If you only put tape on the top of the box, bye-bye super awesome, easy to see color-code system. I also wrote the room name across the tape, just so the people helping us move wouldn’t have to refer to a color-key to know what room to head to. As a result, the movers quickly got into the groove and everything ended up in its rightful place.

I opted for duct tape versus just coloring a corner with a marker or using small office labels because I wanted the label to be highly visible. I picked up two packages from Amazon, spending about $30 to get 12 different shades.


I wrote the room name on the inside of each tape roll, to make it easier to remember which color to use.


I dumped the duct tape rolls into a bucket along with scissors, a packing tape dispenser and a couple of markers. Thus I could carry everything I needed with me while I was moving around the house packing, without having to go in search of items or run up and down the stairs.


I recommend both a regular black sharpie and a white sharpie or chalk pen. The white works better on the darker colored tape, helping to make the room name much more visible. I also kept a color key in the bucket for my husband’s reference.

In addition to a roll of tape for each room, one roll of duct tape was reserved for our “Day One” boxes. These boxes included the items we would need the first day and night we spent in the new house, to make sure we could address our immediate needs without having to unpack a lot of boxes or go out a buy items. This amounted to 3 boxes included:

• Sheets
• Pillows
• Comforter
• Bath towels and washcloths
• Toiletries
• Kitchen towels and washcloths
• Disposable plates, cups, napkins and silverware
• Tupperware
• Chef knife
• Cutting board
• Dishwasher tabs
• Dish soap
• Light bulbs
• Scissors
• Box cutters
• Paper towels
• Toilet paper
• Cleaning supplies
• Laundry soap
• Dryer sheets

As a general rule I recommend packing things by the room, but these Day One items were an exception. As I was packing, I had a cloths basket set aside to corral these items as I came across them. I didn’t pack these items until the final day and I didn’t tape the box closed until we were literally heading out the door for the last time, to make sure I had everything. The first thing we did after closing was open these boxes. Well, after walking around and admiring the house.  I had never done this for any of my previous moves and it made move in day so much easier.


STEP TWO: NUMBERING SYSTEM

In addition to assigning each room its own color of duct tape, each room got its own unique number. Like the duct tape, the number was added to the top and 2 sides of the box.


Some of you are probably like… um, you already color-coded, why did you to number all your boxes, too?

Good question! While the duct tape was about getting boxes to the right room, the number series was about knowing what was in each box. By the time we closed on our old house, our belongings were spread across our storage unit, the garage of the new house and our temporary lodgings. When move in day arrived, I wanted to be able to quickly access the items I needed to unpack immediately, like dishes and glasses, and be able to identify which boxes fell into the I’ll-get-to-it-when-I-get-to-it category, like books and décor items. It was the numbering system that enabled this and it saved my sanity time and again.

Rather than just labeling the first box #1 and going on down the line, each room got its own number series: the basement was the 100 series, the kitchen was the 200 series, and so on. This again was about making things easy to find. Our basement ended up with 37 boxes. Did I mention I have a lot of books…? If I had just gone in chronological order, those 37 boxes may have been #1, #47, #108, #205, etc. It would have made it a lot harder to quickly locate the box I was looking for. For example, when I recently went in search of my sweet niece’s birthday gift, I’ll I needed to do was scan the stacks of boxes for the one ending 36, which made it super easy to find. Without the numbering system, I would have had to unpack a ton of boxes or go buy her new gifts and hope those size 24 months clothes would still fit her by Christmas.

Which reminds me of a side tip on packing: be strategic about how you pack. Rather just going through each room and boxing up its contents, think about how your items will be used and stored in your future home. Will they live in new places in your new home? For example, wrapping stuff lived in my craft room in our old home but was reassigned to our basement storage room in the new house. Rather than packing the paper and bows with all my crafty bits and bobs, I tucked it in with other basement items. As a result, I avoided carting a whole bunch of stuff down the stairs. Since one of the goals with the new house was fewer stairs for me, this was a huge win and a time saver. I also recommend packing all your storage containers in one box (or in my case, 3 huge boxes). Even if you purchased or created something for a specific purpose in your old home, you may find a new use for it when you move. When it came time to start organizing in the new house, it was so nice to be able to look at my full collection of options and pick the one that worked best. As a result, there was a lot less going out and buying new storage solutions.

Using a numbering system and being strategic about how you pack your boxes definitely takes more time. When numbering the boxes, I had to find the next number in the series, label the box and add it to the packing manifest (we’ll get to that momentarily). I avoided so much frustration and wasted time, making any extra effort and time upfront well worth it. As with any good organizational system, time spent in the beginning pays huge dividends over time. And anytime my husband says “Do you know where…,” my reply is always “Yes!” and within minutes I can put my hands on requested item.


STEP 3: PACKING MANIFEST

And finally, the packing manifest. This is where people sometimes get a fearful look in their eyes and start slowly backing away. Don’t worry, I said manifest, not manifesto. I’m not crazy, my mom had me tested. (Not really… I don’t think). But it is true that I numbered every single box, bag and bin with its own number and added that number and a description of the box’s contents to my manifest. So I supposed that may be its own kind of crazy.

I set the manifest up in a spreadsheet and created 4 columns: room name, unique box number, description of contents and location.



While I didn’t necessarily name every item in the description, I did get pretty detailed. For example, none of my boxes said “kitchen items.” I wanted to know where the dishes were versus wine glasses versus cook books, so I could unpack boxes in a logical order based on need and organization. Like the unique numbers, this level of detail helped me find exactly what I needed when I needed it. For example, my new craft room doubles as my home office where I work from home 3 to 5 days per week. While unpacking my craft supplies is a work in progress as we build new work surfaces and storage solutions, I needed my office supplies. Being able to quickly search the packing manifest for “office supplies,” locate the exact box I needed using the numbering system and unpack just the items I needed was a huge help in the busy days after first moving in.



Here’s another quick tip: if you have to work in a room filled with boxes, and piles of boxes stress you out, pile them behind your desk so all you see is the lovely view out your window.


#workslikeadream

The final column, location, may not be applicable for everyone. Because our items were stored in a few different places, I wanted to know exactly where everything was in case I had to access something while we had packed away. We made sure we had important items with us when we moved to our temporary accommodations -- like passports, financial documents and items needed for closing on the house – but I didn’t want anything to be temporarily “lost” because we didn’t know where it was. Also, my husband waited about a week or so after we moved in to clean out the storage locker, so it was helpful to know what items I wouldn’t come across in the first week of unpacking.

Make sure to print out a paper copy of your manifest. Luckily we did this or a good part of that hard work would have been for naught. My husband is a computer loving guy, so all of our computers are networked in our home and content is saved on a shared drive. Somehow, when we shut the server down for the last time before moving out, part of the tracking spreadsheet didn’t get saved. If I hadn’t had the complete paper copy, I seriously would have cried. As it was, it was frustrating not being able to just pop open the spreadsheet and do a find for all items. There were some occasions where I thought an item had truly been lost because I just couldn’t initially find it when scanning the paper copy.

All that being said, you don’t need to do all three to up your moving game. Even the color coding alone, which is pretty quick, makes a big difference. Whether you hire movers or trick wrangle friends & family, color coding allows them to drop each box in the right room without having to go to the trouble of reading. While reading doesn’t seem like it would take that long, this little time savings really add up in the carefully timed dance that is moving day. My boss also liked the idea because she thought it would help get her kids involved in the process. The colored tape is not only fun but would tell them which boxes are theirs so they can help with the packing and unpacking process (if you dare…).

But if you will have items boxed up for a while in storage, in multiple locations or just in your home, this three-part system might be worth considering. It just might save your sanity, not to mention your very precious time.

If you’re still with me (aren’t you sweet!?), you may be asking yourself: why didn’t she just unpack all her boxes? It’s been 4 months… Our project list has been quite long since day one. Part of my vision for our dream home of course involved a lot of great custom storage options. Rather than going with the builder basic installs for closets, which let’s be honest totally fail to maximize space, we wanted to design and install our own storage solutions. Ditto for the mud room, laundry room and bathrooms. The combination of the color-coding, numbering system and packing manifest enabled a just-in-time system, allowing us to unpack only what we needed exactly when we needed it, rather than having to unpack everything just to get on the items we really needed. This freed us up to spend the majority of our time on the projects to make our house feel like a dream home.

Would I use this system again? 100% without a doubt. But hopefully I shouldn’t have to any time soon, because the only way I’m leaving this place is kicking and screaming.


One final quick tip before I go. My brilliant husband discovered that we could purchase gently used boxes via Craig’s list. They were delivered right to our house and were a fraction the cost of new boxes, plus reusing boxes made me feel slightly less guilty about all the packing materials I was going through. We still had to purchase some boxes from the big box store, but we definitely saved money on the move. We’re just now getting the last of the boxes unpacked and when we’re done, we can call the same industrious young fellow to come collect the boxes.

If you decide to use all or part of this system, I hope it helps makes your moving experience a little less stressful. I would love to hear about any improvements you discover. Or have you already moved and landed on a system that was the bomb-diggity? (Are we still saying that?). Thanks to Jen for letting me stop by and I hope everyone has a lovely fall!



"My name is Sarah and I live in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN with my husband of almost two years, Eric, and our two adorable Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Hermes and Brontë. I am a Communications Consultant by day and by night/weekend/any spare moment, I indulge in my passion for writing, crafting and organizing. I am honored to share with all you dedicated iHeart fans my tips, tricks and secrets for organized crafting, which will not only help you get control of your craft clutter but also allow you to make more efficient and productive use of your precious crafting time. While I am blessed with an entire craft room, I promise to explain how all the solutions I share can be tailored to your specific situation, whether it be a dedicated room, a small storage space or mobile crafting. In the meantime, Happy Crafting!"

Confession: I’m a font fanatic. I love to have a wide variety of fonts at my disposal when creating scrapbooking pages and cards so that I can match the style of my journaling, captions and titles to the theme of the project.  Back in 2012, I visited Ms. Jones’ fabulous blog to share my ideas on organizing letter stickers, but for me fonts go well beyond stickers.  I can frequently be found exploring free websites for unique new fonts and I have a ton of font cartridges for my die cutting machine.  But as with any scrapbooking product or tool, I run the risk of not making full use of either my computer or die cut fonts because I can’t remember what I have.  That’s why I’m so excited to share my most recent craft organization solution.

For my computer fonts, I created a Font Catalog that I keep tucked in the front of my letter binder.


This somewhat tedious but super easy project took me about an hour, a great task to complete while watching TV.  I created a three-column table in Word.  In the first column, I repeated the phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” for each of my fonts {this phrase contains all 26 letters of the alphabet}.  In the second column, I identified the font name.


Since I went through the fonts alphabetically, this was pretty easy to complete.  Once I had documented all the fonts, I went down the list and filled in the third column of my table with the category for each:

• Cursive
• Script
• Serif
• Sans serif
• Theme
• Shapes

{For those of you who aren’t quite the font nerd I am, a Serif font is one that has little feet on the letters, like F and I, such as Times New Roman.}  Once I had everything categorized, I then saved a new version of the Word doc and reorganized the fonts by category {keeping the alpha version will be a big help later if I ever need to re-create the categorized version}.

Again, this was not a super sexy step, as it involved a lot of cutting and pasting, but it was quick and well worth it: now I can flip right to the category of font I need and pick out the exact right style.


But my die cut fonts are a bit of a different animal.  While I can look at them in the font booklet or on the computer, nothing compares to looking at the cut out version.  But it’s a waste of time, paper and cutting blades to cut out a “test” version for each project.  So I wanted a solution that would allow me to quickly and easily look through all of my fonts, be durable and easily portable.  Then inspiration hit.  What if I cut out one sample letter from each font {I selected A} and created my own booklet?  I have to say, the finished product is even better than I expected!


The first step was obviously to cut out each of the letters.  I wanted each letter to be large enough that I could see all the detail, so I sized each to be approximately 2 inches high, though the width obviously varied.  Since I was using my Cricut and Gypsy, I created a new project in my Gypsy, went through each cartridge one-by-one {in alphabetical order} and added the letters to the mat. This way I could cut out my letters in a bit more of an assembly-line fashion.  But this first step will vary based on what type of die cutting machine or tool you have.  Once I had everything laid out the way I wanted it, I cut out the letters.



As I removed the letters from the cutting mat, l carefully stacked them in the order I cut them out.  This helped me when it was time to label each letter, because I was able to refer back to my Gypsy and determine which cartridge each letter came from.  Once all the letters were cut out, I needed to add adhesive so I could mount them on cardstock.  Bring on the sticker maker! {I actually have the Xyron sticker-maker in three sizes – all of which get a ton of use – and this largest one did double duty on this project as a laminator}.


If you don’t have a sticker maker {though if you’re a paper crafter, I highly recommend you run out and buy one right now – some of the best money you’ll ever spend, I promise!}, you could use Mod Podge or any other adhesive; this step might just take you a bit longer.

I originally planned to punch a hole in the letters themselves and string them on a ribbon, but I realized this would make it difficult to flip through the letters and much more likely that the letters would get damaged over time.  So I mounted each letter on cardstock instead.  I first determined the size of my cardstock mats by using the tallest and widest letters {which were not necessarily the same letter} to determine the dimensions.  I decided on 4X4, which left extra room around the edge for labeling the font.

Because the booklet will hang in my craft room and be used often, I wanted to make it fun and visually interesting.  I picked a deep shade of solid pink {one of the accent colors in my craft room} for the letters.  I originally planned to cut the letters from patterned paper, but I realized that would make it difficult to see all the details of the letter.  Instead, I used a variety of double-sided papers for matting, selecting patterns that are simple and symmetrical on both sides to avoid overwhelming the letters.


As a general rule, each sheet of cardstock got one letter on each side.  However, if a particular font had a complementing shadow font, I included both.  And while for most of the fonts I cut out only the uppercase A, in some cases the lowercase version was distinct enough that it needed to be included, too.  To help with categorization later on, each cardstock square got similar fonts on the front and back.


As I added each letter sticker to the mat, I also labeled it, indicating the name of the Cricut cartridge as well as the specific font name and any other detail that might be helpful.  I hand wrote my labels to make this step quick and easy.


Once all the letters were matted and labeled, it was time to laminate.  I’ll be flipping through these frequently, so I wanted to make sure they were durable.  If you don’t have a laminator or want a less expensive alternative, you could use Mod Podge to seal each one.


After laminating, I cut each mat out with my handy paper trimmer, leaving a little border of lamination around the sides to protect the edges of the paper.  The final size of each measured just over 4 inches square.

Similar to my Font Catalog of Word fonts above, I wanted to categorize my die cut fonts, so I sorted my laminated cards into the following categories:

• Cursive
• Serif
• Sans Serif
• Letters in shapes
• Themed

I created divider cards for each of the sections to make it easy to flip to the right font.  I cut solid yellow cardstock into in 4 X 4.75 sheets and used my corner rounder punch to round the corners on one of the longer sides.  I then hand wrote a category label on each divider card.


The final step was to laminate them.


With all the font cards and dividers created, I could finally put them together.  I punched a hole in the first divider card, then used it as a guide to cut holes in the font cards and remaining divider cards.  Once all the holes were punched, I selected a coordinating ribbon and tied all the cards together.


I made sure to tie the ribbon securely enough to keep the cards together but loose enough that I can add new cards in the future if {okay, let’s be honest, when} I get new fonts.


I’ve even set aside some pre-cut mats and divider cards so they’re ready to go when I need more.  The final step was to hang my lovely new Font Portfolio within arm’s reach on the craft cart next to my desk.


I simply attached a binder clip, left both prongs up and looped the ribbon around them.


This little beauty has already been a big help with my crafting projects and I’m definitely making better use of my fonts.


Now I’m pondering other ways I can use this idea.  Hmmm… flash cards for the nieces and nephews? Do you have other ideas on how to use a cardstock booklet?  Do you have a great solution for organizing your computer or die cut fonts?


"My name is Sarah Eelkema and I live in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN with my husband of almost two years, Eric, and our two adorable Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Hermes and Brontë. I am a Communications Consultant by day and by night/weekend/any spare moment, I indulge in my passion for writing, crafting and organizing. I am honored to share with all you dedicated iHeart fans my tips, tricks and secrets for organized crafting, which will not only help you get control of your craft clutter but also allow you to make more efficient and productive use of your precious crafting time. While I am blessed with an entire craft room, I promise to explain how all the solutions I share can be tailored to your specific situation, whether it be a dedicated room, a small storage space or mobile crafting. In the meantime, Happy Crafting!"