Pocket Scrapers - Help Me :)

Kjersti

Kjersti

Sweet Shoppe SugarBabe
I was thinking about starting to pocket scrap. How do you keep everything organized? Do you take a daily photo? Weekly photos? Do you keep a notepad and write everything down for the week? I would love any tips you have :wub:

Kjersti
 
I try to keep caught up so that I don't have to take notes or anything like that. This is my first year doing it, so I'm still learning. I don't take a daily photo, but I do find that I'm taking a lot more photos than I used to. Even so, some weeks are very photo-heavy, and other weeks I struggle to fill my pages. Traci Reed has a great PL organizer that may help you out if you want to go the more organized route. I'm always working on the current or previous week, so I don't feel the need for it. I also highly recommend Traci's monthly PL collections! They're awesome!
 
I don't take a photo every day. Sometimes all my photos for a given week are from one busy weekend day, and other weeks they're spread throughout the week. On weeks I don't have enough (which rarely happens) I might take photos of the kids' schoolwork, download a photo related to a news story, or use a photo of a video game or show people here are liking. I like to record funny stories and conversations for my journaling, so I use an app (Diaro) to journal and then paste onto my layouts.

For me, it works best to store photos on the computer by week. I put journaling and screen shots in those weekly folders, too. I fall behind a lot (especially during the summer, when we have more family stuff going on and less time for scrapping), so staying organized makes it possible for me to catch up even if a lot of time has passed. I also like to work in batches. So one day I might choose photos for multiple weeks, another day I will place all the chosen photos and journaling on the layouts, and then I'll take a day to make each of the weeks look nice with cards, elements, etc.
 
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I don't do anything special to organize. My photos go into Lightroom in folders by day. For each week I want to scrapbook, I select the photos and create a Quick Collection with them.

I use whatever photos I have -- I don't try to take a daily photo. Sometimes my 2-page spreads have a ton of photos, sometimes only a couple. If I don't have very many, I try to include other things like screenshots and lists (like Favourite TV Shows or something else random).

I find journaling by checking out my Facebook posts, texts, google calendar, instagram feed, and emails. Sometimes I google the news for the week to see if something big happened that I want to note, or the weather.
 
I pocket scrapped my last vacation. Since it was a 'vacation' I journaled every night in the hotel room (or while sitting in the car during the 'boring' parts!). And since it was also vacation I had photos from each day! (Actually LOTS :D)

Pocket scrapping worked like that for me because I had a 'theme' - in this case vacation. If I was going to try it for more daily life type of things, I think I would go for a theme too for the daily pictures. Like taking a picture of where your feet are everyday, or food experiences, or places with my pet, or something like that.
 
I do take a photo every day, but I rarely use all my daily photos. It's much more likely that I have a lot of photos from the weekend and throw in a few from the week and some daily photos just get discarded.

I do Oh Life everyday but my biggest tip is that I do my week in review card on Saturday mornings (my week ends on Friday) while the memories of the week are still fresh. I sometimes look through my photos to remember what happened, but I don't worry about the details.
 
I was much more organized last year (and also much more caught up!). I have never really gotten into a routine of keeping track of things. My photos are also sorted in lightroom by date, so I just usually sift through the photos for each week and try to use that to jog my memory. As well as Facebook posts (which is half of the reason I post so much on Facebook!), and my phone pics automatically upload to my Google Plus account. I don't always take a picture every day.

The only thing I wish that I could get better at is writing down funny/cute things my kids say. I get some of them, but my memory is horrible. I am much further behind this year than I was last year, but I LOVE pocket style scrapping. I hope you enjoy it, Kjersti!
 
I have all my photos sorted chronologically on my computer, so I just scan the imbedded data for dates when I clear off my camera every weekend. I try to at least open up a new template & save the photos I want to use into it even if I can't get the rest of the page done at that moment. I will also type in a short phrase if I know what I'm going to do for one of the 3x4 pockets e.g. conversation with E. at lunch or SSD contest. I do the same thing as Sara and will scroll down my Facebook page for current events/statuses/etc. type things to add in.

The best advice that I can give you is to follow your gut. Last year was my first year of PL, so I decided to do just one PL page per week to see if I really liked it. It was always Design A, too. Even though this wasn't what 'some people' did, I knew that I needed to make it as quick and painless as possible in order for me to follow through on it. This year, I'm doing a two page spread per week with different designs on the right-hand side. I always use a 3x4 calendar because using one of the 4x6 pockets for a date card seems like a 'waste' to me. I really researched what other people were doing, what other scrappers I admired were doing, read through some PL threads here & elsewhere, and asked myself what I wanted to achieve with PL. I still do regular layouts, but PL has become a major part of my scrapping.

I am continuing to finetune my system & am contemplating loosening up next year and doing a double page spread that includes one full page that highlights something from that week and then a pocket page of a various size with mostly photos. I really like the look of paper albums that have pages of all different sizes which for me as digital means I won't be able to print my 2015 album as a bound book, but I can always do individual pages at Persnickety. I have 'conquered' PL and need a new challenge, so I think having pages of all different sizes, dictated by my stories of the week, will help keep it fresh and interesting for me.

Good luck!
 
I'm getting excited! My daughter is a freshman and I realized I don't have much time left before she leaves for college. I was hoping that if I pocket scrapped I would remember all of the little things we did together. I wish time would slow down. Thank you for all of the amazing tips!! I appreciate your help. I'm off to see your galleries.
 
Kjersti - I think your girls are about the same age as mine. I realized the same thing last year when Katie was a freshman. I decided to just explain to them why I wanted to document our lives and that I needed their help. I take most of my pics on my phone. Once a week I ask my girls to send me their favorite pics from the week. I try to remind them to take pictures if something fun is going on at school (pep rally, dress up day, football games, etc.) My youngest is in middle school and they aren't allowed to have their phones out at all during the day. So she helps by reminding of things I might want a picture of. :) I do great at the beginning of the week and then as the week goes by I forget and then Sat and Sun we always do something fun.
I try to take one selfie a week to include. I take pics on our way to the bus stop, or what we eat for dinner, when we shop, etc. I try to include funny things that happened or things they say. I remember with Evernote or a text to my husband. I just look through my phone at the end of the week. My pics automatically go to Drop Box so I can grab them when I'm ready to work with them. As long as I work on weeks 1-2 weeks ago I'm good with my own memory. I move from Drop Box to week folders on my EHD. Then I can look at the whole week's worth of photos and pick those I want to use.


I have also created some extra high school PL pages for my oldest. I'm making her a high school album to give her at graduation. I've been doing them all in a theme. Homecoming, Learning to drive, Football, etc.

I hope that helps! Can't say I've stayed caught up, especially over the summer. However, every week I get done is another week and I'm not going to beat myself up over it being perfect. If we are busy and I miss weeks so be it. Life isn't perfect so why should my albums be?
 
I put my photos in a map by month, only take notes on vacations en origanize the photos bybday then.
i ,m doing a project 12, monthly project and keeping up with it
 
We are thinking in parallel lines Kjersti! Cheyanne started high school this year too and I've been contemplating doing a PL book for each of the next 4 years to document this part of her life.

Juli - Love your idea of including pics the girls take at school but unfortunately Cheyanne's high school has an absolutely no phone policy during school days, not even in the cafeteria or during assembly, rally, etc. But I'll still have plenty to work with I'm sure :) This thread may have convinced me to jump in and do it!
 
I do mine monthly as I don't have time for weekly spreads. It's usually four pages/month, five or six if it's a busy month... so there's less worrying about what to take a picture of each week or about having enough photos. I don't necessarily put the photos in chronological order either - they just need to appear somewhere in that month. And I have plenty of 'pockets' left for fillers and other fun stuff too! As for notes, journalling, etc - I keep it all in my head and provided I do my pages shortly after the end of the month I tend to remember it all (so far anyway!).
 
Kjersti said:
I'm getting excited! My daughter is a freshman and I realized I don't have much time left before she leaves for college. I was hoping that if I pocket scrapped I would remember all of the little things we did together. I wish time would slow down. Thank you for all of the amazing tips!! I appreciate your help. I'm off to see your galleries.
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Kjersti, I started doing PL the year we moved from Malaysia to the Philippines, and I feel like I was so much more conscious about documenting the everyday details about our lives that I had taken for granted for so long. There were so many little things I miss that I probably wouldn't have thought to have taken a picture of if I hadn't been doing PL.

My only tip would be to write stuff down when you're stopped in traffic or waiting in line because there are so many things you can forget that are really cool to have recorded!
 
I've been taking a daily picture for over four years (crazy that it's been that long!) so I always include them and that helps me remember a LOT of what happens for the week. I also have a paper planner that I record my daily activities in and rely on the momento app to collect all my social media posts for the week. I too use Lightroom to collect all my pictures.

My main advice would be to stick with a few elements- calendar cards, templates (with or without overlays), background colors (like my kraft paper) or fonts and keep them the same the entire year. It's nice to have a few things the same while switching kits each week.

Good luck! I can't wait to see what you create!
 
luckyme said:
I don't do anything special to organize. My photos go into Lightroom in folders by day. For each week I want to scrapbook, I select the photos and create a Quick Collection with them.

I use whatever photos I have -- I don't try to take a daily photo. Sometimes my 2-page spreads have a ton of photos, sometimes only a couple. If I don't have very many, I try to include other things like screenshots and lists (like Favourite TV Shows or something else random).

I find journaling by checking out my Facebook posts, texts, google calendar, instagram feed, and emails. Sometimes I google the news for the week to see if something big happened that I want to note, or the weather.
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THIS

and I use this by Traci to do the planning

 
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