Recreating a Page...and Rotating a Filler Card

I don't know that there is anyone who really reads this, but it's a project that keeps me busy regardless.

I have now gone to my local FamilySearch center the last three weeks and scanned hundreds of paper scrapbook pages, resulting on thousands of individual images that I am SLOWLY working to re-scrapbook in the Project Life app.

Some may think it's a waste of my time to redo what has been done. Well, that's just it. It's MY time. And I want to spend it making scrapbook pages the way I want them.

I've said before that I wasn't fully satisfied with how the paper pages looked, and how incomplete they were because of the missing journaling that I would someday come back and add. Well, today is SOMEDAY, and I'm adding that journaling...and just happen to be tweaking the pages and making the digital at the same time.

Here's the latest example of a page I converted.

The original page wasn't half bad. I had picked a color scheme that matched the photos. I was even a little artsy in making a cardstock patchwork pattern out of different shades of blue to mimic the denim quilt in the pictures. And there's the title that I stamped with rubber stamps and then colored in with markers. And can we just talk about what a big fan I was of tilting the pictures as I glued them on the page? Oh, yeah, I was all about that.

But..... no journaling. What year did this happen? Who made the quilt?

So in my quest to digitize the page, I knew a couple of things. If possible I wanted to keep the stamped title of the page intact. I knew I wanted to keep the red and blue color scheme. I knew I wanted to add the journaling.

So for this page (and it doesn't always happen this way for me), I started looking for a template first. I knew I had two pictures that I'd want in big slots, and that my title would probably have to be split into three smaller, vertical oriented slots.

I ultimately decided on the Design S template. I could use the smaller vertical slots for the title, the other small slots for filler cards, and the bigger slots for my pictures and journaling.

From there it was just a matter of pulling in the various elements and adding the journaling.

Since I liked the red and blue theme, I picked the Americana card set for my filler cards. I probably spent more time "testing" cards in the slots than it took to make the page altogether....the paper way! I would pull in pattered card in the top slot, then add a second, different patterned card in the middle slot, and then back out and look at the page as a whole.  Nope. Didn't like how the two patterns clashed, or didn't like those colors next to each other.

Finally I decided I liked the idea of striped cards. The narrow blue stripes and the thicker multicolored stripes. But.... the narrow blue striped cards were horizontal and on the thicker striped card, the stripes were vertical.

I lucked out, though. This isn't the case with every filler card in the different PL app sets, but I could actually rotate the orientation of the thick striped card within the app. I don't know if you have ever tried rotating a filler card before, but here's how to do it (or see if it's even an option to do).

Pull in the filler card you want to use, into the slot you want. Then click on that card slot so that it is "selected" and it sort of zooms in on your phone screen. Here's you'll see the Add Photo or Add Card buttons you are used to seeing. But in the opposite corner, if the card is able to be rotated, there will be the Rotate button. Like I said, not all cards will have this option, and some cards that do have this option will, when rotated, shrink or stretch the card image slightly. You'll just have to play with it and see if you like it.

Some cards may look better if you rotate them 90 degrees (one tap of the Rotate button), or it may look better if the pattern/design on the card was upside-down (180 degree rotation, or two taps of the Rotate button). Play around with it. Post your pages on Instagram. Tag me @projectlifeappdude  in the photo or the comments! You guys are so kind to me in the comments of things I post on Instagram, and I'd like to return the favor! Plus as much as I hope my pages inspire your creativity, I get ideas for things other people post just as much!

Anyway, that's it for this go around of taking scrapbook pages digitial.

Until next time! :)

Watching the Olympics and Feeling Nostalgic...

As I was watching the 2018 Winter Olympics on TV over the weekend, it got me thinking back to 2002 when the Olympics were in Utah. I knew I had at least one page that I created back then in the pages I had scanned, so I went through my scanned files and found these bad boys (emphasis on BAD!)

Holy sticker overload, Batman!

Wow. Just, wow.

It's like I felt I needed to use every single sticker in the package. And why that huge zamboni sticker? It's not like we went to the Olympic event to see the zamboni!

Well, thank goodness I could make up for some of these mistakes when I remade the page in the PL app, right?

When I scanned the pages, I got a scanned copy of the entire page, but then also had a scan of each of the individual photos on the page. That gave me the "meat" to work with on the page.

I decided to use the Design D template, and to focus the large 4x6 pockets for three of the images: the tickets, the German face painted guy, and for the one of me and my friend Nathan. And then I'd use the smaller pockets for the horizontal images from my original pages: the hockey team, and my wife and I with the hockey rink behind us. I opted to not use the picture of me next to the Olympic themed fence. It's not the best picture, the wording on the fence is backwards, and it just isn't part of the "story".

I decided that I wanted to use emojis on the page for the flags of the countries. For those, I just pulled in white journaling cards from the Neutral Cards Set, and then centered the flag emoji on the card, and increased the font size as big as it would go.

I added my journaling to the remaining 4x6 pocket and tried for like an hour to find a plain journaling card that matched the color of the tickets. It's not quite purple, but not quite blue either. I finally gave up and just decided an a gray color. Then I matched the background color to that, and I was done.

Two super-busy looking paper scrapbook pages condensed down to one PLapp page!

Feels like a gold medal to me! ;)

Westley the Wizard...

So my three hours of scanning old paper scrapbook pages (which you can read about HERE) resulted in quite a few gems seeing the light of day for the first time in over a decade.

This was one of those pages.

Not a bad looking page. The colors coordinate, there’s some matting going on behind the photos, a little Deckle edge scissor action, and what I’m sure was time-intensive sticker lettering. But…what year was it? What was the occasion? Why the wizard outfit?  No journaling! Again! (I’m thinking that could been my theme song…anyone know a lyricist and a composer?)

The main thing I was glad of when I looked at this page was there were nice big pictures that I could easily import into card slots in the PL app. The tricky part would be for those pictures that overlapped each other a little bit. When you are trying to just zoom in on a photo, you only get either a square or a rectangle shape to work with, and photos that overlap each other can leave you with weird pieces on your finished page.

So I selected a template in the PL app that had matching orientations for the photos on my paper page.

Then I pulled the pictures in, and added the journaling that had been absent for 17+ years! But there was still that pesky overlapped photo bit that I didn’t really like.

It's so hard to find the "right" purple background! I must have looked at every card collection that had a shade of purple until I found this one that would work (Everyday Joy Themed Cards).

I’ve talked about how I sometimes use the LetterGlow app to add journaling on top of photos, and I knew that the free version of that app also has shapes you can add to your photos, so I decided to give that a try.

I exported a 12 x 12 image of the page from the PL app and saved in on my phone’s camera roll. Then I opened up the LetterGlow app and imported the page.

From there I selected the Add Graphics option, and selected Banners/Frames and scrolled through them until I found the one I wanted.

There are a few basic shapes that come free with the LetterGlow app.

I thought this banner looked "wizardy".

Then I positioned the banner over that little bit of the overlapping photos that I wanted to try and hide. Then I added some text to the banner graphic, and had my finished page!

So at this point I still had (in the PL) app the “finished page” without the banner. I exported an editable backup of this version and saved it in Dropbox. Then I took the “really finished” version, with the banner added, and exported that from LetterGlow as a 12 x 12 image and saved that along with the editable PL backup. If I ever wanted to make changes to the page, I can bring the editable version back in the PL app, but would have to go in and redo the banner I added in LetterGlow again. Make sense?

Anyway, I liked how it turned out in the digital version a LOT! What do you think? Feel free to disagree with me…I’ve got thick skin! :)

Let the Scanning Begin...

When I made the decision to convert all my paper scrapbooks to digital, I knew I needed to find a place that had a nice scanner I could use, and hopefully one that didn’t cost too much. Sure, I have one of those printer/copier/scanners at home for personal use, but when I tried to scan pictures, the colors didn’t ever come out right in the photos. So while that would be super convenient, the quality wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

Luckily, here in Utah where I live, a new FamilySearch family history center just opened up, and besides having a computer lab where people can do genealogy work, they also have scanners that you can rent by the hour….for free! So I signed up for some time this week.

To prepare, I went down into the basement and started collecting scrapbooks.

Our family scrapbooks are in a menagerie of big bulky 8.5 x 11 faux leather 3-ring binders, cheap 1- and 2-inch “school” binders, and even a couple of those sticky-pages-with-plastic-cling-on-the-front albums.

They take up a ton of room. They’re heavy, the rings are always popping open, or not closing correctly, and half of the time at least a few of the page protector holes aren’t even around a binder ring! You know what I’m talking about, right?  Bottom line = they are stuck in the basement in a storage room, not getting looked at.

(Okay, back the main point!)

So, I pulled out a few chronological years’ worth of binders off the shelf (it just happened to be 2000-2005), opened them all up, took out the pages and put them in my transport box. I did put a sticky note on the first page of each new “year” so as I worked through the box and scanned them, I’d have that reference point.

Well, who’d have thunk?  There ended being 287 sheet protector pages (most double-sized scrapbook pages) in just those five years! Whew! Was I biting off more that I could chew?

Well, I went to the FamilySearch Discovery Center in Lehi, Utah and got to it. The place is run by volunteers and LDS Service missionaries, and my in-laws happen to be serving a mission there a couple of days a week, and were on shift last night. 

SIDENOTE: If you have one of these FamilySearch centers near you (they are located all over the country and even the world) I highly recommend looking in to seeing if they have scanning equipment available—not every one does. But if they do, the machines are FREE to use, just need to reserve a time. And yes, FamilySearch is operated by the LDS (Mormon) church, but you don’t have to be member to use the facilities, and there is NO PRESSURE to change religions or get baptized or anything. They are there to help you with family history—either discovering yours, or preserving it!

Again, I digress.....

So after a quick introduction to how the scanning software and scanners worked, I began. At my “station” there was a large touch-screen computer monitor attached to a flatbed scanner, and a document feeder scanner. I knew I had mostly 8.5 x 11 scrapbook pages, but I also knew some of the sheet protectors just had loose photos in them as well, so this setup with both scanning options was great.

My father-in-law and I getting all set to begin.

The "feeder" scanner.

The flatbed scanner. This one was big enough to scan 2 full pages at once!

Touch screen computers were nice, too!

The first thing I discovered was that some of my sheet protectors had that matte, frosty kind of finish on them, and while “see-thru” when scanned didn’t look so great. So for those pages (which was a LOT) I actually had to remove the page from the sheet protector before I scanned them…which just means a lot of reassembly for me later on when they go back in the binders…but I’ll do that another day….in front of Netflix….with a bag of chips and BIG Coke! ;)

The actual scanning process was fairly quick. I set the scanners to a nice, high resolution, knowing that I’d eventually want to bring these scanned photos into the PL app when I converted the pages. And away I went. Scan a page, save it, place another on the scanner, scan it, save it. When I’d run across some loose photos, I’d stack them all together and place them in the feeder (which could handle about 25 at a time) and then those just whipped through the feeder machine like a dream—much faster that I’d anticipated.

Well, three hours later (it really wasn’t that bad, because I was also getting to “see” each and every page that was scrapbooked, and some of those hadn’t been viewed by human eyes for nearly 15 years), I ended up with a total of 405 scanned images, counting both the full page scrapbook layouts and the individual photos scattered throughout. And that was actually only years 2000-2003! I didn’t even get to 2004-2005—guess that means I’ll be back! J

When I was done scanning, I saved all the files (which I named according to year) onto a flash drive to take home. Once I got home, I took some time to go through each photo and rotate them if needed (I wasn’t very particular about which direction they were scanned—I was going for quantity at that point), and organize them by year.

Then I organized them into “events” folders within the main year folder. For example, in the 2000 folder I had subfolders for Christmas, Zoo Trip, etc.  I repeated that for each year’s worth of scans.

Now it was time to take all those scans and move them to Google Photos. I’ve already outlined in a previous post my process for storing and using Google Photos. But in a nutshell, I added new albums according to the event folders I had just created, and moved all the scanned files now onto Google Photos, where they will reside until I make PL app pages with them.

Overall, the process of actually scanning the pages didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Incidentally, I did get a little faster at the scanning once I started to get to large groups of scrapbook pages that were actually in truly clear sheet protectors and didn’t have to remove each one. Greatly sped up the process.

I know I’ll have some return trips to the FamilySearch center for more scanning, but I’m okay with that. But once they’re scanned and saved on Google Photos—the real fun begins—transforming the pages in the PL app!  The next few posts on this blog will probably be some more of those page transformations, but I’ll be sure to point out any issues or tricks or frustrations I run into along the way.

Thanks for reading. Hope you didn’t fall asleep halfway through my rambling. But from the few comments I’ve gotten here and on my Instagram, this seems to inspire a few people to do more with their documenting, so I’ll keep writing if you’ll keep reading! (and I love to read your comments…just sayin’) J