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Renne Looney of ForeverJoy Designs joins us to discuss documenting our lives through other digital methods. We say it all counts, but does it really? Plus, we all share our opinions on freebies.
Joining the Discussion:
Renne Looney
Peppermint Granberg
Katie Nelson
Steph
From the Show:
- for Project Life digital ideas
- Using the calendar as a journaling tool
Picks:
Peppermint: Leap Motion
Katie: Storytelling ebook by Stacy Julian
Steph:
Renne: Post Secret
Sponsor:
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I just knew you were going to make that the title – lol!
It honestly hadn’t occurred to me until you told me not too…lol. Love ya for the idea!
1. comments very good about freebies. When first starting digi you need stuff! After 8 years of digi scrapping, the freebies I DL are very much tied to my purchases.
2. Just got my 2012 PL in 2 volumes back from printer. My daughter made a comment about having headlines for reading through it NOW, but I reminded her that the detailed journaling will be valuable in 25 years!! What strikes me is how much I had forgotten about 2012 already!! All about capturing the MOMENTS!
I started with freebies (I didn’t really know about Digital Scrapbooking but I enjoyed collecting the cute little graphics and admiring them – I enjoyed watching a slideshow of each folder). Eventually I started buying kits to thank the designers for the freebies. I still download weekly freebies from Raspberry Road where she gives away a mini, or sometimes something else, in honor of each kit she designs. And I sometimes never use the freebie, sometimes I go back and buy more paper or elements to go with it, and sometimes I fall in love with the kit and go to the shop and buy everything available.
Hey Peppermint~
You mentioned a place that you put private comments and rants, but it wasn’t in the show notes. Could you point me to that site?
Thanks,
AL
I use OhLife.com. They send me an email every morning at 8am (you can choose your own time/frequency) and then I add to the email throughout the day, letting it sit as a draft until just before I go to bed. I can go to the site and read through past entries to refresh my memory on the details of a certain day. The daily emails also contain an entry from the past, and they can be fun to read. You can turn that feature off, though.
You can also export all of your entries into a text file, so you can take them all with you if you decide to use something else or if you just want a local back-up.
Thanks Peppermint! I love the site and how you use it. I have bits of info written on things all around the house. I am in the process of scanning some of these in to use in some of my digital scrapbook pages. This seems much more streamlined to how I work.
Thanks again!
AL
Thanks for reading my mail!
I really enjoyed hearing all your responses. Sorry for the somewhat “controversial” questions haha. (half joking). I appreciate the time you took to answer. I think you girls are right, it should be tied to something if it’s a business tool. I liked what you said about it opening up the market to people who might not know how to digital scrapbook yet, and rely on the freebies to break them in. Good stuff!
You’ve been taking on some pretty controversial subjects lately
Great job handling them with such great concern and tact.
Once our kids reach a certain age and we’re not with them to document all of these experiences, we have to get creative in how we keep their memories!
I also downloaded tons of freebies when I was trying to decide if I wanted to start digi scrapping. It gave me something to play with and try without having to invest a lot of money. It also helped me get to know designers and stores and figure out what I liked. As I have scrapped more, I have found that I have deleted a lot of the original freebies that are not from those designers that I find fit my style. I also am much more selective deciding on designers to download freebies from-only those designers that I really purchase from or designers I really want to try. I think freebies are a great way of being introduced to new designers or styles.
I LOVE Renee’s idea about using her son’s Instagram photos to make a “secret scrapbook!” I have my daughter’s iphone photos that have ended up on my computer if she plugs it in to charge
Yes tammy! Lets call it “creative”- and NOT stalking! I cant wait to see his face when I show him the book I’ve made… maybe I’ll wait to share it when he goes to college!
Do you know you can IFTTT app to send you a text when they upload a picture to instagram? I have this set (my Son knows) just to me 100% sure I’m happy with what he’s sharing. Just a security blanket against sharing of things that shouldn’t be shared.
N0- this is a good one! I rely on the “jailhouse sweep method”- he never knows when- but mama can say at anytime- bring over that Ipad! (he also thinks I have some super secret stealth keystroke thing on all his gadgets!) I know this is going to come up in therapy one day!
Ooooh! I’ll have to check that out! Thanks, Ronnie
my daughter’s phone photos back up to my photostream also. She knows that and actually likes that I also have a backup and that I can scrap her viewpoint.
I totally agree about the freebies! I loved them at first and downloaded tons of them. I lived off of them longer than I should have I think. I will blame it on being a starving student.
Now that I am done with school and have a bit more to spend I am spending it wisely. I watch my favorite designers blogs and if there is a kit that I love I buy it while it is on the new release sale so I save money. I am also a digi game member and have considered buying the Scrap Pack at Scrap Stacks a few times but haven’t yet.
(Katie and Steph you will want to make sure you are sitting before you read this next part) I have been cleaning up my hard/organizing system. I realized there were loads of freebies sitting on my hard drive that I knew I would never use, so I deleted them. It felt so refreshing to have and extra 20gb for worth while scrapping supplies. It is also nice not to see the uninspiring stuff sitting in my stash.
Thanks for all you do! I love listening to you guys everyweek!
I’ve been doing the same thing lately– I started organizing by store and designer, and that make me see some of the “freebies” I downloaded in the beginning are people that I’ve never purchased anything from since. Unless I LOVE those few freebies, they have to go. Clearing the space feels great!
Love that you are organizing your stash. I actually just deleted a bunch of old freebies and stuff I will never use. I had to take a deep breath to do it, but it felt great!
I just wanted to add something to the “to freebie or not to freebie” conversation! For me personally, I didn’t have any plans to start designing. I had just made a few pieces for one of my layouts, some friends asked for them so I put them on blog – and it all went from there! As a very new designer, having those first freebies on my blog led directly to me being offered a place to sell at a store. I know the industry has changed a lot since then and there are a lot more freebies and designers around, but I still think that freebies can be a great way for store owners to notice new up and coming designers, especially if the freebies are unusual and create a bit of a buzz in the community!
That’s how I started too, Kate. I made a free mini-kit for Christine when she opened up her template store, and then Catrine at CatScrap asked me if I would like to start selling there.
I guess I need to read the comments here more often because I didn’t know that about you Peppermint!
I still have that freebie, P! I love it–the palette and the papers and well, everything
I found you because of your freebies Kate so I’m so glad it worked out that you became a designer. You are so talented!
Finally got to listen to show this morning. I just wanted to say to Steph that the greatest find I made when clearing my parents house was the diary my Mum had the year I was born. Not a lot of details but the lists she made of things she needed to take to the hospital and the mealing planning she did prior so there was food for my Dad and sister. Your daughter may not appreciate it now but put it away take it from house to house and when the times comes she will find this treasure and she will be touched to look back and read those details.
I do love your show! As I was listening to you talking about designers that retire, or stores that close, I was again reminded of how I am trying to reorganize my supplies using Lightroom. I am only putting previews in Lightroom, but sometimes the challenge for me is whether to name the kit by the designers actual name, or the name she uses for her designs, or the store where she sells them. For example, Dani Mogstad uses Designs by Dani. Peppermint uses One Little Bird and sells them at the Lilypad, so I do put them in the folder with your name, Peppermint (which is a fun name – and I get to hear it lots on the Digi Show), or use your design name. This is probably a silly question, but I was curious to know how you lovely ladies do it. For the record, I have listened/read Kayla Lamoreaux’s free tutorials — and they have been helpful. She is great too!
While I am at it, do you also file each designer separately in the collab kits? And….Peppermint you spoke recently about using actions in your work flow that helps it to move along quickly. It would be interesting to me to have you list the actions you use from the first upload of photos to filing them in LR (or wherever you keep them).
Thanks so much to all who help me so much in this fun hobby – or rather, important family history records!
I looked through my supplies folder and I actually have a mix of both naming methods – and it seems to depend on how the designer themselves name their .zip files. I have Dani Mogstad as my folder name, but that’s because her zip files are “dmogstad”. I have Liz Tamanaha’s products in a “Paislee Press” folder and Krista Sahlin in “Sahlin Studio”.
The One Little Bird folder on my hard drive is labeled “mine”. Haha.
Whatever makes sense in your head is the best method. There’s no right or wrong way as long as long as you know where to find them.
I file collaborations in one designer’s folder with a (with Designer Name) added to the product folder. There’s no rhyme or reason to which folder they go into, it tends to depend on whose store I bought it in or whose folder I go into more. Since I find them by preview anyway, the actual folder is a non-issue.
As for the preset I apply during import in Lightroom, I have a post on my blog explaining how I do that. I also let Lightroom sort my photos into folders by Year > Month during import, and I *try* to add keywords to my “Last Import” photos before importing new ones. However, a lot of photos do fall through the cracks. So periodically I pick a month folder and use the filter bar at the top of the library, choose “metadata” in the options, and change one of the columns to Keyword to zero in on ones that are in the “none” category. In my mind I always seem to keep track of what month I left off on, but it’s also easy to just click through each month folder and watch that “none” number to find my place.
HTH!
I try to just use the designer name – like Peppermint’s stuff is all filed under “One Little Bird”. I learned long ago that stores and sites change. Every once in awhile a designer will change their brand also, but that rarely happens.
I like the term drive-by downloaders… haha. It’s such a challenge with freebies, because so often designers just want to share something without having to think there’s going to be these huge consequences to the industry or anything like that. But it’s sad that the drive-by downloaders sort of ruin it for the folks who are genuine fans and supporters, you know? I have moved towards making freebies… really small… so it’s a sampler – which is different from just giving something big away.
Freebies! Where?
I agree with Tammy and Peppermint (shabby princess). On the other hand, I am not a designer – just a scrapper. I was a “drive-by” at the beginning and downloaded freebies when I first started and it helped me figure out how to use Photoshop and what I like! If people want to stick to the freebies, then that’s okay – it’s when people start EXPECTING that it starts to get greedy.
The thing is – this is your job and profession!!! This is how you guys make money. For people to have negative feelings about why you don’t offer your items for FREE, that isn’t your problem it’s their problem. Like any profession – counseling, teaching, medical, do those guys charge with something they know? Yes! From a consumer’s view, be grateful when there is a freebie (or a sample) out there you can grab. I LOVE “going to lunch” at Costco, but I don’t go up to those little old ladies and demand more when the 3 chocolates don’t satisfy my appetite. It’s all about the attitude – stop being greedy y’all!
What a wonderful write-up! No idea how you came up with this text..it’d take me days. Well worth it though, I’d suspect. Have you considered selling ads on your website?