fbpx

on-the-go memory keeping

I’m a busy wife and mom of 5 kids, and I work at home–often full time depending on what’s going on with my crafty work. I love memory keeping and scrapbooking, but sometimes it takes me a while to get to that once I’ve taken my photos (ie I’m still scrapbooking 2013 and 2014 is almost done). What to do?

There are a lot of options available to help with that common dilemma, (ie digital scrapbooking, project life, photobooks) but I’d like to share some ideas about instant memory keeping with your smart phone, some really cool photo editing apps, and your social media accounts.

Often times I feel “stuck” because I think I have to get all my photos and memories onto beautifully crafted 12×12 scrapbook pages that go into beautiful leather albums. For some reason I think that’s the only way to preserve or document those memories. Of course I still plan on getting those memories and photos into albums at some point, but in the mean time I’ve decided that I’m still accomplishing my basic goal of recording my life story if I choose to do that in a quick, easy, digital way.

I admit that I fought this for a long time, but I’ve come to embrace using my phone and my social media accounts to document my life in an instantaneous, on-the-go way so that at least my memories are recorded somewhere while I’m waiting for time to get them onto a cute layout in a lovely album.

I know some scrapbookers carry a small notepad or journal around with them so they can instantly record moments or memories and then refer back to those notes when they have time to create a scrapbook page. Using my iPhone, Facebook, and Instagram accomplishes the same thing for me.

Now that I’ve babbled on about the why of my digital memory keeping, let me share a bit about the how.

Most smartphones have awesome cameras these days. I’ll admit that my DSLR still takes the best photos for sure, but I’m continuously amazed at the cool features my iPhone 5s camera has. I’m to the point now where I use that camera more often than I use my Nikon. It’s just easier to carry around a little iPhone than my big old Nikon.

Once I’ve taken photos on my phone it’s super easy to share them on Facebook or Instagram and write a little something about the photo. Isn’t that our basic goal as scrapbookers? To share photos and journal about them?

But what about the creative part? you may be thinking. Let me share how I get creative with my iPhone, Facebook and Instagram.

1) First of all, there are some great photo editing options right on my phone. Check out your phone and user manual to see what photo editing features are available. Some of those filters and enhancements are pretty cool!
2) There are also some very cool filters and enhancements available on Instagram. You can make just about any photo look awesome on IG.

3) One of my favorite photo editing + enhancing apps is, of course, Rhonna Designs! Rhonna has created several photo editing apps full of beautiful artwork, fonts, frames, masks, and filters to help turn your photos into works of art. They’re available for iPhone and Android . I love to use them to “scrapify” my photos (like the one above), and to edit/crop/enhance. One cool way I use the Rhonna Designs app is to crop rectangular photos so that the entire photo fits into the square Instagram format. Super handy.
4) PhotoGrid is another favorite photo editing app of mine. I use it to create photo grids which I love to use for Instagram, Facebook, and my family blog posts. You can also use it to create videos for Instagram or Facebook. Here are a few I made recently. In fact, I made the second video while riding between hikes on the Zion National Park shuttle. It took me less than 5 minutes. Yeah baby. How’s that for instant memory keeping.

There are other apps available to edit, enhance, and beautify your photos before you share them with your friends and loved ones online. One I’m excited to try and have heard great things about is the new Project Life app by Becky Higgins. Such a great idea, and so easy to use for phone shots. Check it out!

Just remember, if you feel “stuck” like me wondering if you’ll ever be fully “caught up” on your scrapbooking, try creating some instant memories using the phenomenal digital tools available. You’ll still be documenting your life in some way at least, and then you can always go back later and get crafty with your scrapbook supplies.

Leave a Reply

%d