Snapshot Stories

by Lynda Angelastro

Snapshot Stories are Heritage Makers' way of recording memories in small, more doable chunks. Pair 6 x 4 or 4 x 6 Invitations with photos, or cut your Invitations in half to make 3 x 4 inserts. Saved in scrapbook albums or binders, the Snapshot Story approach is popular with busy women, mothers of small children and all who are looking for a unique, smaller slice of creativity to document their lives. To create the popular rounded corners shown here, we used an inexpensive corner rounder.

 
Regular or Special Page Protectors
Scrapbooked on 6 x 4 Invitations or on 12 x 12 Scrap Pages, finished Snapshot Story pages or pieces are assembled inside either traditional (for the 12 x 12 Scrap Pages) or specialty (for those made on 6 x 4 Invitations) page protectors. The divided page protectors, like the ones shown above, can be purchased at many hobby and craft stores or purchase online through www.beckyhiggins.com or www.amazon.com. They are often referred to as “Project Life” page protectors. These specialty page protectors usually have pockets that fit 4 x 6 and/or 3 x 4 sized cards in a variety of arrangements. 

  
Looking for Inspiration?
Snapshot Story type projects can be found everywhere. Typically, the terms for this very popular kind of memory keeping include “Project Life” from Becky Higgins, “Photo Freedom” from Stacy Julian and "Sn@p Studio" by Simple Stories. Google any of these terms and select “Images,” or go to Pinterest and search these same terms. You’ll find an amazing number of people are scrapbooking this way and posting a wealth of ideas to guide you. Search on “snapshot” in our own Template Gallery to find templates designed for this approach.


Art to Support You
Try your hand at this contemporary approach to scrapbooking and you’ll find a wealth of art to support you. While no special art is needed really, Heritage Makers is all about making it as simple as possible for you! We've recently added art collections to our library that were specifically designed for Snapshot Story type of memory keeping. And we’re not done yet. Watch for more additions of smaller slice scrapbooking collections each month. 
Here are some collections to use now: “Reasons to Smile,” “Life's Little Helpers Bright Papers,” “Life's Little Helpers Bright Labels,” “Life's Little Helpers Bright Journal Cards,” and “You Are So Beautiful, Papers.” These collections contain journal cards, labels, word art and other embellishments that work perfectly with the Snapshot Story approach to scrapbooking. 


Templates to Get You Going
If you’re ready to start a Snapshot Story album, you’ll find loads of Snapshot Story-type templates in the Template Gallery, including these school days designs from Roxanne Buchholz. “Snapshot Story: Grade School Album” 12 x 12 Post-bound Album, Template 103236; and from top to bottom “Snapshot Story: Grade School 1” 6 x 4 Invitation, Template 103235; “Snapshot Story: Grade School 3” 6 x 4 Invitation, Template 103233; and “Snapshot Story: Grade School 2” 6 x 4 Invitation, Template 103234. All are designed with the school aged child in mind. Just recently released, these are just a small smattering of the school focused projects we offer. Paired with photos and coordinating digital paper, just a handful of these 3 x 4 cards finish off a divided page protector.


Fast and Easy Baby Album
Young moms with babies will love this approach for baby albums. Easy, fast, one bite at a time—this approach is doable for even the busiest of moms. Shown here are a handful of BASIC 6 x 4 Invitations by Michelle Bell. “Snapshot: Baby Girl Basic, Stats” Template 103041, “Snapshot: Baby Girl Basic, Month 1” Template 103039, “Snapshot: Baby Girl Basic, Meeting You” Template 103043 and “Snapshot: Baby Girl Basic, Oh Baby” Template 103040 will all get your baby album off to a fabulous start.




Family History in Smaller Bites
While cutting edge contemporary is the typical Snapshot Story style, nothing says you can’t preserve historical facts about your family in this way. Roxanne Buchholz used this format to show off dates and events from her ancestors’ lives, and you can too. “Snapshot Story: Portraits 1” Template 102904, “Snapshot Story: Portraits 2” Template 102903, “Snapshot Story: Portraits 3” Template 102902, “Snapshot Story: Portraits 4” Template 102901 and “HM F is for Family Post-Bound” 12 x 12 Post-bound Album, Template 81570 are templates designed specifically for those treasured family facts and photos. 


Scrap Pages in Similar Style
Mix and match your divided page protector mini projects with full-size scrap pages in the same bite-at-a-time style, like those shown here from Lynda Angelastro. Create “Baby Boy Bits,” Template 103561, on our lighter weight scrap pages and scrap back to back projects, in almost any page protectors. It’s the perfect way to scrap when you have a page or spread you want to devote to an entire topic.


Keeping It Convenient for You
Trends in scrapbooking represent changes in the way you want to preserve your memories. Here at Heritage Makers, we listen. Snapshot Stories are just one of the ways we’re making it easier for you to get those memories down while they’re still fresh in your head and heart. Get it done today with the Snapshot Story method. Give it a try tonight!

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Year-End Books - A Memory Keeping Tradition

With all the photos we take in a year, you'll love seeing them all together in a year-end album that chronicles the past 365 days of special milestones and everyday moments. Family and friends will enjoy reviewing the pages and reliving the. While your list of other Heritage Makers projects may vary from year to year, promise yourself you'll find a yearbook style you love and commit to publish one each and every January. It will quickly become one of your most treasured keepsakes.


Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Year-End Albums
If you want to read the best book on family albums, download the Kelly Wolfer template “Ultimate Family Yearbook.” This 12 x 12 storybook template, number 77508, is a complete yearbook template that also includes every tip and hint about making a yearbook or modifying one that you could ever imagine. These instructions can be found on the last pages of the storybook's template so you can refer to them while creating, then delete them prior to publishing.
  
As shown above, this template showcases plenty of photos as well as journaling blocks in a clean and simple style. This allows the reader to focus on the photos themselves, instead of distracting design elements that may cause a cluttered look. You’ll appreciate the information on the edge of the pages that gives you the numeric location of each photo block so that should you want to increase the size by replacing three photos for one, you’ll know at what coordinates to replace the photo.

Organization Tips & Tricks
As Kelly’s book points out, the key to an easy yearbook process is organizing your photos. This is best started on your computer, not in Studio. First, create a "2011 Yearbook" folder on your computer and fill it with 10-15 photos per month from your images on your hard drive, flash drives, camera memory cards or CD/DVDs.

After you've selected several options that best tell the story for each month, you're ready to upload these into Studio. Create a new folder named "2011 Yearbook" with new "albums" for each month. Note the numerical naming structure, which helps them stay in chronological order in the folder. See an example with this 2010 version shown below.

Once those are loaded, your project will be a breeze. Everything is already organized for you. No matter which yearbook template you choose, it's unlikely you'll need more than 12-15 photos per month. If you have more than that for a special occasion like a holiday or birthday, for example, you can simply duplicate a spread and use it for an extra "month." If you don't have as many photos as the layout shows in a month, simply modify the photo spaces to be larger versions, delete some of them and add more copy blocks, or swap them with coordinating papers or fill the spaces with embellishments or quotes if you wish.


Family Album in Basic
If you or someone you know does not have a Premier account separately or free with a Club HM membership, they can still create yearbooks too with a free Basic account. “Our 2011 Family Year Book” by Lynda Angelastro is a 12 x 12 storybook, template 77502 and has the same clean style as Kelly’s Premier template.
  
You may also opt to do individual scrap pages for your yearbook instead. While these are not on sale this month like the 12 x 12 storybooks are, you can design a year's worth using "Our Year in Pages," template 77507.

A Photo a Day
You may have heard of this "Project 365" idea of taking a photo a day for a year. It's an incredible undertaking and a brilliant way to capture your year in a unique way. If you were one of the dedicated photographers who took a photo every day in 2010 or 2011 or you’d like to set that goal for 2012, “Project 365” by Darcie Toom is the right 12 x 12 storybook for you. Template 36226, Darcie’s book is arranged to allow you to document a photo a day. Variations in the month of February from year to year are easily managed by copying a new set of pages from a larger month and removing a space or two.

For 2012, February's Leap Year will technically make it a Project 366 but it's simple to add an extra photo to make room for February 29th.
  

 

It's an organized design that not only showcases a photo per day, but also includes a small caption box to let you journal about each one, as well as a few more lines about the month as a whole.

  
12 Photos a Month
If you don’t usually have your camera out every day, Tanja Rigby has made scrap pages for every month of the year that require just 12 photos a month. “Year with You - Jan thru Dec” by Tanja Rigby, 12 x 12 scrap pages inside template 77329 is perfect if you'd rather keep up month-to-month instead of only publishing once in December or January. While all the pages are in one template, download it, do the months you want, delete the rest of the pages, publish and do the same thing next month. You COULD wait and publish them all at the end of the year, but why not let your family enjoy your pages every month?

The Weekly Way
However you decide to approach year-booking, it takes so little effort if you do it on a regular basis. That could be once a day, once a week, once a month or even once a year, but don’t let yourself get a year or two behind or you’ll never get those priceless memories in print. Designed with a single page for each week of the year, Michelle Bell's 11.5 x 8.5 storybook called "Family Yearbook: 52 Weeks" template 61136 is ideal for year-booking the weekly way. Michelle makes sure she updates it every Sunday evening so she stays on top of it and has very little left to finish during the busy holiday season, and she can publish right after the New Year.
  
Pages can easily be traded using “manage pages” so that a week has more or less photo spots, depending on the week. Headings are plain text and so the week number can be changed in an instant.
Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013
What better New Year’s resolution could you make than to preserve your family’s memories of 2012? With our wide variety of templates and organizational tips and tricks, it’s a project that offers so many rewards for comparatively little effort!

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Template Spotlight: Baby Boxes

What do you do with your babies' infant memorabilia? I have had Hospital Baby Bracelets, 1st Homecoming Outfits, Baby Announcements, etc floating around on the top shelves of closets (where they would be safe) for the last few places we've lived, and it's been really annoying finding these things and thinking "These are special. These need to be kept safe." and not really having a good place to put them. So I finally did something about it!

I went to Michael's Craft Store and bought some plain white photo boxes on sale. Then I brought them home and measured them - our 12x12 individual scrap pages would be perfect! I wanted my boxes to look traditionally scrapped, designed with love. So I made a piece for each side of the box and lid - Pink for my first daughter, Purple for the second :)

When my pages arrived, they looked like this:

Then I used my straight edge cutter to cut the pieces apart. I used a UHU glue stick to stick the pieces to my box. Super simple!

This is what the finished boxes look like! You can find these both in the Template Gallery, along with a boy's version :)

Girl's Pink Box: 81056
Girl's Purple Box: 81057
Boy's Blue & Red Box: 81055

Enjoy!!!

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Julie's 2012 Yearbook

I am SO excited for my 2012 yearbook. I've got a routine, and I'm sticking to it, and at the end of this year I am STOKED to get this gorgeous book in my hands so that my family and I can look back on an awesome year! Every Sunday, I empty my camera, sort my pictures, upload them to my HM account, and then do that week's page in our yearbook. I've started it with template ID: 61136, but I really wanted a 12x12 album, so I adjusted it from an 11.5x8.5 to a 12x12 to create more room for journalling.

So far I've got the first 3 weeks done, and the rest of the pages are ready to swap my pictures into and type my stories! Easiest "yearbooking" ever. There are so many incredible yearbook album templates in the Template Gallery - it's never to late to start!

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Details on Uploading Photos

What Can You Upload?
With a Premier account, you can upload jpgs and pngs. With a Basic account you can upload jpgs. The file size for your image must be less than 10 MB and the dimensions must be less than 4800 x 4800 pixels.

To Upload Photos
Organize your photos into folders and albums. To start a new folder, click on the button "new folder," and name it. Photos live in albums, so add albums to your folders by clicking on the "new album" button. Fill with photos by clicking on the "add more photos" button and navigating to the photos stored on your computer. Hold the SHIFT key down to select multiple photos. Press the "Open" button and your photos will load into the album you selected for them.

Rearranging Photos and Albums
You can easily arrange and rearrange your photos and albums with just a click of a button. Move a photo from one folder to another with the "move" button. Turn a Vacation folder into a Reunion folder by using the "rename" button or move it to another album using "move."

Shared Albums
All shared photos appear in the Shared Albums folder. Because these photos are shared by another user, you cannot move the albums or photos. However, you may delete albums. Doing so will not affect the photos in the sharer's albums or projects.

Want to Name Your Photos?
Double click on a photo to add a title or caption. Title Example: Saving the Easter Bunny. Caption: Brian thought dad really ate the Easter Bunny and was ready to use the plunger to save him.


Want your Photos to appear in chronological order? 
Name the photos, albums, and/or folders by date first. For example: "2011-12-25 Christmas with the in-laws"

Want to Download a Photo onto your own computer?
Double click a photo in order to download a high resolution image. This will open the photo in a new tab or window in FULL resolution, where you can then right-click to save.

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Dry Erase makes for Simple Organization

Have I shown you these yet? After we moved and had more house to keep, I re-vamped my existing "To Do Lists", and used our new Dry Erase pages (available in both 11x14 and 12x12) to keep it simple! I got some cleaning/organization ideas from Fly Lady, and then made my own master lists to rotate through. I LOVE these - there are 6 pages, each with a different "zone" in our house, and the things that should be done at least once every few months to keep our home clean and organized (and to keep the momma happy!)

I started off with This Template, because it was just so cute, the colors and everything, and the clean colors made me happy. Then I changed it to fit what worked for me. 

The 2 things I love about these the most:

1.  I have an easier time keeping track of what's been done, even from 6 weeks ago, so that I'm not re-doing things, and leaving other things undone (sometimes I skip things!) 
2. It makes it easier for my husband to know what I want him to do :D 

Check them out! And they CAME ready to dry-erase, I didn't have to laminate them! I just punched 2 holes in each and strung them onto key rings and hung them on my bulletin board (so I can turn a new page each week)

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Happy New Calendar Year!

I LOVE change, I love new starts and new beginnings! I'm also a big fan of organizing things. Which means... I love getting a new calendar at the beginning of the year. Fresh new boxes waiting to be filled in, brand new pictures to look at... so much fun!!

Check out our family calendar with all of the birthdays and anniversaries already filled in! (Incidentally, this also ended up under the tree for the Grandmas!) template ID: 40638

Also, I made another calendar for my mom for Christmas - I LOVE this template, so elegant and so easy to customize, just change the colors to match YOUR pictures! (template ID: 42331


Happy New Year!

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Calendar Crazy!

In case you missed it, we've archived our latest specialty class on CALENDARS! What perfect timing - if you're anything like me, you're probably thinking lots about calendars in preparation for the upcoming gift-giving season and the New Year!

There were so many fun ideas covered, from outside-the-box calendar ideas to displaying some of the fun templates for traditional calendars, to tutorials on customizing your own calendars! Enjoy!! 

Watch the archived class here!

So many fun things to learn about, PLUS a sneak peek of the upcoming Art Collections for November!

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Organizing your Photos

Did you know that with Heritage Makers, you can have 2 Gigabytes of FREE photo storage with a Basic account, or UNLIMITED photo storage if you upgrade to a Premier Account? This is something I especially love, as I can sleep safe knowing that all of our family pictures are SAFE, even if something terrible were to happen; all those memories are not going to be lost!

If you have a zillion-trillion-gabillion photos like I do, you might enjoy this tip: Organize your photos in folders that are named numerically by date, so that everything is easy to find and organized chronologically. For example: if you have a bunch of pictures from June of 2009, call the folder "2009-06 Family Pictures".

Take a peek at what I've got to get a clearer idea of what I mean:

Not only does storing your photos with Heritage Makers keep them safe in the event of a fire, flood, theft, and even TIME, but it also has them ready to put into storybooks, make canvases with, or even use in cards and gifts like calendars or flip books.

Did you know that you can upload a bunch of pictures at a time? By holding down "Ctrl" on your keyboard at the same time as pushing "a", you can highlight ALL of the pictures in a folder to upload, or by holding down "Ctrl", you can click on whichever random pictures you want to upload at once.

Because Heritage Makers uploads your full resolution images, it might take a little longer than, say, Facebook. I like to upload a bunch of pictures at once, and then go and do the dishes or something. Another perk of uploading your pictures to HM is that you can download the FULL resolution image from any computer connected to the internet later if you want/need to.

I LOVE Heritage Makers!!

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Post-Bound Albums!

I love my new Post-Bound Album! Heritage Makers is the only place you can get these fully-customized Scrapbook Album Covers! And the best part is, it only took me 5 minutes to make, since I found this gorgeous template in the Template Gallery! (ID: 38450)

Now I've got a special place to put those pages from my traditional scrapbooking days - the album comes with 10 page protectors, and of course, being post-bound, you can add as many as you'd like!

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Another Confession...

My brother once told me that he's pretty sure I'm OCD, just based on how hyper-organized I am. I'll admit that I get annoyed if my kitchen is less-than-clean, and that I start to get anxious if the chores start to pile up, undone... but isn't that normal of most people? Feel free to let me know :)

Anyway, I'm a big huge fan of To-Do lists. As in, I tend to make a new one each night for the following day, and sometimes my lucky husband gets one also :) The funny thing is, most of the items on my to-do lists are the same each week - vacuum, mop, clean the fridge, scrub the bathrooms, etc. So I thought, rather than waste paper over this, why not take my laminated Fridge Calendar a step further?

And, voila: hidden inside one of my cupboard doors are my laminated (dry-erase) weekly and monthly checklists - not only do they keep me in order, but it also makes it easy to just say to my sweet hubby "Find something on the list to do!" Thank You Heritage Makers!!

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What's Cookin'?

I have a confession to make. I completely despise menu planning. I hate the question "What should we have for dinner?" because when it comes time to come up with something, I seem to draw a big, fat, BLANK. Not because I can't cook - I actually think I am quite a good cook when I put my mind to it, but it's the deciding what to make that gets me stumped.

So I came up with this:

This is the Fridge Calendar of my previous post along with some custom-magnets that I made with menu ideas - a bunch of different things that I like to cook, and that I know my family will eat! But this saves me the trouble of coming up with something each night - it's already up on the calendar! And if I come up with new menu ideas, I can always make more magnets (maybe not a full 12x12 sheet, just a postcard's worth :) )

The magnets were super-easy to make - just cut the 12x12 sheet up, give them to the nice girl at the counter at Staples to laminate (laminating was surprisingly cheap!) and then after that, it's just cutting and gluing to magnets - yay for hybrid projects!

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Studio Showcase Winners

This year at Reunion, Heritage Makers added a new category to the "Best Of Heritage Makers" - Studio Showcase! There are so many fun things to be done with our products, outside of the regular storybooks, etc!

Watch the 4minute video below to check out some of these innovative ideas!

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Attention Coffee Lovers!

Did you know that you can customize your own tumbler? It's true! Check out this adorable tumbler/travel mug that I just made!

The mug (tumbler?) is from Starbucks, and is designed to have your own collage safely nestled between the clear outer plastic and the inner insulation.

My good friend Heidi Jackson (who is on the new Heritage Makers Studio Design Team! Congrats, Heidi!) has kindly designed several "tumbler templates" for us to use, to make it really really easy! Just search "tumbler" in the Template Gallery and pick your favorite!

This project is literally easy as

1:

2.

3.

And Presto! You'll have your very own personalized drink container (tumbler? travel mug? :) ) that nobody else will ever be confused enough to drink from!

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