The Project - Part 1

Hello!

I am writing this blog posting with two friends on my mind - one virtual friend -  Tracie from Tennessee and one friend I met in real live - Tiffany from Kentucky. I met them through their podcast, The Scrap Gals Podcast.

Tiffany and Tracie share my love for memory keeping and the big photo organisation is something they know all too well. Their show is fun to listen to and it was their show that made me hungry to finally tackle a task that has been sitting in a box for ages, 16 years to be precise. 

A box filled with photos, bags covering albums plus adhesives and a collection of scraps (leaflets, tickets and folders): Our trip to Cuba in 2001

This weekend the time has come to put Cuba 2001 into action: into the album.

400, maybe 500 photos have been sitting in a box for over a decade and this weekend I am finally going to tackle this task.

The weather forecast for this weekend is promising: rain and 19°C. Perfect weather conditions. 

A few months ago I've bought these two albums. Both are old school albums with "spacing sheets"

Which album to choose?

 100 pages seem to be the right choice. The smaller album has 80 pages.

Adhesives. Plenty. Yes, I made sure that nothing is going to stop me.

The weather outside still behaving very cooperative.

Not just photos: plenty of scraps are going to make it into the album.

These old guide books are extremly helpful since I can't remember the names of all the places we saw back in 2001. Where was this photo taken? What was the name of the tower? Many villages en route ... I am glad to have the guide books available. And as soon as I have finished the album, I am going to donate the guide books. They are old, but not outdated. 

The major task: Colour prints, sitting in the box. 

Various sizes. What was I thinking? 

Hours later the most important step is completed: the prints are in the right order. Back in 2001 we were shooting film with 2 cameras, which means different rolls of film at the same place. This confusion does not make the whole task any easier. 

Ha ha! Speaking of confusion and tricky tasks: Lets add some b/w prints in various sizes, too!
grrrr.

The task becomes tricky at this point, because I have to make sure I don't miss any place on any roll of film, because I want to fill the album chronologically, starting with our first day in Havanna and ending with the departure on our last day. 

I have to admit I am not too happy with the quality of the b/w prints. They were printed with a colour-machine. Hmm. I could create new prints on decent paper, by myself in the dark room. Not now. And not tomorrow. No roadblocks, please! Right now I've decided to use the prints I have, replacing any poor quality prints in the near future remains an option. 

Before I am going to stick any photo into the album, I will deliberately take my time, going through all the photos, all the album pages, creating layouts for every single page. By doing so, I make sure that I don't run out of pages by the end of the album. LOL

2nd Page "Maria la Gorda": check!

The amount of photos exceeds the number of pages and one album has to suffice. That's why I am eliminating photos during the process of layouting.

One hour later: The table looks like this. 

I spent a decent amount of the afternoon playing with photos and layouts: Which photos go nicely together? Which won't make it into the album? Where might I need more space to place some scraps and notes? ... 

Time for a short break, admiring raindrops. 

Do you have similar projects sitting in a box, waiting for you to finally tackle them?

Have a nice weekend!
Paula

Part 2 coming soon! (including hand writing, cutting photos and some scrapping)