Use Your Photos {Photo Prep & Storage}

Photo Series with #MomSpotted {Calendars, Instagram, & More}As you know I love taking photos. I have tried so many ways to keep those memories alive and failed miserably at a lot of them. This year I’m trying a few new things and thought I’d make it a monthly blog post since I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one in need of a little direction. Feel free to use your favorite online photo site of choice, if you don’t have one you can use Shutterfly with me. If you aren’t following my MomSpotted Fan Page make sure to so you can get any deals I find!

Photos Taken.

Instagram.

I love Instagram. If you use it feel free to follow MomSpotted. I love that I can upload my Instagram photos directly into my Shutterfly account. I can pick and chose which ones I want. I’ve decided to make photobooks each month highlighting my favorites.

  • Make a photobook
  • Print your favorites

Photobooks go on sale all the time and often times if you make Shutterfly your main photo place they’ll occasionally even send you a code for a free one.Just because you make a book doesn’t mean that you have to buy it right away. Just make sure it’s done and made so you can buy it when you see a great sale of get a code. Save all the photos in an album “Jan13-Instagram”.

Camera Shots.

Upload all your shots and do your edits. Place them all into an album titles “Jan13”. Order all your prints. If you prepay for your prints you’ll get a better deal.

Calendars.

I make calendars as gifts and they are a huge hit with our family. I make 14 of them total and if I waited until December to make them all I’d  probably never make another one. My secret is I work on them all year long.

  • Make a list of the people who will receive a calendar
  • Figure out which people can share the same prints.
  • Design the photo tops for January for each calendar. Save them according to the family.

I know my inlaws can all share the same design & photos so I will make one calendar for 4 people, the same goes for my mom and grandmother. I make another style for my dad and his parents, etc. I like to make my calendars as personal as possible. Next month we’ll take another step to make these more personal.

This month will be your most time consuming month because you will have to start everything and figure them all out. Once you get a hang of how your photo site works it will come together and take less time.

So what do you think? Doable?

Photo Storage.

I’ve tried things several ways but at this point I’m just keeping the SD Cards. I use to transfer to CD’s but they cost money, are bigger to store, don’t hold many photos. I generally need to do 3 CD’s to one 4GB SD card. It cost a lot less just to replace the SD card.

Photo storage options

I found this great little Memory Card Carrying Case to store all my SD cards in which is cheap and perfect for holding lots of cards. Since I was already on Amazon I also bought 2 additional SanDisk Ultra 8 GB SDHC Memory Card which are perfect for lots of storage for even my DSLR camera. If you don’t have a DSLR you can go with a smaller SD card or just use this forever.

For photo storage I LOVE my Cropper Hoppers! I have several of them like the Cropper Hopper Photo Supply Case I show above. I never seem to get them into photo albums and I don’t have the space for them all either. This lets me keep them well organized and together in bulk but not take up a lot of space. They even have a section to store enlargements and will add in old photos when I switch around my frames.

Getting Ready for Next Month.

  • Valentine’s Day is coming. Think of a cute little photo shoot you can do that can end up being your calendar spread. Remember to get individual shots of each child. Possibly one with them all (you could send a cute card out to the grandparents!).
  • If you are doing the cards/calendars with me find out everyone’s birthday’s & anniversary.
  • Mail out all cards for February birthday’s & anniversaries.
  • Finish the above

So what do you think? Going to get it all done? I just did this all during the Super Bowl last night so while it sounds like a lot it really just requires a couple hours of focus. You’ll be so glad you did it, I am.

 

Comments

  1. ehh im slacked last month. But Im on it this month.

    • Jennifer says

      But we’re just starting! You haven’t had a chance to slack yet!

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