Dawn says, “It was awesome that they had captured exactly what I wanted from a retreat I had taken. Pamela took great care of me & walked me through step by step.”

Dawn now has an inspirational book of poems that she can page through to remember the special friendships, touching moments and spectacular beauty of the North Shore.

The first step in creating your custom photo book is to determine exactly what type of story you are interested in capturing. To do this, Pamela will sit down beside you and look through your photos and memorabilia. The whole time you are looking through your material, she is listening carefully and recording important notes about your story. By doing this, Pamela will determine the scope of your project, estimate how many pages your book will be, and let you know which dimensions will best suit your story. In addition, she will ask questions to clarify your vision and to determine your style and tastes. Pamela will arrange the conversion of all documents, photos, slides and other media into digital format as needed.

Next, Pamela brings me what she has learned from you. We sit down together and go over her notes and look through your materials again. Pamela does an excellent job communicating what she has learned from you to me as the designer. She tells me exactly what I need to know regarding colors, fonts, style and layout. Then I go through all the materials you have given us, looking for themes and design ideas. I read through all texts and notes so I have a thorough understanding of your story.

The third step is to begin the actual design process. I start by designing the first three pages of the book. These first three pages will give you a great sense of how the book will come together. Pamela will email you images of these pages and schedule a time to receive feedback on the work done so far. On these pages, you will see a sampling of the colors and style that will be used. Pamela will gather your feedback on this “first draft” and relay your comments back to me. Then I’ll tweak the pages appropriately to match your needs and Pamela will again email the pages to you for your feedback. At this point, we have almost always “hit the nail on the head” and you are excited to proceed. However, we will follow through this process as needed to ensure we have perfectly matched your intended style.

Next, I will continue with the design process. With your style now determined, I will proceed by completing about eight more pages on an average 20-page book. Once they are complete, Pamela will send you images of these eight pages for your additional feedback. At this point, we are looking to ensure we are telling the story appropriately. Pamela will once again ask for your feedback to make sure we aren’t missing any important parts of your story. Also, if you feel any design elements aren’t quite right, I will make slight changes to correct these as well.

The fifth step is completion of your storybook. Depending on the scope and size of your project, we will have gone through step 4 at least one more time, but it could be many more times for a larger project. However, once the project is about half-way complete I will go ahead and complete your storybook and Pamela will submit the entire book to you for your review. Changes can still be made at this point, but typically everything comes together very quickly because the design and story have been so well established previously.

Next, I will design the front and back covers for your book that visually support your story. Then Pamela will send you the images for your covers as well as all pages for your final review. Once you are satisfied with all elements of your book and have approved it to be printed, Pamela will send the book to the printer. Your book is typically printed and ready in about a week.

Finally, Pamela will personally deliver your custom photo book to you. It’s an amazing feeling to know that what you’ve seen on the computer all this time is now a printed and permanent story that you will now have saved for generations. Enjoy!

With much gratitude to Gary Lieberman, we’d like to share our latest creation with you. It’s an 8×8 hard cover storybook that chronicles a white water rafting trip that Gary took with his childhood friend. We’ve included Gary’s testimonial along with a link to view the custom photo book. Please post any questions you have about this project as we’d be happy to respond to you.

“I went on a rafting trip with a good friend for our 50th birthday. When we got back, I had all these pictures and wanted to do something different with them. I had heard about scrapping but knew nothing about it. And being a CPA, art design was not my specialty. I met with Pamela, one of the owners of “I Hate Scrapping.” We talked about what I was looking for and she suggested putting them in a book format.

This sounded great so I picked out the pictures for the book, put narrative to them and sent them on their way. Pamela’s company took the pics, brushed up the wording, laid out the design of the book and even went to the rafting company’s website to include additional information about the trip, something I would never have thought to do.

When I got the first proof, I was blown away at how it looked and know that I couldn’t have done this on my own.  I was very happy with the printed book. The people in my office were very impressed by it, too.

Then I gifted a copy to my friend who took the trip with me and he was ecstatic. His wife and daughter were very impressed by it as well.

People have asked me if I did this on my own and I told them I could not have designed anything like this by myself. I highly recommend “I Hate Scrapping.”

Sincerely,

Gary Lieberman

In addition to adding descriptions to our favorite photos, here are some basic steps of preserving digital photographs as shared by The Library of Congress:

IDENTIFY where you have digital photos
Make a list of these locations if you have several locations.

• Places include your computer, laptop, phone, cameras and removable media such as memory cards, external hard drives and flash drives.
• Another place might be photos saved on the Web

DECIDE which photos are important to you
This is the toughest step for me. I take it from the other perspective, though. I try to remove those photos that don’t mean anything and won’t mean anything later on. The rest I keep and organize.

• Choose the ones that you feel are most important
• If you have copies of one photo, be sure to select the one with the highest resolution (largest file size)

ORGANIZE the selected photos
You can do this several ways but regardless of which way you choose to organize your photos, be consistent. I use a program called Memory Manager by Creative Memories that gives me the ability to place my photos in folders, tag them and add descriptions. Find a program that works for you and stick with it.

• Create folders and subfolders to organize the photos
• Give descriptive file names to some photos
• Tag photos with names of people and descriptive subjects
• Add descriptions wherever you can

MAKE copies and STORE them in different places
After taking my photos, I download them from my camera and save them to my desktop computer. Then I copy them to another hard drive. Then I copy them onto an external hard drive before pulling them into my Memory Manager program. And Memory Manager has a backup service to save all the revised photos. So I’m well covered on copies!

• Make at least two copies of your selected photos
• Place the copies on different forms of media, never on the same hard drive
• Store copies in different locations that are as physically far apart as is practical.
• Put a copy of the photo inventory with your important papers in a secure location.
• Check your photos at least once a year to make sure you can read them.
• Convert files to new media when necessary to avoid data loss.

 

Watch this video to learn more about these steps and other tips to archiving your digital photos. Toward the end of the video, Facebook, camera photo programs, file formats and embedded META data are discussed.

As you follow these basic steps of preserving digital photographs, remember that you’re making a difference in the lives of future generations who will want to experience your memories. Instead of turning a paper photo over to get more details, they’ll be sifting through files on a computer. Will it be a guessing game? What do you want them to remember?

If this all sounds overwhelming, turn to “I Hate Scrapping” for help in completing this process. Photo organization professionals at I Hate Scrapping are experienced in preserving digital images and can take away the guesswork. Contact them at www.iHateScrapping.com today!

We create collages of photos that can be placed in posters, calendars, party invitations and more. Enjoy more of your great shots all year long!

Here’s a sample birthday invitation. We can create any size you want.

We can edit any poorly developed photos, resize them as needed, crop the photos to get the best views, and lay them out with a design that you like.

Whatever the occasion, YOU create the memories and WE create the fantastic, breathtaking photo collage!

Are you someone who:

• Likes to give unique gifts?
• Is too busy to create a scrapbook?
• Says “Someday I’ll do something with my photos?”
• Likes to be remembered for the gifts you give?
• Takes a lot of photos and wants to do something with them but hasn’t done it yet?



We LOVE to scrap! And we want to scrap for YOU!

It’s time to blow off the dust on those boxes of photos under your bed. We’ll find all the photos on your computer. Let’s get those photos organized and into distinctive photo books that you’ll be proud to show off. The clock is ticking…

Your photos are worth NOTHING on your computer OR in boxes. Bring your pictures to life on the pages of a high quality, stitch-bound custom photo book designed by I HATE SCRAPPING.

NOW is the time. Haven’t you waited long enough?

Get started today by clicking here. We’re ready to scrap for YOU!