Tag: Memory Keeping 101

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

Picture Perfect Prints

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – GET YOUR PRINTS WITH ME

I Remember the Good Old Days, Too

Remember when getting your printed photos was fun. You took pictures with a camera, not your phone. You used film, not an SD card. You couldn’t look at or share the photo until the film was developed. You’d gather up all your rolls of film and take them to the drug store to get printed. They took your photos and sent them to a lab and a few days later, you could have your photos. Seeing what you shot was like reliving your vacation or event. You even loved the bad photos.

Photo printing became big business and getting your photos back fast became the gold standard. Eventually, we all expected to get photos back in an hour, but instead of a technician in a lab developing your photos, you had some high school kid running the film through a machine that may or may not have been properly maintained, so those pictures might or might not be worth the paper they were printed on.

Along Came Digital

In my opinion, digital cameras were not an improvement. Suddenly, a whole new layer of challenges stood between me and my photographs. Yes, I know all about the improved photo quality and some people might like all that editing, but I liked dropping it off at the drug store and waiting a few day for the photos.

I’ve tried a lot of things since the advent of digital photography – printing the photos myself, taking a disc to the drug store or big box store and I’ve used SO many of the online photo printing services that I could not start to name them all.

An Education in Exploitation

Then a couple of years ago I discovered Forever and it has totally changed my outlook on the whole process, from where I store my images to where I get them printed and why. Have you ever wondered why so many places are so eager to print your photos and why they are willing to do it for such a cheap price? Try reading one of those terms and agreements that pop up as you fill in the blanks on your order. That would be an eye-opening experience.

Basically, when you download your photos to Shutterfly, Snapfish, MixBook, Costco, Walgreens – you name it, you sign an agreement which transfers the rights to your photos to that company. In turn, they do print photos for you on the cheap, but in return, they’ll use those photos for all kinds of things you never dream your photos would be subjected to. We’ve all heard horror stories about people seeing the photos they post on Facebook ending up in an ad campaign or on the dark web or other equally bad scenarios. The same thing happens when you upload your photos for printing.

And print quality? Once I spent a day editing a set of gorgeous vacation photos. I sent them off to Snapfish and eagerly awaited their delivery. The images I sent were sharp, crisp and beautiful. The images I got back were hazy. I’d been in the photography business long enough at that point to know something had happened to my images since I edited them and I was right. The company compressed all the photos before printing, because they could only handle up to a certain resolution. Sure it was all there in the terms and agreements, but who reads those.

So Now I Know

Then I found Forever. Instead of loading my photos onto a commercial site where who know what would happen to them, I load them into my very own online storage that I own. Nobody will ever mine my photos for advertising, sell them for stock photmpress them. When I want to print, I just choose the photos I want out of my account and order whatever size photo I want.

And here’s a tip. You know those letters and numbers on the back of some photos. Ever wonder who makes those up? Ever try to read them and decide what they mean. You can actually control what that says with Forever. That’s a big help.

Another Choice

So, you may be thinking to yourself, but I don’t WANT to store my photos on Forever. I just want to print them! OK, fine! But I have another option. Don’t go to the big box stores of online photo processing. You can print your photos with Creative Memories. Amazing quality, no compression, and yes you can control the print on the back of the photos.

What’s more, you’ll get your images back in these cool little plastic boxes that keeps them all nice and neat until you use them in your scrapbook. Then they are great for storing embellishments. I love them!!

Have It Your Way

So, if you want safe, secure storage along with your very affordable and convenient photo printing. You want Forever. Here’s the link: https://www.forever.com/ambassador/jane-sadek/autoprint/photo-prints

If you just want to upload your images and get them back in nice little plastic boxes, also very conveniently and affordable, then here’s your link: https://www.creativememories.com/photo-prints.html

When you are considering how you are going to handle your memory keeping, please consider me. I have all the answers you will ever need and sometime I have more than one way to do what you want. Come back next and let’s do some more memory keeping together.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

Taking Video to the Next Level

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – VIDEOSTREAMING FOR THE SHARE!

Don’t Be a Captive!

There’s a reason we all love YouTube and Facebook, but there are also a lot of reasons we all hate it. If you love video, then I don’t need to enumerate either set of reasons. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed both watching and sharing on these channels. If you’ve ever wished you had more control over the videos you post, then I have an answer for you. If you don’t know the pitfalls and challenges of using these channels, we should talk.

The primary problem with using YouTube, Facebook or any other streaming service for your personal videos is that once you upload them to the channel, those videos belong to them, not you. They have no duty to you. They are doing you the favor of making your videos available to others and they are in control. They can reformat, compress or delete them. Your agreement with them says so. It also says they can data mine them, sell them or whatever they want.

You might have thought you had no choice. You had to be a captive of these services or keep your videos captive on your own device. Forever offers you a choice.

Store Your Videos on Forever

Last week I talked about digitizing videos to which you may have lost access. I touched on the fact that storing these videos on Forever would be a good idea, because DVD’s and thumb drives are not permanent storage devices. Neither is your computer or an external hard drive. I know! Before I discovered Forever I lost an entire year’s worth of real estate photography which was stored on an external hard drive. And your phone is certainly not the right place for these precious memories. We all know the horror stories associated with losing or damaging your phone.

Another answer is to rent space on a cloud – those services like iCloud, Google or Dropbox – but that’s not a good answer either, for so many reasons. If you follow my blog, then you don’t need to be reminded of all the dangers of renting storage, but in case you have missed it, when you use these services, the terms you agreed to allow them to:

  • Mine your photos and videos for marketing purposes
  • Sell your photos and videos to third parties as stock
  • Carry no responsibility if your photos and video disappear
  • Compress and/or reformat your photos and videos
  • Terminate your account when you die
  • Delete your photos and videos whenever they so desired
  • Own your photos and videos
  • Delete your account if you pay

With Forever YOU own your storage. You’re not just renting it. None of those things listed will happen to you. You pay once, you’re done and your photos and videos can be enjoyed for generations to come. Forever guarantees it.

Download or Stream?

It’s easy to share photos and video with Forever, but when what you are sharing is video, which is ok. Your recipient will just have to download the video to watch it. Or you can get video streaming. Then when you share, they just click the arrow. They will love you for it!

If you are an avid fan of video, then you know the value of your precious memories and you can appreciate the convenience of a personal video streaming service. Imagine sending video to your family and friends without forcing them to watch ads! Yes, that would be nice.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, though. There’s a price for streaming, but there’s always a price, even if it is not dollars and cents. The list above is one price. Forcing people to watch ads might be the price. Or paying every month for the rest of your life might be another price.

With Forever, you can chose to pay monthly if you want. The price is the same as you’d pay for similar services, but without being subject to the list of issues I outlined above and a few others we can talk about. This is great if you just want to try out video streaming.

You can also pay by the year and save 15% over the monthly plan – which is great. Perhaps if you’ve had a special event like a wedding or the birth of a child and you want others to easily enjoy and share the videos for a while, this would be the plan which would interest you.

However, with Forever, you also have the option of buying video streaming that will last as long as your Forever account. This means those who enjoy your videos on Forever would never have to download. They could always watch the videos right in account. You can pay for it in a lump sum or pay it out over a year. Then video streaming would belong to you always.

The retail price for this generational legacy is $1600, but with deals and The Club, you never have to pay full price. If this is the right choice for you, then I can show you how to get the best price.

Many of Forever’s customers buy their storage and video streaming as a family. They all use the account for sharing photos, videos, documents and more. It’s an investment for everyone that will be enjoyed by the family members of the future, without those future family members having to pay for it into perpetuity – and some storage solutions won’t even allow you to pass down accounts, even if they were willing to pay for it!

Everything Works Together

The real beauty of Forever is that everything works together. The reason this company even exists is because the founder got frustrated when he found out he needed several different kinds of accounts to do his memory keeping. He had to send his photos one place for digitization, store them in another and make photo books someplace else – and the compatibility of the various accounts was in no wise seamless.

With Forever, you store and share all your media in the same place and all the tools you need are right there. For instance, you could make a digital photobook and include video by adding a QR code. Or maybe a calendar with a QR code that allows a grandmother to hear her sweet grandkids saying hello, anytime she wants. When you’re using Forever, the possibilities are endless.

Video streaming may not be a service you need at all, but if you’re into video, then you should at least think about the benefits you could enjoy. Come back next week and we’ll talk photo printing. I have two choices to offer and they are both great!

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography

Accessing & Preserving Your Video History

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – OFF THE SHELF AND INTO YOUR LIFE

Reclaim Your Video Memories

From old reel-to-reel home videos to moments recorded on phones, video memories have been a part of our media landscape for a long time. My family never went down the movie path, so my personal experience with them is limited. However, I have a lot of customers whose memories are more video than photograph. Forever can handle that, too.

What I usually hear first from video clients is they have a stack of tapes/reels somewhere and they don’t even have the equipment to watch them. I have both good and bad news to deliver at this point. The good news is, Forever CAN convert those tapes/reels to digital. The bad news is, there is no watching service to give you a report on what the video contains before the conversion. It is during conversion the subject matter becomes knowable.

So, whether your tapes/reels have riveting moments of well-shot action or hours and hours of poorly shot videography (which would cure insomnia), you get the good with the bad. The good news is this. Once the footage is digital, there are lots of great apps and software out there with which you can turn the yawners into jewels with just a little editing. So, while we all wish our parents, grandparents and spouses were better videographers, at least we can save the good parts for future generations.

What Does It Cost?

I’m not going to lie. Pricing digital conversions is tricky. A small Forever box is regularly priced at $60 (but there’s always some kind of deal going on, so it will never be that much). That price includes the conversion of two “items” in Forever-speak. An item can be a VCR tape or a 50 ft reel (or 25 photo/slides for that matter, but we’re talking video today). If you put two VCR tapes or two 50 ft reels or one VCR tape and one 50 ft reel in the box, digitizing them will be covered. However, the boxes will hold more than two videos, and Forever encourages you to fill them in order to save shipping, but that’s where it gets confusing.

I go over this with everyone who ships in media to be converted, but often they are so excited about the project they don’t hear me. Then we have sticker shock and I hate that. While you can fill the box to the brim, whatever you put in there beyond the first two items cost extra at the regular price of $30 per item.

So, at regular price, if you had 5 tapes/reels. You’d pay $60 for the box, $90 for the extras and then shipping and taxes would be added to that. That’s $150 to reclaim your memories (at regular price) and that’s a pretty good deal – a lot better deal than storing tapes/reels you can’t watch.

Now, the more tapes/reels you have the larger that number gets. If you’re currently storing boxes and boxes of these things, then we need to get together an discuss strategies. We can watch together for the best specials on conversion. Perhaps you have family members who would share the cost with you. You could join Forever as an Ambassador for a year and enjoy that discount on your conversions. And there’s always The Forever Club to help you budget your memory keeping expenses.

Special Considerations

Certain types of media come with certain restrictions. For instance, let’s say you sent in what you thought was your wedding tape and it was all I Love Lucy reruns. It’s always best if you have some idea what’s on your media and if you don’t, please understand our technicians need to be paid for the time they spend on your material, even if it’s not what you thought it would be.

There is nothing Forever can do about the missing wedding footage and they are not allowed to reproduce copies of copyrighted material, so you’d have a conversion mess. At least if it were blank, you could get back 50% of your money, but to pay for finding out you didn’t have the wedding tape you thought you did, that would be a really bad day. Thankfully, we don’t run into many bad days.

While it might be obvious I Love Lucy or Batman Returns are copyrighted, there are other things that might not be as obvious. Take wedding videos by a professional videographer or game clips from your child’s team or video you bought at a dance competition or swim meet. Because you paid for these tapes, you might think that you own the rights to them, but in most cases you do not. Technically, you are supposed to return to the videographer who created the original.

While this is technically true, in many cases, it could be virtually impossible to find the videographer and honor the copyright. So, if you are only digitizing the copyrighted media for your personal use, then you can sign a waiver releasing Forever from any responsibility, should you be sued for improperly use of the footage. I’m warning you though, don’t turn around and use it in a “for profit” project or you could end up in the middle of a very serious law suit.

Just, in case you are wondering, if you have documents like birth, death and wedding certificates, or census and deed records or any publicly available documents, those are not copyrighted. Digitize away!

What If There’s Something Wrong with the Video?

Forever will do the very best it can to digitize whatever video you turn over to them – even if it is broken or damaged. I’ve heard many heartwarming stories about people who doubted Forever would even be able to digitize a single frame of a tape. They thought if they could get back anything they’d be lucky. To their amazement they got back a digitized copy and they couldn’t even tell there had been any damage on the original. Forever cannot guarantee you’ll get back something that looks better than the original, but that could actually be the case in many situations.

So, How Exactly Does it Work?

Well, first choose the box you think will best fit the media items you want digitized, then let’s talk so I can be sure you’ve taken advantage of all the discounts available. You pay for your box, shipping and the covered items up front. You can also choose to get thumb drives or DVD’s if you like, but we should talk about Forever storage and streaming. Soon your box will be delivered.

Materials for packing your box, packing instructions, a worksheet and your shipping label will be inside. Follow the instructions and fill up your box. I’ll be happy to help you with this step. The worksheet will show you what’s included with the purchase of the box and give you an estimate of the amount you will need to pay for extra items. Put the paperwork in with your media and put the shipping label on the outside. The let Fed Ex know there is a pick-up or just drop it off at a box or office. You can keep an eye on the Forever Box Center to know what’s going on.

When Forever gets the box, they audit the worksheet and the items you have packed, to make sure they are correct. Then they’ll start digitizing. It’s all done right here in the good old US of A and lovingly handled by gloved humans, rather than machines. The difference is noticeable take a look at the “A step above the rest” section, on the lower part of this page to see why Forever is better: https://www.forever.com/ambassador/jane-sadek/digital-conversion

When you items are digitized, Forever will notify you that your videos are in your box center. The images will stay in your Box Center for 60 days, giving you time to add them to your Forever account, download them to your computer or whatever. They’ll also ship your stuff back, along with any DVD’s or thumb drives you’ve ordered.

And that’s it. I, of course, would love to discuss the benefits of storing these precious memories on your own Forever account. DVD’s and thumb drives are not permanent storage devices. Someday folks will look at them the way you would look at a 78 rpm vinyl record – if you do have a device to play it on, chances are it won’t sound the way you though it would.

One of the best reasons to choose Forever as your online storage provider is their video streaming service. We’ll talk about that next Thursday.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

Digital Scrapbooking with Creative Memories

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – A TOTALLY DIFFERENT DIGITAL

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. We’re not talking animal cruelty here, I’m referring to the old saw which pointed out most jobs have more than one way to go about them. You say po-TAY-to and I say po-TAH-to. Same veggie, different pronunciations.

Well, Creative Memories has their own interpretation of digital scrapbooking and it’s not a photobook at all. It really is a scrapbook. The coverset is the same coverset you’d use for their traditional albums, but instead of a solid bookcloth or one with decoration embossed on it, your album can have your own photos on it, just like a photobook.

The Best of Both Worlds

My scrapbooking hit a bump in the road when digital came along, because Creative Memories hit a bump in the road. At the time, it just looked as if management was abandoning the traditional scrapbookers who had made them the premiere memory keeping company in the world, but it turned out they had abandoned a whole lot of stuff. We’ll just leave it at that. They went bankrupt and have been totally reorganized and refocused, but those were rough days in the scrapbooking world.

At the time, it seemed as if you had to stay on the traditional scrapbooking road or take the exit to digital everything. There were no solutions which embraced both formats.

I wasn’t ready for digital back then, so I stayed with traditional scrapbooking, but there was no good source for traditional scrapbooking supplies (except the huge stash of CM supplies I had bought up to meet the quarterly quota, which thank goodness is no longer a thing!) I eventually found another scrapbooking supplier which had the same style pages and coverset as CM, so that period of photographic unrest is not apparent on my scrapbook shelves.

Then CM returned and it felt like coming home. At first, I still wasn’t ready for digital, but these days I heartily embrace the CM solution for both traditional and digital scrapbookers. At first glance it looks like a traditional scrapbook. The construction of the coverset and the format of the pages is the same as the CM traditional album, but a closer look reveals the personal images printed on the coverset, just like they are on a photobook.

But wait there’s more! You can create a digital coverset for your traditional album if you want to stick with traditional pages, but want a personalized coverset. Or you can select a beautiful traditional coverset for your project, but all of your pages can be designed and printed digitally. And you have to know where I’m going now. No matter which coverset you choose, your pages can be both traditional and digital. The point is, you don’t have to choose.

Making It Work for You

Now, if you are a scrapbooker yourself, then your mind is exploding with possibilites. If you’re not a scrapbooker, then let me tell you why this is such a good idea. The photos and memorabilia for a Baby Boomer are going to be primarily analog. Generation Z is going to be totally digital. Generation X-er’s are going the start out analog and melt into digital, while Millenials might have anything.

I do custom albums for all generations. Baby Boomers and Millenials are easy. Baby Boomers generally want a traditional album, because that’s a more straightforward way to address their photo mess – even if they turn around and have the album pages digitized, it’s just simpler to work with what they have. Millennials go for online albums, because that’s how their brain works and they don’t want to kill trees.

With Generation X and Millennials, what they have in the way of photographs and memorabilia depends a lot on which direction their parents leaned. If like me, their parents had a hard time letting go of their analog camera and printed photos from the drug store, then the record of their lives, at least at the beginning, will be analog. Then there will be a period where some items are digital, but others are still analog. If their parents instead embraced the digital age from the very beginning, then they generally go the route of the Millenials, but they might print a photobook for their parents. (And that’s what Forever’s for!)

Since Gen X’ers and Millennials have both traditional and digital items, they might feel it would be necessary to make a choice, between scrapbooks and photobooks, but they don’t. It’s not necessary to digitize all the analog stuff to go in a photobook or print all the digital items, so for a traditional scrapbook. With CM digital, you can have a traditional scrapbook with both traditional pages for analog and printed pages for digital. Some people even get their digital items printed and add traditional photos or decoration to the printed page. There are no rules!! Only solutions and I can bring you all of them.

What Do You Have and What Do You Want?

I started the Memory Keeping 101 series the same way I begin my conversations with a custom scrapbook client. What do you have and what do you want? You answer may be that you have a little of everything and you’d like a solution to embrace both analog and digital. Well, here’s your solution. No matter what you have, CM has a scrapbooking system which will do either or both. Just give it all to me and let me at it. Or you can do it yourself. I’m here to help either way.

Come back tomorrow for The Weekend Report if you need suggestions for your weekend and on Wednesday, Travel Talk will be focused on NYC. On Thursday, we’ll be back to digital solutions from Forever.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

Digital Scrapbooking with Forever

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – Artisan, Scrapbooking, but Digital

Digital Photo Gifts and Photobooks

You know the names – Snapfish, Shutterfly, Mixbook, SmugMug, etc. etc. etc. You go there. You drop your photos into a template. Maybe you can edit some, maybe you can’t. You can make gifts with photos, like blankets, coffee mugs, calendars and ornaments. You can also make bound photobooks.

Ever try to contact their customer service? I have chatted online. Either you’re talking to someone with a name five miles long that you can’t pronounce or it’s a bot. Doesn’t matter. They can’t help you, because if it is a real problem they don’t have a script for it. So they elevate your problem and good luck with that. I’m still waiting for my email from my elevated customer service call concerning a Christmas Card order a few years ago.

Quit that!! You can do all of that and more on Forever. Highest quality images, best quality products, quick turnaround and amazing selection. Here’s the difference. Those other guys are the big box store. Forever is me. Now I’m not doing all the work, but you have me so you never have to chat with a bot. I have Forever, so whatever it is that you want to do with your photos, I can get it done.

Since the main focus of my business is custom scrapbooking, I don’t spend much time trying to transform Snapfish customers into Forever customers. In fact, if you’re already memory keeping, then good for you. That’s what I want. I’m happy to tell you why I believe Forever is a better way to go, and I would love for you to buy these services from me instead of them, but my real target is people who just have a mess and want me to fix it. I would love it, if next time you go to print photos or make a calendar/coffee mug/photobook/blanket, you gave Forever a try, but what I want most is for you to keep on memory keeping.

And Then There Was Artisan

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t do all that photo gifting stuff for my own purposes. Perhaps that’s because I don’t have kids, grandkids or pets, but I think the real reason is because I’m a scrapbooker. I want my photos and memorabilia in an album, not on my coffee mug.

Because I’m a scrapbooker, I’m used to starting with a blank page, so all those photobook templates frustrate the heck out of me – even Forever photobook templates. I tried. I really tried and I ran, not walked, back to my traditional scrapbooks.

Then I discovered Artisan! With Artisan I can start with a blank page. Oh, they have all the templates in the world, if you want them. In fact, the training videos assume you want to use templates and teach from that standpoint, so my learning curve was pretty steep. However, after a few sessions, I skipped to the part where they just told me what the various buttons did, without telling me how they worked with templates. I haven’t looked back.

I still prefer traditional scrapbooking. Perhaps you know my husband and I own a real estate photography company. I sit at a computer all day long managing photos – downloading, uploading, receiving and delivering. When my real estate photography day is over, I would prefer to move to the scrapbooking table and do things manually. Don’t get me wrong, I will do digital photobooks, for my clients, for gifts and occasionally just for myself, but it’s just not my first love.

If like me, you just want to keep doing traditional scrapbooks, then you should at least allow Forever to print your photos. Here’s why they are the best:

Taking It to the Next Level

If digital scrapbooking is your thing, then before I go, I should tell you about Pixels 2 Pages. It’s an online community of digital scrapbookers. These people are serious about it. They even have retreats where they get together with their computers, either virtually or in person, to scrapbook. You can try it out for free for a month.

Online communities are not my thing, but they might be yours. I have met some of these people in person and they speak a language I don’t even understand. I think it’s easy to learn, but again, I’m primarily a traditional scrapbooker. I’d rather talk about the latest Border Maker or Punch, but, as I said, that’s me. I just wanted you to know it was there if you wanted it.

That’s all for today! We’ll visit the Metroplex tomorrow and go to NYC on Wednesday, but on Thursday, we’ll get back to Memory Keeping 101.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

The Forever Pricing Game

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – NEVER EVER PAY FULL PRICE

A Sign of the Times

I’m old fashioned. I think the price of something should be a definite thing, but it’s gotten a lot more complicated than that. Whether you’re shopping online or at the grocery store or the local department store, there’s the price that’s marked, the price that’s advertised and the price you can get it for. Unfortunately, though I love everything Forever has to offer, I hate the way they do their pricing. Younger people might understand it all better, but I get confused.

The Welcome Coupon

Joining Forever is free. I send you a link: https://www.forever.com/ambassador/jane-sadek/. You fill in a few details and you’re in – all the wonders of Forever at your finger tips. But it’s better than that. To thank you for signing up, Forever gives you a $20 Welcome Coupon. They’ll send you an email to thank you for joining, but don’t delete it, because there’s a code there you’ll need to redeem your $20. With just a few minor exceptions, it can be used for anything.

The Forever Club

Remember Layaway? That’s an old selling strategy where a store will put your purchase in their storeroom and you pay for it over time. You’ll still see it every once in awhile, but these days most people just charge it. Back in the day, we weren’t so free with our credit cards, so the stores would help you buy their merchandise. I have a beautiful silver service my favorite aunt paid for piece by piece year by year with layaway. It’s one of my favorite treasures.

The Forever Club is like layaway in reverse – like a savings account. You go ahead and put a little aside for a few months and suddenly you have enough to get video streaming, a terabyte of storage, the big Forever box or whatever else you’d like to get, without putting a burden on your credit card. And unlike the bank, where they’ll charge you service fees for holding your money, the Forever Club is free and your Club dollars never expire. That’s a nice tool to have when you are planning a digital project.

5% Off Everything and Stacking

But there’s more! When you belong to the Club, you get a 5% discount on everything. So even if you don’t want to save up for a big purchase – I never have – belonging to the Club is worth it. You may only put in $25, but you’re going to get $26.25 worth of merchandise. Your shopping cart will just have that 5% taken off every time, whether you’re scoring a Deal of the Day for Digital Scrapbooking Art or getting photos printed or buying more storage.

Stacking is a thing at Forever. You know how you get a coupon from some companies and the rules for using it are so restrictive it’s almost impossible to use. Well, you can use your Welcome Coupon and your 5% Club discount together on virtually everything and then stack them with other deals I will talk about later.

Free Storage

And, like the vegetable cutter at the state fair, that’s not all. Every three months you belong to the Club you get free storage. The amount you get is based on the level of membership you buy. And this isn’t one of those Clubs you get into, but can’t get out. You don’t have to go through a bunch of hoops or spend hours on the line waiting for a customer service rep. You go into your account and cancel it yourself. I know, because I start and stop all the time, but I always be sure to stay in for 3 months to get my free storage.

When I am working on digital projects, I know I am going to be spending dollars with Forever. Like I said, the Forever dollars can be used on everything and they never expire. Why wouldn’t I want a 5% discount. So, when I start the project, I join the Club at the lowest level, $25 and I be sure my membership goes for at least 3 months. During that period of time, whatever I am doing from buying storage and printing photos, to creating print projects or even buying up digital art, I get that 5% off and I am also earning half a GB of storage. Believe me, the way I eat up storage, I’ll take every half a GB I can get.

But some people are more aggressive. They want it all and they want a lot of it – a TB of storage, video streaming, several Forever boxes – you can quickly stack up thousands of dollars. For the sake of this post, let’s say they’ve set a budget of $7500 for their project and they want to get it all within a 3 month period. They’d join the Club at the $2500 level for 3 months, but they’d end up with $7875 to spend and 50 GB of free storage. Yep, that’s a good deal.

The Deals Page

For me, the deals page is the good news and the bad news. The good news is that there is always a deal. You will never pay what Forever lists as their full price. However, the problem is that the deals are always changing. If you asked me today what you’d spend on any given project, I can tell you the full price and what it would be if you bought it now, but I can’t tell you what the price will be if you buy it later. It might be better, it might be worse. I try to help people get the best deals, but there is no published schedule of deals to come.

Most of the deals are just a percentage off the list price – usually ranging from 10% to 50%, but keep an eye out, because crazy things can happen. They also come up with specials that you can only get with the Club, which is a nice bonus. You can get free tickets to online events, membership to the Digital Scrapbookers Group (Pixels 2 Pages) and even deals on shipping.

There’s also the Deal of the Day, which is usually something for digital scrapbooking, but sometimes they throw us a curve ball, so it wouldn’t hurt to check it everyday. I look anytime I go on the website

Then there are the bundles. Perhaps you can get free storage if you buy video streaming, for instance, but they put all kinds of things together. They also get more creative, but the more creative they get, the more complicated they also get. During the madness of Black Friday, you could get $100 and $200 gift certificates with a bonus coupon which would give you amazing discounts off various things, but while the gift certificate would not expire, the coupon had to be used by the end of December and it had rules about what you could stack it with. More good news/bad news in my opinion.

You Need Me

This is why you need me. While Jenga is a game where you pull out blocks, Forever is a game where you have to stack the deals to get the best price. I wish it were easier, but the days of easy seem to be over.

There’s another reason you need me. I have a 5% discount in my pocket that only I can give you. It’s only good for certain products, but if you are buying something which qualifies we take off all the other coupons, discounts and deals, and then I take 5% off the top. Let’s say you were buying that TB of storage. With my pocket discount I could take hundreds of dollars off the bottom line.

When You Fall in Love

If you become a member of Forever, which is always free to join, you might have a little period of adjustment, but at some point you are going to fall in love. Maybe it will be the joy of owning your own piece of the cloud or taking boxes of photos digital or maybe it will be the first photobook you print, but at some point, you’ll say, I’m so glad I did this. That’s when you start sharing.

Now, in this social media heavy world, sharing usually means putting a post on your channel and your reward is clicks, likes and comments. You get more with Forever. If you share my page and the person you shared it with joins Forever, they’ll get that $20 Welcome Coupon and you’ll get a $20 Thank You Coupon. There’s no limit! Share away! You don’t even have to involve me. Just go to your Forever account, hit the share button in the upper right hand corner and you’ll get a link to text or email. Done!

The Ambassador Opportunity

While we are talking about saving, I have to tell you about one more opportunity. You can become an Ambassador for $119 annually. Instead of just getting 5% off with the Club, you can also get at least 20% paid back to you for everything you buy. This is not for everyone. You’ll need to spend at least $600 to breakeven on this deal, if you’re just buying in for the discount.

My business is photos and memory keeping, so being an Ambassador just makes sense. I have people with Forever Club memberships who yield me a few dollars every month. I have other clients who pay big purchases out over a year’s time and I get a few dollars every month from them. Sometimes I make a big sale and get a huge commission. But most importantly, whatever I buy, I get 20% back and there are no minimums and I don’t hold any inventory.

If you’re a serious memory keeper, it might make sense for you or if you are looking for a business opportunity you can have fun with, look no further. Let’s talk about how it would work in your life.

Never Ever Pay Full Price

I know, that’s a lot of information, but I wanted to put it all in one place, if for no other reason than to remind myself of all the ways I can save money or save you money on your digital memory keeping. Wanna know more. Keep reading my Thursday posts or just give me a call.

Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography

Digitize Your Memories

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – PUT ALL YOUR MEMORIES ONLINE WITH FOREVER

Forever Boxes Make Digital Easy

Unless you’re quite young, you’ve watched the world go from analog to digital. One set of grandparents used a Brownie Hawkeye camera to take photographs, while another set grandparents opted for slides. An uncle wandered around all of your family gatherings filming reels and reels of movies. Then maybe your dad showed up with a huge camera on his shoulder to take VHS tapes and you may remember when he changed over to the Hi8 format. Then you went digital, but you’ve got photos on your computer, more on dvds, others on a hard drive, perhaps some on the cloud, but a whole lot on your phone, for sure!

A lot of that media you can’t even look at, because you no longer have the equipment it needs and if a photo you want to find is on your phone, then you might have to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll to find it. Last week I told you how wonderful Forever’s storage is and obviously moving all your digital images from wherever they are to your own digital storage space will be easy. But what about the photos, the slides, the movies and all the rest. Well, Forever can convert it all to digital – including the piles of photographs.

Well, that’s easy, too. You put it all in a box and send it to Forever. Not just any box, a Forever box and I’ll be happy to help you.

Your Forever Box

Here’s how it works. We decide which box(es) is/are going to hold all your stuff and order what you need from Forever. Forever sends you an empty box to fill up with all the items you would like to be converted to digital. When the box comes, you fill it up and send it back to Forever. Forever digitizes it and puts it online. Then they’ll send your stuff back to you, but if you don’t want it, you can just dump it in the trash, because all your stuff is online.

When Forever digitizes your material, it goes into a temporary storage account for 60 days, so you can decide what you want to do with it. They’ll also be happy to produce a dvd or thumb drive. But the very best thing you can do, in my opinion, is get your own permanent storage from Forever and put your memories there. Those memories will be there to be enjoyed by generations to come and you can rest easy.

Organizing Your Online Memories

Once you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of getting your memories online, you’re going to want to share them and Forever makes that easy, but somewhere along the way, you really need to do some organizing – or get me to do it for you.

Many Forever customers want to do the organizing before they send their memories off to Forever or they get me to do it for them. This is the most economical way, because you won’t be digitizing things you’re not interested in keeping. Your empty boxes will come from Forever with plastic bags and labels to keep your memories in order. If your memories have already been organized, at that point we can put notes on your bags and Forever will use those notes to name your online images. Your organized memories will be ready to share.

However, some of my clients say, “Jane, I don’t even know what’s on these videos!” Or they say, “It will be easier for me to sort through them once they are online.” Some even say, “Once they’re online, my family is going to help me sort them.” In this case, we can get your stuff all packaged up, as is, and send it off to Forever. Then you’ll have 60 days in your temporary account to decide what will go on Forever, what you’ll download and what you’ll just delete.

Curation for the Generations

Anything is better than nothing. If all you manage to do is send your stuff off in your Forever Box and move it over to your own online storage account once it’s digitized, then you’ve already done more than most people manage to get done. Too often, the next generation, faced with a cache of slides, reel to reel tapes, VHS videos and a pile of analog photos, will just toss them into the trash. And why wouldn’t they? If you haven’t organized your memories and taken the time to identify who is in them, then exactly how are those who come after you supposed to know what it’s all about?

Now, imagine notifying your family and friends they can peruse their memories online, at their leisure, with the click of a link. That will be great news for them, even if the images are helter skelter, but imagine how much more excited they will be if the memories are organized by date and event and tagged for cross-referencing by name. With a few clicks, your Uncle Joe can see all the photos you have of him in one place. You get to decide which of your photos you want to share, whether you want your family and friends to download from your cache and even if you want someone to be able to upload new photos or add notes.

I’m There for Whatever You Need

If you like, you can do all of this yourself. It’s easy and I am happy to show you how. Or, if you’d just like to turn it all over to someone and wake up one day with a totally organized online storage account, I’ll be happy to take over for you.

How much does it cost? Well, that depends on a lot of things. How much do you have, what does it consist of, is it organized or do you need me to sort it? Here’s the link to the digital conversion page, which has the cost of the various boxes https://www.forever.com/digital-conversion/, but first timers can find it very confusing. You’ll need to understand what an item is and how overages work, to begin with. So, give me a call at 972-971-5263, and we’ll get you started.

When it comes to pricing with Forever, there can be a little sticker shock along the way, but there are also a lot of different ways to save, save, save. During November’s Black Friday Sales, you could get $1000’s worth of storage for less than $400, but you needed to know all the money saving tools available from me and from Forever. So, while I encourage you to browse the Forever site and learn all the exciting things you can do with Forever, don’t let sticker shock scare you away. I’ve got offers you’ll be excited about.

In fact, why don’t we talk about those money-saving plans next week. You’ll love all the ways there are to save with Forever.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

Getting Punchy

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – TOOL TIME FOR SCRAPBOOKERS

A Sampling of Punches and Border Makers

A couple of years ago I made the poster above to demonstrate the many shapes you could make with Creative Memories Punches and Border Maker. Some of these are no longer available, but they’ve also come up with all kinds of new ones. I always want every single one they introduce, but you soon learn to get a little picky.

Punches, Border Punches, Frame Punches and More

Punches are individual tools you can use to make anything from various sized circles to a variety of borders. However, each punch only makes one thing, be it a single shape or a certain pattern. The great thing is you can make them out of any color or pattern of paper you want to. Punches start at about $25 and go up to about $30, according to what the punch will do.

If it makes a single shape the punch is less expensive. The more you can do with with a punch, the more it costs. Some punches can stand alone on the page or make a border, like the Masquerade and Nativity border punches above. In the top picture of the poster, towards the bottom is a beige square. That’s one of the Frame Punches which will either make a border or the square you see above. Then there are the circle punches. They only do one thing and it requires a flipping the paper over in the middle of the process, but CM has only made a few circle punches and they are the most expensive. None are available at this time.

That’s the basic operation of punches, but if you are patient and you are given to a little experimentation there are all sorts of things you can do. Some croppers have figured out how to get some of the regular punches to do the same sort of thing as the specialized punches. Others use two punches and make a border with two shapes on it. These are the crafty people. You can spend all day on CMTV, the Creative Memories channel or on You Tube watching all the crazy things people figure out to do, but you’re not going to find me there. I just use the tools for what they were intended and never run out of ways to use them.

Border Maker System

Like the Custom Cutting System, the Border Maker System is a collection of tools you use together. With the Custom Cutting System, you get a mat and some blades to go along with several shapes and sizes of patterns. For the Border Maker, you get a two piece tool that works together to hold and cut your paper. Then there are a plethora of cartridges you can buy to use with the two piece tool.

While the punches have a tendency to sing, dance and serve hors d’oeuvres, all the border system does is make straight borders. The basic system is $35.50 and then the cartridges are $19.50 each. After your initial investment in the two piece tool, which does come with one cartridge, it is less expensive to buy the various shapes. I used to say that generally the Border Punches made wider strips than the Border Maker, but nowadays it’s hard to tell, just by looking, what tool made any given border.

Making Your Tools Work for Their Supper

Nothing in scrapbooking is in a vacuum. I’ve been traying to make it simple during these intro posts, but the more you learn about scrapbooking, the more there is to learn. There is more than one kind of page. There are several choices of adhesives and which one you use depends on what you’re sticking down and what you are sticking it to and what you want it to look like after it is stuck down.

When it comes to punches and borders, the same thing applies. There is absolutely nothing wrong with punching out one border and placing it directly on the page or the wallpaper. However, once you start working with them, you can get as crazy as you want to. Some punches only cut an edge off the paper, while others cut on both sides making a chain. You can use the edge punches on a wide strip of paper to make fancy strip cut on both sides. You can start stacking your strips and come up with completely new looks. Some crafty people make borders that are several layers thick, incorporating everything from letters to stickers and embellishments. About all I ever put together is 2-3 layers, but that’s me. You do you!

Obviously, you could go bankrupt buying punches and border maker cartridges, but they only represent a portion of the tools available to scrapbookers. There’s a corner punch which will create two different corners for your photos or mats. The 12 inch Trimmer has seven fancy blades to interchange with the straight blade. There’s a decorative trimmer to make your own wavy strips, a circle cutting for making infinite circle sizes and a zero centering ruler which is very helpful. I love the multi-purpose tool for scraping up things I’ve stuck down by accident and there’s a pointed end which I use for all kinds of tasks my fingers are too fat for. You need pens for journaling and there are two different scissors, both of which I use. And templates – did I mention them. Well, they can be used for several design jobs. Then there are sorting and storing tools which are really nice.

All this and you haven’t yet bought a single sticker or embellishment. Oh my! Have you begun to understand just how expensive it can be to get addicted to this hobby?

Next week, since you now have an idea what it costs to take up scrapbooking, let’s talk about the value of letting me do it for you.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

The Fun Stuff(?)

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – EMBELLISHING YOUR PAGE

A Brief History of Embellishments

Back in the day there were two kinds of embellishments – die cuts and stickers. You bought them. You used them and it was all over. Then you had to go shopping for more die cuts and stickers. Fast forward until today. You can still get die cuts and stickers. The assortment available with Creative Memories and other suppliers is limitless. However, you buy them, you stick them down and they are gone. You want more – you buy more.

The Custom Cutting System was one of the first forays into tools you could use to make limitless embellishments in the colors of your choice. The only shapes available at first were circles, but it was revolutionary. If you’d wanted to have a circle before the CCS, you used a plastic template to draw the one size available and then used scissors to cut it out freehand. I was dismal at it, so I was happy for an option that made perfect circles at least more often than I could cutting them out freehand. I still had my challenges, but it was better.

As they started adding other geometric shapes to the Custom Cutting System, they also started making punches available. At first, like the CCS all you could get were geometric shapes, but it was still cool. Then they added others, like leaves, cars, planes and such – but in the beginning, they were really small and didn’t make much of a statement on the page.

They also came out with a variety of trimmers so you could make strips. There was one for straight cuts and then a second one with a couple of wave patterns. They even came up with various blades for the straight trimmer so you could get different kinds of edges. I have to tell you though, those rotary blades were dangerous because you could slice your finger easier than you could get a good cut in your paper, but the new trimmers all have enclosed blades.

A Border Warning

I guess this is the place where I have to talk about borders and titles. Borders and titles are a thing among a lot of scrapbookers and CM pushes them like the local drug dealer offers gateway drugs. In fact, CM recently put out a book with 110 borders ideas and believe me, they are beautiful.

The borders start with a strip 2-3 inches wide and then you layer letters and embellishments on them. The borders can be put at the top and or on the bottom or added to the sides or even run through the middle. Some consultants advisors (the old CM used to call us consultants, but we’re now advisors) spend their days creating borders to sell at workshops and crops.

Some people start every page/2 page spread with a pair of borders at the top and bottom or at either side. No wonder scrapbookers want to buy them pre-made! Now, don’t get me wrong. I love borders, but I don’t use them on every page. I sure as heck don’t make them several layers deep with one of the layers being a jigsaw puzzle of small paper pieces.

You can make beautiful, simple and quick pages with just photos, memorabilia and a few items of decoration. I do it all the time. People pay me to do it and they love every single page – even the ones without borders.

You can also use lots of borders if you want to. I just don’t want you to think you have to spend your days cutting out minute pieces of paper to layer on a pair of 2-3 inch borders for every page. You need to decide whether you are a memory keeper or a crafter.

To me, this kind of scrapbooking is expensive in time, materials and space on your page. It also puts the emphasis on the decoration of the page, rather than the photos and memorabilia. Borders push scrapbooking from the realm of memory keeping into the world of crafting. I am not a crafter. I don’t have the skill, the patience or the time (not to mention the money) to be a crafter. My focus is preserving memories.

I say this now, because we are treading on dangerous waters here. Scrapbooking is fun and it can certainly be a craft, but when you start down the road of embellishments, you start adding to the time and money you devote to the job of memory keeping. Time and money are the top two inhibitors which keep people from memory keeping.

As I flipped through the new idea book, one of the first ideas I saw had a woven paper lattice on a three inch strip decorated with layers of punches and floral embellishments you can buy ready-made from CM, to go with those you’d need to make. It was gorgeous. I wanted to make one right away.

Then I thought about the time, materials and tools I would be using and the fact that I didn’t even have a page to put it on right this minute. I actually have all the tools used in that particular border, but as a flipped through other pages, I was dismayed by the number of punches, bordermakers and blades I don’t have.

I am happy to support your scrapbooking, however you go about it, but if you’re like most people, elaborate pages are the wide and straight road into frustration, incomplete pages and guilt from overspending. I’m warning you not go there without your eyes wide open. A few punches will enhance your pages. A lot of punches could be a dream or a nightmare.

Okay, enough of a warning, come back next week and all introduce you to the other dangerous habit I have to go along with my paper addiction – punches and Border Makers.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

Confessions of a Paper Hoarder

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – ORGANIZING YOUR PAPER ONCE YOU HAVE IT

Being a Paper Addict Has It’s Challenges!

Costing about 79 cents to $1 per 12X12 page, your paper is a valuable asset in your scrapbooking supplies. For that reason you need to find a way to protect it once you have it. While Creative Memories has awesome storage tools, it’s not the only game in town. Buy what you want, where you want to for your supply organization or even incorporate things you already have around the house, but don’t just leave the paper sitting around unprotected. And perhaps you’ll be smarter than me and not become a paper addict, so you won’t even need all this advice.

To protect my paper, I use various CM organizers I have bought over the years, but I also use a variety of boxes, envelopes and such I’ve repurposed for my scrapbooking supplies. For this reason, my studio is pretty low rent in comparison to those of other scrapbookers. They have special shelving to hold the cardstock and it looks just like what you see in the craft stores. Then they have another kind of shelving built to hold themed papers in their original packaging. They line it all up alphabetically and chat with one another about it like they are talking about old friends, instead of packages of paper.

Do not be intimidated by these scrappers. Your scrapbooks do not come out looking better just because you have fancy storage systems. You also shouldn’t buy up more paper than you will need in a reasonable length of time, unless like me, you just like paper. You do need some kind of system, so you’ll know where your stuff is and it won’t get damaged, but that’s the only criteria. As I’ve said before, it helps you get your scrapbooking done if you can designate a space in your house as your scrapbooking corner, but even that is not a requirement. It just helps.

My System

So, I have 10X12 papers I bought in the nineties, 12X12 cardstock and printed papers I’ve bought since then, and a whole lot of everything else. Any newly opened CM paper I have sits in a CM organizer, divided into plain cardstock, shimmer cardstock and printed paper and then sorted by color. I know the CM organizers will protect the paper because they are made with the same photo safe requirements. The primary reason I segregate my CM paper is because I do, from time to time, sell something to someone. You don’t need to be so fussy.

I also have my new papers from other sources stored in CM organizers. Many vendors sell their pages in a themed book, but I take them out and sort the paper. A smaller organizer holds papers from a ginormous book which would destroy the top edge of the sheet. I keep them separated, because I know they will not fully cover a 12X12 page and they are also not strong enough to be wallpaper. These are organized primarily by color, because there are no real themes. The rest of the non-CM papers I keep in a larger CM organizer, organized by theme.

All these steps just make me organized, but the sheer volume of my stash is a little ridiculous. It’s the rest of it that makes me a hoarder, but it also makes me very practical. I keep my scraps – all of them. Sure, if you’ve merely cut a circle out of one corner of a page that cost $1.25 almost anybody would store that page until they found a way to use the rest of it, but if it’s bigger than an inch, then I’m probably going to save it, too.

The pictures above are a sampling of my organized scraps, which I file by shape, size and color. On the left are the strips. In the middle are my small odd-shaped scraps. At that point, I am not as worried about archival issues. I challenge myself to use these rather than cut into a new piece of paper. It’s sort of a game with me. Cut new paper and I lose points.

Then on the right, behind my sticker organizer is a black CM organizer where I keep those sheet-sized scraps. This is not so much to protect them archivally as it is to keep them from getting wrinkled.

Do It Your Way

I have told you how I store my paper, not because it’s the right way to do it, but to give you some of my ideas, which might help you develop your own system. You may never see a piece of paper smaller than 12X12. You may always buy CM paper or you might never buy it from them. You may only have a few packs at any given time or you could become a full blown paper addict, like me. You be you.

These are the basics of paper handling and this is where you can stop buying tools and supplies, if you’d like. It’s all you’ll ever need to make beautiful albums. However, it just scratches the surface of what’s available out there if the scrapbooking bug bites you as hard as it has me.

Next week I’ll chat with you about the steps I take to build a page, which will by necessity introduce you to some of those other tools and embellishments you don’t need, but which will beg you to buy them.