Hello Project Life App!

Hello again! Back again sharing a few more things I've been playing around with. 

You may have heard of it. 

It's the Project Life App from Becky Higgins and team. And it's pretty awesome. 

I had a chance to be a part of the beta testing and was able to use it to get a month of 2013 layouts and more done with it for the class. One of the things I tried to do was to use it to "keep up while catching up" and it worked pretty well. I think for most normal weeks it works well for me.

In fact, during class one of the students and I made a challenge to work on that week with the app and see how it went. So I did that and thought it was pretty awesome. And so I did the following week as well. I'll share the other one soon. 

So here is week 47. I've never been one to try to number my weeks because I wanted the flexibility to change things up. But…if this works for me, I might try it! It's kind of fun! 

Have no idea what week it is? I usually google it. I've found a site here that tells you what week of the year it is. Kinda cool. 

Here is the full two page spread. I created a 24x12 canvas in PSE to put the two together after they were created. I just really like seeing the full two page spread together. It helps me to see the layout as a whole and creates more cohesion for me. Plus, I like to share it this way too.

I did the creation of this all on my iPhone.

To begin with, I used my favorite Collect Photo App to collect the photos and stories. Then I exported and saved them to my camera roll at the 3x4 size. I chose not to add the print bleed since I was just dropping them into the app and I think they worked well.

For a video tutorial on how to export, click here. Note, the latest version is slightly different, but still similar enough. I plan to do a new tutorial this coming year on my process (once I get it worked out.)

Here is the left side. I used the Midnight edition in the app for the title and week in review card. 

Then the "This is Daily Life" word art is from Ali Edwards. From the "Wash Your Hands" set. 

To create that, I used the another app from the creator of Collect called Letterglow. It works great and lets you import .png files (for word art.) Hello awesome! I also plan to do a tutorial for this sometime too. (note that you can use .png files in the PL app if they are already sized correctly -- for instance Ali's fall cards worked great. I will share that in another post.)

Basically, in the Project Life app,  I created a collage with the 2 on a  4x6 and added the kraft paper card and the heart card and then exported and saved to my camera roll.

Then brought them into Letterglow to play around with adding word art and type on the cards.

And for the right side:

For this page I added IKEA RUN and the Everyday Love in Letterglow (to the cards I had exported from the app. I also had to crop each to 3x4 in PicTapGo to make it work like I wanted. See--still working out my process.)

Then I just saved them and then added them back to the app. Yes, it would be awesome if we didn't have to toggle back and forth. But seriously, this is just such a huge step forward for mobile memory keeping! I hope it will come with later versions. But for now, this works pretty well for me.

Also note there are lots of other apps that let you add text to photos and use .png files. This is just one I'm familiar with and the easiest for me to use at this time.

And here's a close up of my week in review and the Ali Edwards word art. And if you look closely at the photo on the bottom right above: the Thanksgiving preparation one: see if you can find the giant balloon that was in our house for over a month. My niece and nephew got a kick out of it too.

The result? I pretty much love it. I can tinker around a bit on my lunch break or before bed. I'm still in tinker mode. Meaning, I'm just playing around with it to see how to make it work best for me. (note I may have nothing done in my December Daily but I pretty much have four pages done already in the app for December! More on that to come.)

My plan for Project Life in 2015 is going to be to use this for my base spreads. I will use a D-ring 12x12 binder. I just picked up two of these from Becky's site during the cyber Monday sale. That way I can still add in physical pocket pages as well. At least for the first part of 2015 that is the plan. The idea is that I will use the extra time I save (hopefully) to catch up on some old projects and maybe, just maybe finish up my Week in the Life and December Daily projects.

So here is a look at how I'm beginning to use the Project Life App. I'll be back to share more. And it includes more Design A and other styles. The fun thing about the app: no worries about what goes on the backside! You can just create for the photos you have! Pretty cool.

I think I like it.

Mobile Monday | New App Love | Little Moments™

Just a quick update on this Mobile Monday!

Still planning to share more about tags, PicFrame and Over in tutorials. But I really wanted to share this new app called Little Moments™ by the folks that created Collect and Letterglow (two of my favorite apps) and of course by the blogger Chantelle Ellem, also known as Fat Mum Slim.

She has created the Fat Mum Slim Photo a Day challenges for a while now, and I have tried here and there to play along and keep up. I just never could stay motivated or inspired. And while I still may not be able to keep up, having inspiration from the prompts along with the cuteness of the app may just help spark some creativity in my current photo taking slump.

Currently, the app is iPhone only, and hopefully an Android version will be out soon.

I downloaded the app last week after my friend Chari Pack of Persnickety Prints shared she had created one of the filters in the app. How cool is that? Plus, one of my main problems with participating in a photo a day challenge is that I never remember what the prompts are.

First thing I noticed was that I love the name! Little Moments ™ is just perfect and I love the colors, the clean design and the options for filters, overlays and text right in the app. The prompts are right at your fingertips and you can share with ease to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Then, I suggest adding your photo to Collect or your photo calendar app of choice, to see your photo collection growing. It's great motivation and the reminders help too.

Little Tip: an easy way to add your title in Collect is to copy the text right before you upload to Instagram or other social media sites, then paste that as the title in Collect. (especially if you write more than just the name of the prompt.)

Also, if you tap on the "More" button and then "open in" button, options for other apps will appear and you can add open up Collect from there. If it doesn't work the first time, just go back to the Little Moments™app and try again. For some reason it takes a few tries sometimes.

So there you go! I wanted to share today, as it is the end of June and a new month of prompts begins tomorrow! So play along if you would like to, or just use some prompts to help keep you motivated and finding new creative ways to capture daily life.

Here are some of the photos I took over the past few days that were inspired by the prompts. Probably wouldn't have taken some of these otherwise. These are all photo cards from the app Collect.

Enjoy and have fun capturing all those Little Moments™! Also, if you share and tag your photos #littlemomentsapp you are entered in a cool prize pack including Origrami prints! Check it out here for more details.

Mobile Monday | Using Tags in the Collect App

Hello! Welcome to my second post of my "Mobile Monday" feature! Thanks for the great feedback! I'm excited to share more about how I use mobile technology for memory keeping and excited to hear what you are using as well. I can easily get in a comfort zone and keep using the same apps, etc. I'm going to be challenging myself to try new apps, new techniques, etc as a way to keep learning and keep it fun.

Today I wanted to share more about how I made the "super mega collage" from last week. My plan is to break it down into three parts, and share one part each week.

First, this week I want to share how I use tags in the app Collect on my iPhone to curate and gather photos for stories I may want to tell. You can use the principles here even if you don't use Collect. See if the photo system you use includes tags or create folders to gather photos into that you want to keep. (Hint: you can even use tags, or hashtags, in Instagram and have those photos printed in one batch from Persnickety Prints.) In week 2, I want to share how to create the collage. I used PicFrame, but there are different apps that can get you the same result. And finally for week 3, I will share how to finish it up by adding the word art overlay. I used the app Over, but there are quite a few really great apps out there that you can use. 

Before we get too much into the details, I wanted to review what a tag is and why you might want to use them. 

So, what is a tag? Basically it is a keyword that you assign to a photo that allows you to find it again.

Let's use an example of donuts. Say you like going for donuts each week or month, or you just really like taking photos of donuts. If you tag your donut photos with the same keyword, over time you will have a great collection of photos to use. You could gather these photos and use them in a layout, create a photo book, mini book, print a bunch out and hang them on your wall…you get the idea.

Here's a screenshot of the tag "donuts" in my Collect App.

Not sure if this makes me want to make a layout or go on a donut run, but it is fun nonetheless!

For an awesome example of a Project Life® layout of a theme, check out this amazing page about coffee from Elise Blaha Cripe. 

For additional ideas on topics to use for tags, I would highly recommend any class by Stacy Julian. I've taken her Library of Memories/Photo Freedom classes and they are so great. She is the queen of "connection based pages" as she calls them and really does have some great systems for gathering your stories. The class, Inspired Scrapbooking at Big Picture Classes has lots of great ideas for topics you may want to use for tags.

Another resource highlighting stories/themes/topics is the eBook Project Dig Deep at Big Picture Classes, where we took a theme/topic inspired by our chronological scrapbook/Project Life and then created new pages about that theme. My topics were personality and traditions. Both were fabulous topics for me, and I adore these pages, but since I had not been using tags, gathering the photos was a pain in the you know where. That's when I really understood the power of using tags, and although I do use them more than I used to, I still don't use them as much as I should. Seriously, they are so easy to add. It only takes a few more taps and then all that curating power is literally at your fingertips.

Okay, so are you ready to get started? Here is a step by step of how I use them in the app Collect.

The first thing you need to do is add a tag to your photo card in Collect.

Start by tapping the edit icon to bring up the edit screen. Here is where you add your title, notes, etc. You can also tap Tags and the tags screen comes up. Here you can add a tag by typing it in the box. You can also search with this screen or just move the screen up or down to find your tag. I honestly don't have too many tags or I would get overwhelmed.

You can see below, all you do is tap to select your tag, and you can select more than one for a photo. On the bottom right you can see the tag is now added to the photo card, and when you do a search from your main calendar view, this will now be included in the search.

The second step isn't actually required, but it's a nice feature so you can get a view of what photos you have tagged. This is helpful if you are wanting to do a collage with a certain number of photos. If you don't have enough, you can go back through the photos and see if there are more that you can tag, which is what I did for my collage. I knew I had started a pretty good collection, but had been a bit lazy about adding tags. (I honestly consider it a pretty big accomplishment if I even get photos added, so adding tags for me is like adding the lime to my Diet Coke…it's just so good and easy to do but I never want to actually slice up the lime. Just too much work so it seems. But seriously so good if I will do it!)

To search tags, from your main calendar view, tap the bottom right icon. It's three little dots. When you tap that, the search tags and show dates comes up. Tag "Search tags" and the next screen is the tag screen, where you can search or scroll to find your tags. Simply tap on the tag you want and then it will bring up all the photos you have tagged.

Here is my 2014 album. You can see there are 20 photos. Below that you can see my 2013 album, which has 66 photos. Plenty for me to use for the mega collage. I just repeated the export process for both albums. (I'll go more into why I do different albums for each year in another post.)

Now you are ready to begin exporting your photos to use in your collage. (You can also use them for a scrapbook or Project Life®/pocket page layout, mini book, photo book or other photo project.)

From your main calendar view, this time tap on the bottom left icon, which looks like a little rectangle with an up arrow on it. Tap on that icon and the Export Photos option opens up. Tap on Export Photos, then for photos only, select Export Style and then the Photos Only.

You can change the dates by selecting those, scrolling back to January or whenever you started your album.

Next, tap the back arrow so you are on the main Export page. Now you are ready to select the tag to export.

Tap on the Tags button and the Tags screen will come up. Select the tags you want to export and then select back to the main export page.

Now you are ready to export! At the very bottom is the Export button. Tap Export, and either Camera Roll or Dropbox for where you want to save your photos to. I selected Camera Roll. Photos will be exported to your camera roll. (note if you have a lot it may take a few minutes)

And there you have it! Photos from a tag that you have now curated over time to really show the story you want to tell with photos. (You can always add words, and I highly suggest that you do, but photos curated over time really tell a story as well.)

Challenge for you: create some tags and see if you can tag at least 9 photos for our challenge next week. I will walk you through how to create a collage next week, so you will need at least 9 if you want to do one of the 9 photo collages. If you want to add more, try tagging 36, and if you want to do the super mega one, you will need 81. (you can always add several of the same photo, especially when they are small it's not too big of a deal.) 

Then export the photos so they are ready to use. If you are playing along using other software or another app, export and save your photos so they are ready to be made into a collage next week.

So let's get tagging and curating those stories we want to tell. We can do it!

Just Like Magic | Video Tutorial on Printing 3x4 photo cards for Project Life® from Collect Photo App and Persnickety Prints

Hello cute happy stack of photo cards! So happy to have been better about printing photos this past year.

Have been wanting to share this for quite a while. If you've been following my Project Life® in 2013, you will know that I've used photo cards printed from an iPhone app called Collect Photo App for the majority of my layouts.

First, a little history. I started printing these cards for Project Life® by saving each photo card (which includes the date and the journaling) to my camera roll, then cropping to 3x4 in Photoshop Elements, and then printing at home. It worked great at first because I was keeping up each week. As life got busier, I continued to use Collect to add photos and journaling, but cropping and printing out a month or more at a time felt very daunting.

So I tried uploading and printing from Pernickety Prints. I've used them before and really love their quality and customer service. Plus, they already print the 3x4 photos specifically to fit the Becky Higgins Project Life® page protectors. (I use Design F)

It was a trial and error, mainly due to complex things like photo ratio and print bleed. Thankfully, Chari at Persnickety Prints understands all of that and I was able to contact Stuart at Collect and both of them worked some magic.

Now, with the upgraded Pro version of Collect, you can easily export the photo cards, upload to Pernickety Prints, order them and then enjoy putting your layouts together when you they arrive. I usually do a month or more at a time to get a discounted rate on the 3x4 cards, plus that's usually when I finally get around to doing it!

**PLEASE NOTE: Be sure to select the Project Life 3x4 size if you are using Becky Higgins pocket pages. These are just slightly smaller than 3x4 and Persnickety will trim to 2.88x4 inches versus the full 3x4. 

Here's a sample of the cards I ordered in October. This stack was June - Sept 2013. I'm still working on getting them finished up but most all of these are in pocket pages and in my albums. I'll try to share the finished versions eventually.

Here's a sample of how I use these in my Project Life®.

In this video I show you through how to export from Collect and upload to Persnickety Prints. I use their LifePics app on my phone to upload, and then when I log into their site, those photos are there waiting for me. I love it. The first part of the video shows exporting from Collect and the second part shows uploading to Persnickety Prints.

And there it is! Hope that helps! I'm thinking about sharing another video on how to put two of the card s on a 6x4 (landscape canvas), and then you could use that to either print at home or send to your favorite photo developer. I use either an app called PicFrame or Photoshop Elements. Here's a link to a tutorial from Ali Edwards to get you started.


The steps to export: (in Collect)

1. Go to your calendar view. Tap on the bottom left rectangular box with the arrow on it.
2. Tap Export Photos.
3. Pick your dates. (leave it as it if you want to print the month you are in)
4. Tap Export Style.
5. Choose your photo size. (I choose 3x4 for my Project Life® pages)
6. Be sure add print bleed for best results.
7. Tap on the Back arrow at the top left.
8. Tap the bottom grey bar titled Export to Camera Roll
9. Photo cards will be found on your camera roll.

Steps to upload and print:

1. Download Life Pics app and connect with your Persnickety Prints account (skip this step and just upload from your computer if you choose after transferring your photos to your computer.)
2. Open Life Pics
3. Find the photos you want to upload on your camera roll (I make a separate folder to make this easier sometimes)
4. Tap the photo to select them.
5. Tap Upload.
6. Log into Persnickety Prints, find your photos under the date you uploaded.
7. Select what you want to order and select "Project Life 3x4**" size. (scroll down past the first 3x4 option)
8. Order and then enjoy them when you get them! Persnickety Prints has great customer service and will help you with any problems.

**Be sure to select the Project Life 3x4 size if you are using Becky Higgins pocket pages. These are just slightly smaller than 3x4 and Persnickety will trim to 2.88x4 inches versus the full 3x4. 

For more information on Project Life® by Becky Higgins, click here.

For more information on Persnickety Prints click here for info on their site about their mobile app and here for information on printing for your Project Life® For the link to the iPhone Life Pics app, click here.

note: I did receive some print credits while figuring out the printing process, but I'm sharing this tutorial because I wanted to share something that has helped me tremendously with my memory keeping this year. 

2013 Year in Review using Collect Photo App

Oh the year in review. I always mean to create a fantastic year in review and somehow I never get around to it. Until this year.

Since I've already collected the photos and stories, this was as simple as creating a video in the Collect Photo App, saving it to my camera roll and sharing! Just like magic.

Here's my 2013 Year in Review! Enjoy!

2013 Year in Review using Collect Photo App from Annette Haring on Vimeo.



also trying out different ways of sharing these. and yes, i still need to finish up the captions for November. (I took up Jamaica's idea of Do Nothing November and loved it). Amazing I got some photos done! So happy with all I was able to Collect this year!

January 2014 | New Beginnings and an Introduction to Collect Photo App

Hello 2014!

As a new year begins, many of us choose new projects to work on through the year. My main photo project this year is to continue Project Life ® and continue using the Collect Photo App to collect the photos and stories for my album.

But first, a little back-story.

I began 2013 looking for a way to do better at keeping up with Project Life ®. I knew I wanted to primarily use iPhone photos and stumbled upon Collect thanks to this article from Photojojo. Now, I've tried 365 projects before and they have always been an epic fail. For some reason, this just works for me.

I hope this helps if you are thinking of starting a new photo project and want an easy way to keep up with it on your iPhone, or if you are using Project Life® and would like a way to keep up with iPhone photos better. I'll be back to share how to print these in my next video.

The basics: I simply add a photo to the calendar, add my caption and then print it out to use in my album.

There are lots of other fun features you can use, but that is the main idea.

The cool thing is that I kept up the best I have ever done at both this and Project Life ®. To check out a few sample layouts of how I used the printed cards, click here.



Collect Photo App Introduction from Annette Haring on Vimeo.

Note: if you click on the link to the video on Vimeo it will have the HD version is a bit clearer.

Thanks for watching! Also hoping to be a little more regular here on the blog. In the meantime, you can find me on Instagram.