Photo Carousel Order!

I just realized why I keep getting lost as I try to flip through my photo carousel. The layouts are in backwards order. Open the carousel to any two face-to-face layouts. Turn the page to look at the one you think will be next. Instead of turning the page that is on the right, I have my carousel set up so you turn the page on the left.

Well! That won't work.

Back to the Carousel!

I've not been able to actually finish a layout, but what I've been doing is selecting paper for the photos that I have and cutting the paper to size for the base/background. This is where I use my opposites on the color wheel a lot, to make the photos pop when I can. Sometimes, the photo just does not pop and there isn't much that I can do to save it.

I'm tired of looking at a half finished photo carousel and I'm not going to be able to finish it any time soon, with my stuff getting packed up for the move. But I thought that I'd at least have the majority of the paper cut and ready to use when I finally get time to go back to it.

This technique of getting a little bit done when you have a few minutes here and there is an old successful one. I don't try to finish even one layout. I simply try to finish the next step. If all I can do is cut a single piece of paper, it is still progress. I've been able to cut a lot of sheets of paper.

Vision Again or Vision Still

I've been waiting for new glasses to arrive for a while now. My prescription is complex, taking two pages to write out the whole thing. I have eyestrain almost all the time and I'm just not that interested in working on digital layouts. I've gone to paper that I can see and am working on pages for the photo carousel. It seems to be a fall back project for me. And right now, it feels like Fall is back.

How Long Has It Been?

I haven't scrapped in a while. Not digital, not paper. I've not felt like it. The last layout I did was a digital layout that I printed out at 8" x 8" to put on the calendar for June and I did that on the last day of May.

I've had a paper layout on my worktable for weeks now. It's planned, supplies have been pulled and I have not gotten around to putting it together. Because it is for the photo carousel, it isn't even a large layout, or a complex one. It won't take me long to put it together.

Success breeds more success. Once I get started, I'll be motivated to keep going. I just can't seem to get started. I'm working on it, though.

It's Heavy!

I have put all the page protectors onto my photo carousel. I am still waiting to print out 8 more photos. The photos are in the page protectors, in order. There will be at least 212 layouts on this thing. I have completed 80% of the layouts and they are in the protectors, in order, mixed in with the photos.

The photo carousel is heavy. And I'm not talking about it's heavy like a bag with some paper and embellies in it, I mean it is 'I don't want to carry it around' heavy. It won't be going with me to a crop, should I decide to do a paper crop, instead of a digital one. It is just too big and heavy to drag around with me.

There is a risk that as I fill the protectors with layouts, I won't have enough space on the carousel for all of the layouts that I planned. The more bulky items I put on the edge of the page close to the center spine of the carousel, the less chance there is that all the layouts will fit.

I'm glad that I decided to pre-plan the carousel and put all of the protectors on before I had the layouts finished. The last few protectors were tricky because I didn't have room for my fingers to apply pressure to snap the protectors into place. If I had tried to put them onto a carousel with most of the protectors full of completed layouts, I might not have gotten them on or I might have damaged some of my completed layouts.

I have also realized that because of the fullness of the carousel, combined with how it must be displayed on a tabletop, extensive journaling is NOT a good thing. The viewer's head will be at an awkward angle and the pages won't spread out to offer a flat surface. I am reminded of horror stories from my youth about slides from family vacations being foisted on unsuspecting dinner guests. The ability to flip through quickly, without being required to spend time trying to read descriptions is a mercy I offer my dinner guests/victims.

Over Motivation?

I've got projects rolling around in my head that need doing. It all started last night when I put eyelets into inexpensive towels so we could clip them to our golf bags. Huge, useful eyelets, not 1/4 inch ones... I have the cutest anvil in the world, so it went well. When they say, "...place the setter on something solid, like concrete," they aren't kidding.

The project for today is going to be cleaning up a bit in my studio and putting some more pages together for my photo carousel. I got stuck on Thanksgiving of 2006 and I have some ideas at last. It may also be a day to go shopping for more carousel page protectors. Wednesday is coupon day at the store where I go to get them. I need two more packages and then I can say the carousel is full. Seven Gypsies has changed the stamp protectors slightly and I've been working on this carousel for so long that I've now got both types of page protector on it. It's not a huge difference and won't be visible to the average person looking at the carousel on display.

Fits and Starts

A victim of their own success? I dunno. But the 5.5" x 7" stamp protectors are getting difficult to come by. Everyone wants packages of them for the photo carousel and none of my local scrapping stores have any packages of them in stock. Hello? It's like going to a fabric store and not being able to find any needles, scissors or thread.

I had a 40% off coupon for the local scrapbooking store and there were no stamp protector pages in stock. Sigh.

Carousel Progress

Thank goodness for sketches! I'd been doing a few rather lousy layouts for the carousel and hadn't felt inspired to create many more. Then I looked back through earlier layouts and I remembered that using sketches and embellishments helps avoid lousy layouts. I want to go back and perk up those lousy layouts.

Yesterday I was able to complete 11 layouts! That's not to be sneezed at. The sketches really made a difference. I also put photos on some of the layouts that I'd created earlier. I'm still attempting to use up my stash and not buy any more paper scrapping items. I can't tell that I've put much of a dent in the paper pile, nor the drawers, boxes and albums full of embellishments. The layouts for the carousel are small.

I also find myself counting layouts frequently. I have got 36 protectors in the first section and I'm not going to move any around. Today, I should be able to finish off the first 72 layouts for the carousel and I will be 1/3 complete. Tomorrow, with a little luck, I'll get to a sale and pick up a few more page protectors.

Final Numbers

I have finally finished enough layouts on the 7 Gypsies Photo Carousel to come up with some numbers.

I am putting 35 page protectors on each of the three sections, for a total of 105 two-sided pages. That will be 210 layouts. My carousel will be full and balanced. A carousel with fewer pages, as in perhaps 30 or 25 per section would also be full and not skimpy. I'm on the side of almost, but not quite overstuffed. Since the page protectors come in sets of ten, I might squeeze in a few more, so I don't have extras to store.

I printed out photos that chronicle the two and a half years Bud and I have been together. I included pictures of our family and friends. I still need at least 8 more to fill the carousel and I have even printed out pictures from yesterday, when we were up in West Virginia, hiking around. I'm not worried. By the time I finish all the layouts and am looking for more photos, there will be plenty for me to choose from. The deer didn't make the cut and are not on the carousel.

Still Not Full

I have just printed out 94 more photos for the carousel. Because of the size, 5.5" x 7", there will be one photo per layout. My hubby had to learn to take photos, so in our early time together, there aren't a lot of pictures of either of us. I've gotten 2006 and 2007 printed out. If I add in the photos from 2009, the photo carousel will be full. I had been watching for sales and using coupons to get the page protectors, a few at a time. I will need a lot more.

Wow! Almost three years worth of photos to fill this carousel. And in 2008 and 2009, I got out the camera for almost every sneeze and hiccup. Mowing the lawn? I've got pictures of it. Making dinner? Sleeping on the sofa? Yup. I can't imagine trying to fill this carousel if I weren't such a shutterbug.

On a slightly different note, I'm realizing that there is one group of photos that I don't know where they are. I thought they were all on my external hard drive, but since I've gone through the sets, I haven't found them. They are probably on my back-up drive. At least they should be. I don't always keep every single photo on my external drive. But now that I've finally gotten them all organized, I know that there are some missing.

Off to West Virginia today. I'm hoping to get photos of rocks, trees and flowers, along with a few of people.

Printing Photos

Because I couldn't solve my file organization issue, I started to work on something completely different.

I sorted through my photos from meeting Bud forward and got them into year files, subdivided into events, and everything is filed by date and name of event. I pulled out copies of files that I wanted in my photo carousel and I'm printing them.

At least, I'm trying to print them. The problem I ran into was that I didn't use sequential numbering in my cameras at the time and I've got different photos with the same number/name. I can't select all the pictures that I want and put them into one directory or I'll overwrite them. Great. I only have to do the last five months of 2007.

We were really busy for that period, with house guests for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I've got a lot of photos to print.

Carousel Progress

It's slow. This thing is so incredibly huge a project that I don't have photos enough to fill it. Not yet. I'd thought to do layouts from the year 2008 and fill it. I selected a sampling of photos from 2008 and got them printed out. I'm done through August of 2008. The spinner will be about 1/3 full when 2008 is done.

OK, time to go back through and get photos selected from 2007. I can do that. But I need to purchase more paper to print them on. Sigh. It never ends. 2007 won't fill the spinner, though. I'll need to include photos from 2006, as well as some from 2009. And then I'm going to stop. The spinner will be declared to be full at that point. I don't care if it is or isn't. I've got to draw the line somewhere.

I also discovered something else. If I put in a layout that's a special thing, like a piece of cardboard cut to the right size, the spinner does not open as I think it should. The cardboard doesn't have a hinge where it should for the pages to be as easily visible.

Finishing the Set

The second half of the set of 12 layouts for the 7 Gypsies Carousel. I had one cutting error that required me to use an additional 12x12 piece of paper, but I also was using 8.5 x 11 for the solids and I ended up with two sheets that I didn't need to cut into. The full sheets of paper go back into the stash, the scraps are going to be tossed out. Yay! The exceptions are the scraps of cream and dark brown that I use on namy layouts.

Gift Paper

A dear friend gave me a stack of 7 Gypsies Zanzibar paper. I added some of my stash of solid 8.5 x 11 paper and I'm making a set of a dozen layouts for my spinner. I'm also making a set of similar layouts to give to my friend (who is also working on a spinner) as a return gift.



The spinner pages are so small compared to a regular 12 x 12 layout, that I will only use about 1/3 of the stack to complete 24 layouts. that's a plus if you are conserving your resources, but since I'm trying to use up my stash, it's a little frustrating. All that work and I will barely put a part of a dent into my stash.

Christmas Cropping

I realized that I could move the carousel downstairs and spend time with DH as we watched Christmas movies. I spent a good chunk of Christmas day cropping photos and putting the date the photo was taken on the back. We don't have many photos from February (DH had a Horrible Cold) and June. I don't know what happened then. Nothing camera worthy, that's for sure.

I have printed out almost one year's worth of photos and the carousel isn't half full. I didn't print out all the photos from any event, just one or two of my favorites from each. Those 4x6 pockets are going to be horribly difficult for me to fill. Mostly because the photographer in me doesn't want to crop a photo down small enough to fit on a layout that size.

200+ Pages?!?!

The reason you are not seeing photos of completed carousels all over the place is quite simple. These are a BIG project. You aren't going to complete one in a short time. I have spent two pleasant evenings working on mine, and I have 0.5% of it complete. Perhaps. It is probably because I'm doing complete layouts for each page, with journaling and embellies. But I'm using my stash!

Come to think of it, I've seen only two photos of completed carousels; one was filled with a card collection and the other was a baby album made before the baby was born, with no photos. Hmmm..... But the baby album did give me a couple of ideas for pages that I'd like to include. I've got to track down chipboard, though.

Carousel Information

I went out on the web looking for information on the 7 Gypsies Photo Carousel and couldn't find much, other than ads. However, I have information now! Thanks to a teaching friend of mine and my own experimentation, I now know that:

The idea is to fill the carousel to the point that the center metal portion is not visible when you part the pages to look at a pair of them.

Filling the carousel will take anywhere from 75 to over 100 page protectors, depending on how thick your layouts are. That would be twice that number in finished pages or 150 to over 200 layouts. It can hold a lot of stuff!

A partly filled carousel is tippy and off balance. You can easily add pages, but moving them around isn't always easy. There are ridges to keep the pages from slipping on the clips as you spin. Squishing pages together to add a clump can be tricky.

The larger page protectors are designed to hold the 7 Gypsies clear stamp sheets, but they will work on the photo carousel and hold a 5.5" x 7" layout. That's portrait dimensions, not landscape.

Using layout ideas for 8.5 x 11 pages works well for these pages. The proportions aren't the same, so you can't simply scale down. Just use the general idea.

I have been printing my photos 2-up on a 5" x 7" piece of photo paper and they are a good size for a layout using the larger page protectors.

It is a very good and useful thing to have ribbons, tabs and other decorative pieces stick beyond the page protectors. It becomes very difficult to find anything if you don't. You get lost going around and around.

Since I'm using the clear stamp pages and not the 4 x 6 photo pages, most of the 7 Gypsies 97% finished items, like the calendar pages with tabs or their pre-cut chipboard, are too small. I need to cut my own out of manila folders or chipboard.

I need to allow at least 15" x 15" of flat area to display my finished carousel, and to look impressive it needs more like 20" x 20". It will occupy most of my square coffee table. It will not fit on the average bookshelf, not even with part of pages extending beyond the shelf. If I were using only the 4 x 6 pages, the finished carousel would be much smaller, needing only 12" x 12" of space at a minimum.