ScrappinWAHM’s Journal

I’ll make my disclaimer one more time - these are my experiences, using a dial-up service, thus more tips may be more geared to those who could benefit from some online scrapbooking time-saving tips. Come on dial-up users - I know you’re out there!

Of course you are going to find the most accurate information from the LifeTimez Online (LTO) blog and tutorials - but these are my experiences, and some tricks I used to make my sessions with LTO go smoother while using my dial-up internet connection.

First - I have to say I did some initial work, editing the pictures, readying them for upload on my computer first. And if I had really thought ahead (espespecially with only having 10 days to work) I would have sorted through and chosen my pics before I even signed up for the LTO trial.  Choosing the pictures WAS the hardest and most time consuming part of creating my brag book.
Plan a little bit ahead to save time in the end - go to LTO and check out all of the design options.  You can even see all of the brag book themes and each page layout. Then you can have your pics all lined up before you even get to signing up! You might even go as far as doing some preliminary cropping in your photo editor -

I added the journaling to the photo above before uploading it to LifeTimez Online. I found that with the brag book, not every page allows for journaling within the online text editor - only those pages that have text boxes. So this was a way to still have the journaling on the page. (Caution: this may be a step you’ll want to wait to do until you have signed up and can actually see how your photo might fit on to the page.)

One more thing about pre-cropping your photos, it does cut down on the file size, but don’t cut it too close, as you’ll still be instructed to fit yur picture into the picture window for the page, and you may find some of your cropped photo is cropped some more.

I think there is still more to come - I’ve been inspired by this and want to add more helpful hints for the LifeTimez lovers out there.  Though I must say - I think some of these tips would be helpful for any online scrapbooking service.

It’s done!  And I’m very happy with it.  I finalized, and ordered my brag book through LifeTimez Online. I should have it in time to show it off by Easter.  Very excited!

I admit - I haven’t gotten anything published through TLC’s print services though I have heard they are exceptional.  I do love digital scrapbooking, but I’m more the type to burn my digital creations to a CD and share them that way.  I have the ability to either send the files to be printed through TLC, or another service - and of course with the software on my computer, I can, and do print some scrapbook pages at home.

The Premier LifeTimez Online subscription will allow for all of that as well, and if I were to subscribe I would definitely want to go that route.  Gives you a lot more options, and more control over what you want to do with the scrapbook pages you create. For instance, I would have loved to be able to download all of the brag book pages I created to upload into a slideshow to display here, or burned it to a CD to send to family and friends. (Can’t do that with the free trial, or Standard subscription).

I will say the hardest part of the whole experience was deciding on the 20 photos (out of hundreds) I wanted to use for the book.  Journaling too - because it’s so final and I wanted to make sure I got the wording right.

With my 10-day trial over, I was sent a message letting me know that my pictures, and account information would be held for 30 days - so if I decide I want to subscribe, my completed Brag book is still accessible, as well as the pics that I uploaded that are being stored.  If I want, I can go back into my existing brag book file, switch some stuff around, maybe reword and retitle it to create a brag book for the Grandparents! Hmmm…that’s an idea!

Next, I’ll post some tips I’ve been working on that I found helpful as I was using the service, and more of my experience using LifeTimez Online with dial-up.  Look for that sometime tomorrow, or Monday - we’ve got out of town guests tonite.

Remember, I’m on dial-up - my experience with online digital scrapbooking is not going to be the same as it will be for someone using a hi-speed internet connection.

My trial of LifeTimez Online has had it’s ups and downs.  Last Friday, I was SO close to creating my brag book - I had most of my photos cropped and sized, uploaded.  I chose my theme, set up the front and back covers - and then…”local power outage” on their end (SLC, Utah)!  I couldn’t put any pictures on any pages, got an error message every time.  The end of my 10-day trial came and went without my being able to complete my brag book.

But fear not - while I was a little discouraged, I knew the company would make good on it!  I issued a support ticket Monday morning, as did a lot of Consultants apparently.  Yesterday I received an email from TLC explaining what had happened, and notifying me that my free trial had been extended to March 1st! YES!  This actually gives me a couple extra days to add a couple of things I didn’t think I’d have the time to do before I finish my pages.

So another update is yet to come, but I’m still creating in LifeTimez Online - have not come across any problems yet using my dial-up connection - other than it takes a lot longer to upload the pics, but I’ve learned some tricks there too.  I’ll share some of those tricks with my next update.  Stay tuned!