Memories Made Simple, With Ashley!
Hello all! I am Ashley Collinsworth and I started Memories Made Simple, LLC out of a passion to help others take control over their photo overwhelm. While we are getting through the craziness of the end of school year, I hope if your families are in the same boat, you are finding time to rest some amongst the business. The end of the school year can feel hectic.
This spring I reflected on business accomplishments from the last year and did my annual business planning for the upcoming year. I am grateful to have gained certifications in digital photo organization, completed one year of Professional Organizers Collective, and completed so far, my largest VHS conversion project. This allowed a family to be able to watch older precious memories, some of which had recordings of lost loves ones, together which they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to without digitizing them. I enjoyed the consultations with clients on creating memory books, whether capturing each year’s photos and videos into a photobook or their kids’ artwork and creating a simple classic art photobook. I look forward to what this year brings!
Speaking of family yearbooks, I finished our family yearbook this January from the previous year. I started creating these yearbooks back when my son was born where each year after I run my photo hub library maintenance, I go through all mine and my husband’s cameral rolls from that year and select favorites. I copy those over to a new project folder and pull them into an album design program where it simplifies the process to pull photos into spreads. I start with the prior January and go through each month. I also have added a brief summary at the beginning month to highlight what we did, milestones, etc. I upload the spreads to a printing service, create a cover, place the year on spine and on front, the click order! We, especially the kiddos, love it when the book arrives and they can enjoy flipping through the pages. I love getting those photos printed out and tangible to enjoy and share.
Something new I started last year was compiling all our family videos from our camera rolls into a family reel. I use YouTube to upload the video that is unlisted so its private to only those who have access to the code to view. I use a free QR generator. I save the QR code image and include it directly in the family yearbook. So also, at any time we can hover our devices over the code from the book and watch the home videos right there from our phones or mirror it to the TV verses back in the day our home videos we had to find our VHS adapter and play in the VCR. The kids really get a kick out of that and it brings back some wonderful memories. It’s so simple and swift! One year I took so much video footage from our hiking trip in Colorado, I made its own separate QR code/video reel to place in the book to review and this year, I also had a separate video code for my daughter’s dance recital so we can specifically review that when we want to. These videos are also saved as digital files saved to our photo library that is backed up to a cloud and is safe, and easily accessible later.
If you, or a friend you know are interested in organizing your photos through curating a family year book or a custom album, and either need consult on where to start or interested in having someone create one, feel free to reach out to me for more information.
A little more about Memories Made Simple; after I completed training on organizing digital photos and videos, I conquered my own photo mess. Have you ever wondered where do I have all my photos stored? I finally tackled going through mine and my husband’s old laptops, discs, flash drives, old phones, and current camera rolls then compiled them into one external hard drive and went to work. The most fun is finding duplicates and purging those along with blurry images, screen shots etc. The end result is a sorted chronological photo hub of all your memories in one easily accessible and safe place. Going through this process gave me so much joy and peace of mind. I am grateful to be able to offer my knowledge and skills to help others with their photos as well! In addition, I can convert and preserve old home videos on VHS, VHS-C, MiniDV tapes, etc. into digital files that can be played on today’s formats. I offer scanning services as well for small prints to large up to scrapbook pages.
If you have any questions or would like to know more about organizing and preserving your memories or how I can help, contact me at ashley@memoriesmadesimpledsm.com. You can find out more by visiting www.memoriesmadesimpledsm.com or on IG @ memories.made.simple_dsm
