ten minute tuesday...

hello, I'm back for ten minute tuesdays...finally. It's been a hectic summer but now the kids are back in school things are slowly starting to return to normal. I'm enjoying peaceful days but oh boy - where'd the sun go?!

Anyhoo - creative talk now. Project Life more specifically.

Just before we took our summer holiday I ordered 154 photo's from Photobox. Lots of them were Instagram shots which I ordered on 4"x6", making them 4"x4". Honestly though - what a pain going through and clicking "shrink to fit" on every single one.  For some reason that was the only way I could get it to do it. Ugh.

So, here I am with 154 photo's, destined for my Project Life album. Ha - lots of gaps to fill in too as this is from March to July. Eeek. so where did I start....by buying a new printer! LOL.

I've quickly come to the conclusion that if I'm going to record our lives again, I need a printer.
We used to have a fabulous printer, but it died a death and we replaced it with an amazing printer - but it's an office one, and in all honesty, printing photo's on it really isn't the best. They are ok, but not what I want.

Enter a Canaon Selphy C900.

Wireless. Yeah right. Not in our house.

We work for ourselves, and have a lot of security set up on our network and clearly this little baby doesn't like hanging around for you to type in very long passwords...  Oh the joys. So, I've just plugged it in to my laptop. I'm not upset about it.

So far I love it! But. Warnings.....  

I usually print onto matte paper. The selphy packs are gloss and they are waterproof prints.Great if you have a coffee spill, not so great for my pens. My regular pens don't adhere to them, even my micron pens. Arrgh! I have several sharpies, one has worked. A regular old sharpie with an extra fine tip at one end.  If you don't write on photo's then it won't be an issue for you.

Second issue was Instagram photos. Although the Selphy comes with print size options, and a custom option. It didn't really do for Instagram. I want to be able to print them at various sizes, from 4" to 2".

Back to the drawing board then. Noooooooooo.....

I have had a couple of apps suggested to me to get over this. While they may work for other people I don't want to fiddling about on a tiny phone screen with an app. My eye sight isn't what it used to be you know... LOL. And, more importantly I just don't have the patience. But I do have PSE7. yay. Problem solved!

I do find PSE a bit of a faff most of the time, but this was quick and painless.  I back up all my Instagram and camera shots on our network as a matter of course, so they are all there ready for me to print.

HOW TO.....

• open your instagram image in PSE and select "image" "resize" . I then select the size in inches. As you can see from above image 4", 3.75", 3" and 2" sizes. 
• Do this for all the images you want to print - especially important for the smaller sizes so you have them all selected at once to fit on the sheet. 
• Select "File" "Print multiple images", with PSE7 a new window opens. 
• For multiple images on one sheet make sure you select "contact sheet" print type (dropdown 2)
• Set the number of columns - two should be enough for images 3" and smaller.

There we have it - all ready to print out my Instagram images ready to use.
Project Life album under way.
 I'm not putting myself under pressure to catch up with everything for it. I'll start with the big events and days out and gradually fill in inbetween, but from this week I can start recording things weekly (ish).

Where does the ten minutes come in? errm, well now I have the printing issue out of the way, I can spend ten minutes writing up the cards for the album in my "war on the photo mound".

Please do share with me what you have been up to in your bid to catch up and/or get creative ten minutes at a time.

Thanks for stopping by!
Vicki