Delaney Paige

My Easy Instagram Hashtag Trick

I love Instagram. It's probably my favourite social media channel. I love posting photos. I love looking at photos. I love the community aspect. I love it all!

Hashtags are great for a few reasons.

• If you want to embrace the community aspect, you can link to other users with a common hashtag (the #getmessyartjournal is a perfect example). I have found some of my favourite accounts by browsing through the photos for a specific hashtag.
• If you are interested in building a following (which is not one of my top priorities), it's a good way to increase the chances of your photo reaching  a wider audience
• Using your "own" hashtag is also a good way to link all of your photos of a certain thing. However, this isn't a perfect art... all it takes is another pet owner to get a Gracie, and your #adventuresofgracie hashtag gets diluted with someone else's pet! 

My hashtag trick works because most of my photos can be lumped into one the following categories:

Books
    

Gracie
    

Creative Projects
    

Selfies
    Nature
    

From Where I Stand
    

And now, the trick...

Because I tend to use same hashtags, I have created a document in my "Notes" where I have copied all of my frequent hashtags by photo genre - this list is constantly evolving as I add and remove hashtags.

 

When I want to post a photo, I open up the note, copy the relevant hashtags onto my clipboard, open up Instagram, write my caption and then paste the pre-prepared hashtags.  

#easyaspie

What about you? Do you add hashtags on a whim? Or not at all? Is there an easier trick? I'd love to hear your secrets!

Pattern: Knitted Ottoman / Pouf / Floor Cushion

Because I couldn't find a pattern I liked, I had to start from scratch, making this project a real labour of love. To save you the labour part, I'm happy to share the pattern in case you feel inclined to make a similar project. 

Materials

• 3 skeins of thick yarn (I used the Hoooked RibbonXL)
• Size 12.5 circular knitting needles
• darning needle
• 3 IKEA duvets
• jersey fabric (I used a stretchy old maxi dress!)

Ready for the steps? It's seriously so easy!

Knitting the cover 

• Cast on 55 stitches.
• Knit a row. Turn.
• Repeat. (For beginners, this is called Garter Stitch).
• Continue until you have 2 meters left in the third skein.
• Cast off. 
• Form a cylinder by joining the cast on and cast off edges. Leave a 0.5 m tail.

Preparing the stuffing

• Lay the three duvets out on the floor. They should  be stacked one on top of the other.
• Fold lengthwise until you get the width you want to fit in your knitted cylinder. This might take a couple of tries.
• Roll into a cylinder relatively tightly, like you are rolling up a sleeping bag. 
• Stuff this into your jersey/stretch fabric. I used an old maxi dress so it was already cylindrical, otherwise you may have to sew it into a tube first.
• Cinch the ends - you can either tie a knot with the excess fabric or sew it shut with a needle and thread.

Finishing

• Stuff the fabric-enclosed duvet roll into your knit tube.
• Using your darning needle, sew through/catch every other stitch around one of the open ends of the knit tube. Once you have made a full circle, gently pull until the opening cinches shut. Make a knot to shut the cirle and weave in the end.
• Using the remaining 0.5 meters of the yarn, repeat the step above for the other (open) end of the knit cover. 

Tada!! You have yourself an ottoman / pouf / floor cushion, at half the cost of buying one! Plus, you can boast that it's homemade. If you give this project a try, let me know how it turns out - I'd love to see how it turns out! 

Project Life: Preparing 4" x 3" Photos in PSE

While I love using Project Life for memory keeping, I dread the photo printing and editing process. I can't justify the cost of a home printer (40c/print vs 10c/print)  so I get all of my photos printed outside of the house. This means that as much as I'd love to design my spreads as I go, instead I have to plan them out in meticulous detail. 

The soul-crushing part of this process, for me, is re-sizing and laying out the 4" x 3" photos. I tend to scrap in batches, often completing 5 or 6 spreads in one go, so that's a lot of photos to resize at a time.  I'm not overly familiar with the features of Photo Shop Elements and none of the tutorials I found online were saving me any time.

However, in the search for a solution, I've uncovered a few tricks that make the photo editing process so easy I'd almost call it painless! It involves two PSE features: Contact Sheet II and Process Mutliple Photos. 

1. Open all of the photos that you plan to use in the 4" x 3" pockets. 

2. Apply any actions or edits you require. The next steps assume that your photos are all set to the correct photo printing ratio (3:2). If they aren't, you'll need to crop to this ratio now.  Ensure that you rotate all of your photos to the same orientation.

3. Click on "File > Process Multiple Files" and then brace yourself - this may just be life changing!

4. Select the source for your photos. In this example, it would be "Opened files".  Create a temporary folder for the resized photos to go and select this folder in the "Destination" field. 

4. Select "Resize Images" and set the dimentions to 4" x 3". For printing photos, set the resolution to 300 DPI. Leave the "Constrain Proportions" box ticked. Click "OK". 

At this stage, all of the photos will re-size to 4" x 3" and close.

5. Click on "File > Contact Sheet II" and then brace yourself again - this could also be life changing!

6. Select the source for your photos. In this example, it would be the temporary folder you created in Step 4.

In the "Document" box, set the dimentions to 4" x 6" and set the resolution to 300 pixels/inch. 

 7. In the "Thumbnails" box, select 2 columns and 1 row. Leave the "Use Auto Spacing" box ticked. Click "OK".

Depending on how many photos you have, this may take a few minutes, but don't panic! This is when the magic happens! Within a few minutes, you'll have a whole bunch of new files open - each with two of your 4" x 3" photos on a single 4" x 6" canvas.

8. Now we go back to our first friend, "Process Multiple Files" to finish things off. Again, when selecting the source for your photos, choose "Opened files".  Now you need to pick a destination - I usually save the photos right onto the USB I'll be taking to the store to print the photos. 

9. In the "File Type" box, select "JPEG Max Quality" and click "OK". Each one of these files will now save to the selected destination folder and close.

10. Head off to the printers with your sanity intact!

I hope this is helpful for your Project Life photo editing, or at least introduces you to a PSE feature you weren't familiar with before! If anything is unclear, I'll do my best to respond in the comments below.

Happy scrapping!