Project Life - May

Popping in on this rainy Friday with my Project Life layouts from this month. I didn't get the individual pages photographed (whoops!) but here are the full spreads.

For whatever reason, this month was more about just getting the pages done than inspired, creative techniques. There are so many things I want to do and try, but when my photos and kits are in front of me, sometimes I totally forget about all that inspiration and just slap it all together. And that's fine with me. I've also been including more journaling than usual, which I think I'll appreciate later. Surprisingly, journaling in my PL album is my least favorite. Does anyone else feel that way? Maybe it just seems redundant after writing in my real journal and blogging. Well. At least it's all in one place.

Project Life Kits used: Sunshine Edition, Midnight Edition

My favorite spread this month. Nothing special, but I do love the yellow and black. Six of the photos were actually from the same day, because it's not rare for me to get to Sunday and realize I have virtually no photos from the week. Sometimes it's fun to go on a mad dash around the house/outside taking whatever photos I can. Sometimes.

Project Life Kits used: Sunshine Edition, Midnight Edition

Beach week! We went camping with my sister and brother-in-law at the Outer Banks and had such a good time. These, to me, are classic family vacation photos - not artsy or good quality at all, but the simple kind of pictures we'll love looking back at when we're old and grey. I wanted to keep the cards all neutral, just for simplicity's sake, but that flowered card was just begging to be next to the picture of me in my flower pants. Floral print wins again. Also, I think I love writing on the photos in Sharpie. Might not work for every layout, but it adds some interest to this one.

Project Life Kits used: Midnight Edition, Polka Dot Party Mini Kit

Second page of the trip. I couldn't decide between color and black and white photographs, so I did one spread of each. I love them both. Black and white is so nice for those beach photos that all start to look the same after a while. It's also my favorite trick for poor quality photos. I remember doing that with my friends in college, shrugging off the less than flattering pictures we took together and saying, "Eh, it'll look good in black and white." Works every time. 

I feel like there's so much potential for someone more talented than I to swoop in and do something amazing with this layout. Some colored stamping, some sticker action? I don't know, but I wasn't about to stress over it. It's simple, it tells the story, I don't hate it. Done. 

Project Life Kits used: Midnight Edition

Project Life Catch-Up

The most fun, relaxing method for creating my weekly Project Life spreads is to gather my photos at the end of every week and start creating. But, for various reasons, that hasn't been the case this month and I've had to be really intentional about setting aside time to catch up. At the end of the day (or week, if we're getting technical), as long as I have my favorite moments documented, I'm satisfied. Sometimes it's not about stretching yourself creatively or trying something fresh and new (although that's always fun when I have the time); it's really just about getting photos printed. 

This layout is from Easter week, and mostly captures when my family came up to visit. I loved that I was able to get their pictures in my scrapbook; it's rare that we get to take pictures together, but I know that these will be the most fun to look back on in ten or twenty years, especially when I'm showing my future kids what their aunts and uncle looked like.

I added a 5x7 insert with a picture from a photoshoot on one side and a big family portrait on the other. (Didn't photograph the other side - eep!) My favorite feature is the little blue and purple watercolor card on the left side. I painted it months ago, not sure I'd ever be able to use it, but it matched the photos perfectly and managed to tie everything together. I'm definitely going to be experimenting more with creating watercolor cards in the future.

This week's spread was super simple; I think I literally finished it in ten minutes. I try to take photos with a lot of white space, so that even if I don't have a lot of time to "gussy up" a layout, at least it'll look clean and pretty. The "spring becomes her" card was actually printed from an Anthropologie catalogue - it was too cute not to cut out and use! I used a Sharpie to journal on the "Remember This" journaling card, which I wasn't too tickled about. I love writing in Sharpies on photos, but on the card it was a little much. C'est la vie. Or however you spell that. 

This was my favorite spread this month. I love the consistency of the colors, which was a luck accident. Simple but fun, kind of like the actual week. And I can't get over our dorky picture together in the car - Trevor ruins all of our potentially good pictures and I kind of love it. Photographing his child will be a joy, I'm sure. (Why am I talking about kids all of a sudden? Make it stop.)

Aaaand some close ups just for funsies.

Welp. That's all, folks. 

Project Life - Week 13

Catching up again with my Project Life spreads - this one is from two weeks ago and has become one of my favorites from the whole album. (Questions on Project Life? Check here or feel free to shoot me an email.)

I have been loving using the Design F page protectors lately. It makes the page feel more quirky and collage-like and lets me use up some favorite 3x4 cards. I didn't take a huge variety of pictures this week; most of the ones I included are from a random little afternoon photoshoot downtown. A couple of the photos (like the one of our living room) are random leftover photos from weeks ago. I don't mind including old photos if they still tell our current story.

Left side

Right side

I love the unexpected mix of yellows and blues. The bright pops of coordinating colors made this spread especially easy (and fun!) to put together. I have a feeling I'm going to run out of those pretty flower cards real fast :)

Project Life: Weeks 4 and 5

So, though I've been good about keeping up with Project Life this year, I've been absolutely terrible about posting here each week. To make a long story short, week 2 is still not totally finished (I'm waiting on some goodies to add to it once they come in the mail) and since I didn't post week 2, I king of fell of the wagon. But I finally realized it was ridiculous to put it all off just because that one week isn't finished, so here are weeks 4 and 5 (look for weeks 2 and 3 in the next couple of weeks. Confused yet?)

 

Week Four

 

 

Left side:

 

Right side:

 

 

There was a trend in my photos this week of lots of white space along with the occasional pop of red. I stuck with black and white cards to let the photos pop. I love that these photos capture our personalities, our relationship, what a typical week looks like for us. I'm learning that it doesn't really matter to me if the picture is a little grainy or imperfect; if a beautiful moment is captured, I automatically love it. Products-wise, I am completely obsessed with the Project Life white cardstock cards. I recomment the 4x6 size, which can easily be cut to fill a 3x4 pocket. They're perfect for my weekly date cards as well as a random filler or background for a photo.

 

 

Week 5

 

Left side:

 

 

Right side:

 

This is my favorite spread so far in this album. It's bolder and busier than most of my layouts, but a perfect contrast to the snow pictures. It also included our annual anniversary photo booth photos (taken three months late). I didn't feel bad at all about chopping the photo strip in half, as the other two were even more awkward than the first, if you can believe it.

I'm also slowly incorporating more stamps in the layouts, especially now that I have the versatile "Today Is" stamp from Elise Blaha Cripe. I have a feeling that guy will make an appearance every week from here on out.

As always, these layouts were made with the Midnight Edition. Let me know if you have any other questions regarding products, my PL process, etc. Have a lovely Monday!



 

Project Life: Then and Now

I wanted to share a little backstory today on my Project Life hobby - when I started, why I love it, how my style has evolved since I first started.

I've been scrapbooking since high school, trying everything from traditional layouts to mini albums made out of paper bags. It was such a fun creative outlet, but for all the albums I started, I never really finished any. I think I got overwhelmed with having to start from scratch on a brand-new layout each time I wanted to document a picture. There simply wasn't enough structure to the whole process to keep me interested.

I had never heard of Project Life until I was scrolling through some blogs one day not longer after I had gotten married and happened to find a blogger who used PL. I was so in awe of the whole process that I went straight to Amazon and ordered some page protectors. Luckily for me, this was only a few months into my marriage, so I will be able to have an album for each year from the beginning.

When I first set to work on my album, I was still in that scrapbook-y mindset where I thought I had to throw on stickers and patterned papers and ribbon, etc. I liked the idea of the core kits but, honestly, none of the ones available at the time appealed to me.

I finished the 2012 album, but wasn't totally pleased with how it looked. My photography was straight up awful, edited with an Instagram filter if anything. The pages themselves looked cluttered and complicated. I was ready for a fresh start with my 2013 album.

Again, I started with no core kit and, though I made it a point to simplify my pages, it still wasn't all that fun to put together. I had too many random patterned papers and embellishments to choose from, and the whole process of putting pages together grew tiring.

Enter the Midnight Edition. I ordered this with some birthday money half-way through the year, not sure if I'd be crazy about it, but willing to give it a try. The package came and I fell in love. The kit is so simple and clean and modern, all the things my album was not.

This year I'm using the Midnight and Sunshine Editions, as well as a few mini kits, just to work in a little more color to my pages. I'm continuing to work on my photography skills (which are currently limited to my point-and-shoot) as well as a more consistent overall look. (The date cards in my 2013 album, for example, were totally random and different every week. Not my favorite.)

All that to say, it's okay if your pages don't always turn out perfectly. Your style will constantly evolve as you try new things and find new products you love. That, to me, is one of the most exciting parts of the process.

And, just for fun, the title pages from all three of my albums:

2012

2013

2014

Project Life Week 1

And week one is complete!

I still haven't quite finished my title page, but I'll be posting that soon, too, if I can ever figure out what to do with it.

(side note: Sorry about the picture quality, I'm still trying to figure all this lighting/editing nonsense out.)

Left Side

Right Side

*we had a homemade pretzel night, hence the pretzel. FYI.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with this week's layout. The little doily is actually the backside of a gold doily, which will be making an appearance on the title page. The rest is Midnight Edition with an Elise Blaha Cripe quote card thrown in (I have a feeling that, even though this'll be my third year of using them in my PL books, they're still going to make several appearances. They're just that cool.)

I'm currently obsessed with cropping photos in a circle shape (I'm sure there are hundreds of ways to do this, but the simplest for me is the A Beautiful Mess app.)

I'm not wild about the two pictures on the bottom right - they're both poor quality and, frankly, aren't that pretty. But it was really important to me to have pictures of Trevor's and my respective work places - I like to use week one to document an overview of what are lives are like right now (see "currently" card, also made with A Beautiful Mess.) And sometimes it's more important to me to have a memory captured than to have everything look pretty and perfect. I have a feeling that in ten years, that's what I'll appreciate most about this project anyway.

So there it is! Looking forward to moving on into week two and hopefully soon getting my Sunshine Edition in the mail - Christmas all over again!

work in progress

I plan on sharing a glimpse of my current "work in progress" every Wednesday here. This week has been slow and quiet and I've had lots of time to work on my first Project Life spread of 2013. More details to come on Friday. Happy Wednesday, everyone.

Project Life Goodness, 2013

Hey friends!

As I have hinted in a few previous posts, I am a scrapbooker, Project Life-r, paper crafter, whatever else. I've been wondering how I can incorporate that more on this space without it becoming a "Craft Blog" (not that I don't love those.)

And then, much to my suprise and delight, I was chosen to be on the 2014 Project Life Creative Team. In a nutshell, that means I'll be sharing my layouts on the website every month and hopefully inspiring people who are new to the whole scrapbooking shebang/looking for new ideas/whatever. Check out the page for more info. If you're into that sort of thing.

Anyway, I thought that was a perfect excuse to start sharing more PL pages right here. Hopefully I will be posting a new layout every week, so keep an eye out in 2014.

So to get the ball rolling here's a culmination of some of my favorite pages from my 2013 book.

A lot of the elements in the pages are a little random, as I was still working out my style. I finally bought a PL kit (Midnight Edition) half-way through the year, which was a total game changer and has made the process that much simpler.

Have you tried or thought about trying Project Life?