Project Life: Weeks 2-4

I finally found my Project Life groove and in doing so have come to LOVE this project.

I've been keeping the layouts really simple in the interest of catching up, doing little more than varying the page protectors depending on the orientation/number of pictures and ephemera I have for the week. I've also kept the journaling pretty basic. In doing so, I shocked myself and was able to get three weeks done in one week (and two weeks have extra inserts)!

Week 2
Because my pictures didn't fit in chronological order, I used yellow circle stickers to label each photo with the date. On the left side, I included some ephemera: in the second row, a thank-you card I received from the person whose neighborhood is pictured in that day's photo and an invitation for the event that is captured in the photo in the last row.

During Week 2, I had written two blog posts that were really meaningful to me, so I did a little resizing and slipped them into a 6x12 page protector. I used a printout of my blog button to indicate the source of the journaling.

I also included a divided 6x12 page protector that holds three 4x6 photos. In it, I included a picture of some supplies I bought at Michaels that week (I just really liked the picture), an email I had written for work, one of Hubby's Facebook statuses, and an overview of the weather.

The right side holds a horizontal 12x6 at the top, so I included the front cover of a program for an event I attended that week, as well as some extra journaling that goes with the three vertical 4x6 photos at the bottom.

Week 3

In the reverse 12x6 at the top of Week 3, I used a journaling card to accompany my Instagram photo of Mimi, and instead of journaling a "week in review," I made a color copy of my calendar, cut it up, and pasted it (in a pleasing-to-me way) to capture the week's events at a glance. I used SMASH tape on top of the page protector to label two of my bottom photos that made little sense without explanation.

On the right side, I again used an invite for an event I attended and wrote additional journaling in the white space. I was super happy with my decision to split the 4x6 photo in the middle row across the seam, and I snuck two pictures into one sleeve at the bottom. I cannot express how much I LOVE the flexibility of this system.

Week 4

This week started out with a huge festival, for which I had TONS of pictures, so I decided to showcase only this one event on the left side. I skipped the journaling and instead used letter stickers to put the name of the event on top of the page protector.

This week had an insert of the event's program.

I let the back of the program show on the reverse side of the insert.

And then I had fun with Instagram! This page protector holds nine 4x4 photos (I made a collage of 12 Instagram photos - from this week and future weeks - in Photoshop and printed it on 12x16 paper at Sam's Club). In the middle row, I used precut 4x4 paper from a Creating Keepsakes kit I had in my stash to add journaling and to "decorate."

I think one great benefit of this project will be putting fewer photos in my Library of Memories storage binders. There are definitely pictures I want to duplicate and use on layouts in my LOM albums, but I think the vast majority will wind up in my Project Life album and never get reprinted for LOM triage.

As with any new project, there's a learning curve to this. After completing layouts for these weeks, I realize that I really need to put some sort of simple filing system in place for any ephemera I might use in my Project Life album. I want to get a bit more organized with the supplies I'm frequently pulling from my stash for this project. And finally, if I'm going to continue blogging this project (which I hope you all will indulge me in doing) I need to learn patience in taking photos of my finished pages. I get SO excited when I finish a page that I just HAVE to take a picture of it then and there. Often, this is when the light is coming through the windows in my scrapping area directly onto my work space, causing that obnoxious glare, for which I apologize. It would probably also be a good idea to take a few close-ups of journaling and the like.

It feels so good to be documenting our memories more consistently (doing so has even gotten me putting together some digital scrapbook pages again!). I'm not sure this is the type of album that our friends will necessarily want to spend time looking at when they come over, but I know that we will enjoy it for years - and hopefully generations - to come.

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