Project Life 2014: Book One

Since I'm caught up on posting pages, I thought I would finally post about my book one for 2014.  I really, truly love having my actual pages in hand to look through.  I flip through my digital book online on Shutterfly all of the time, but nothing beats the actual physical book.  I was disappointed at first last year that I wouldn't be able to print just one book for the whole year (I was going over the page limit), but now I don't mind at all and have even considered printing quarterly because a whole year (and maybe even six months) just seems to long to wait!  :-)

So here it is...

I like my cover, but next year, I'm going to be more proactive about my cover.  Every time I've printed, the cover is the last thing I think about and I end up just throwing something together in order to get my book ordered before my coupon expires (like actually watching the clock... that's how close I am some times!).

The one thing I messed up on with the cover was that I did not make the photos of the kids even.  Never even thought about this, but the first thing Clara did when she saw the book was count how many photos she was in versus Alex (?!?!?).  What the girl needs to realize though is that if we counted all of the photos within the book, she would win by a mile.  Given that Alex is off a lot doing his own thing and he and his friends aren't that into taking photos.  :-/

I'm really pleased with my book this year...

Things did print closer to the edge than I would have liked, but nothing got cut off...

I reduced everything on my background by 98% before flattening my page, but I should have reduced it a little more.  It showed this way on the Shutterfly site, so I should have known to reduce it more, but I decided not to.  I'm leaving it at 98% for book two, just because I'm too lazy to correct the pages I had already uploaded and the books might as well be consistent.

Thanks to inspiration from the Family Bees blog, I decided to try a few "inserts"...

I should have taken a before photo, but the "inserts" were just full 12x12 pages that were blank on half the page.  After a week of having the book in hand, I finally worked up the nerve to trim off the blank portion.

It went really well, with no issues.  Jenny of Family Bees cut hers with scissors, I used my paper trimmer.  I was a little nervous, so I left a little room on my trimmed edge in case I needed to clean up any mistakes.  I didn't end up needing to clean anything up, so I have a wider trim on that edge, but that's ok.  I used that extra edging to attach my washi tape tab to (idea also from the Family Bees blog).  It gives people something to grab onto when turning that half page.

Just a random page from the book...

And my other "insert" from this book...

I'm really in love with these "inserts"!  I'm a little sad that I haven't done any yet in book two.  I'm not sure why I haven't.  I may have to correct that soon!  :-)