Project Life 2015: The plan and cover page

Happy New Year!!!

It's hard to believe that it's already 2015!  I'm still plugging away on finishing up 2014, but I thought I would start off 2015 with a post about my plans for this year's project life book.

First up is our cover page...

I'm being proactive and got this done early.

I'm not making any huge changes with my PL book this year.  I'm pretty happy with how things went and as the year was ending, I was really hitting a stride that I liked.  I want to continue with that.  At the beginning of 2014 I was trying to duplicate a style I really admired, but one that didn't come naturally to me.  I just couldn't do it.  Every spread became a battle between this style and my natural style.   My style is definitely different than when I started... but now it has "evolved" versus an abrupt change I tried to force.

One thing that I am changing is my template set.  I really liked using Traci Reed's stitched plastic grids last year, so this year I'm using her stitched grids sets (I bought this bundle and set 7)....

I did a trial run with them when I did our big trip album this summer.  Lots of options with lots of different/unusual sized photo spots.  Even though I'm doing a lot of things the same, I think some of these templates will give a distinctly different look to my 2015 book.  I like the stitching too.  There are two options, white and black.  I think I'll use the white stitching most of the time.

I am going to stick with my plan from last year of making as many pages as it takes to tell the story.  I did debate a bit on this.  My first year I did one two page spread for each week with just a couple of exceptions.  That was much truer to the original project life concept (now called project 52).  I really like that and itched just a bit to get back to that simpler idea.  But, in the end, I decided to keep with doing as many pages as necessary.  With the exception of a couple of specific albums, project life is the only scrapping that I do.  I got more photos out into the world and in a printed form this year than I had ever done!  I printed a bunch when the kids were little, but those are all still crammed in a box somewhere, they never made it to albums.

A change I'm considering is printing three times a year. In 2014 and 2013 I printed (will print) twice.  I split the year in half and printed Jan-June and July - December.  That worked great... until the book for the second half of 2014.  I really can't believe it, but I am dangerously close to the max number of pages allowed in a book!!  110 pages!!  Maybe this was an usual year and this won't ever happen again, but I'm going to plan for it just in case.  Jeff and I talked about it.  I thought about just splitting the year in thirds, but during our brainstorming session, we decided to follow the school year.  Book one - January through the last day of school, book two - summer break and book three - start of school through the end of the year.  Summer 2014 was about 45ish pages, so it will be a smaller album, but I think the split makes sense.

I'm going to try to keep taking a photo a month of the kids in the same spot.  I did it in 2014 and I'm really happy that I did.  I missed two months.  I'm not pleased about that, but I'm trying to let it go.  I really liked adding the photo to my weekly spread, but I decided that I wanted to see them all lined up in order.  So, I'm adding a spread to the back of my book...

This was a photo from a couple of months ago, so I managed to get one more photo taken before the end of the year (I missed August and December).  I thought about changing spots, but I'm going to keep it the same... it's easy and I think it'll be neat to keep adding photos to this collection.

The other changes aren't really changes... just small goals.  And pretty much the same goals I had a year ago... use my big camera more and be in more photos.  I want to try to take at least one family photo a month.  It doesn't have to be a posed formal shot... just one shot a month with all of us in it.  We'll see what happens with that one.  Hopefully I can get my wireless shutter release to work so it will be easier.

I think that's it!!  That was a whole lot of rambling for what isn't going to be a huge amount of change. :-)

Here's the link to my new pinterest board with my 2015 supplies... Project Life Supplies 2015 (digital).

This is the collection I used for my cover page, it's linked on the pinterest board.

Happy Project Life 2015!!  What are our plans??

EDITED TO ADD:  I forgot my biggest plan of all... I'm going to attempt to do a previous year at the same time!!  Not sure how this will go, but I'm going to give it a try.