Dance Album: The Welcome Party

Have I mentioned how much I like love having a printer?  Well... I do!  Especially now that I finally figured out the problem I was having with the printer expanding my image when I printed and therefore cutting things off around the edges. I was still having that issue when I printed these, so they're not quite perfect... but oh well!

Have you read the article making the rounds about the potential "digital dark age" and encouraging people to print their photos?  Well... apparently I've taken that to heart, as I have created yet another project.  Clara is the worst offender in our family about not saving photos.  You know what I do with photos, Jeff takes them and sends them to me to use in project life, and Alex just doesn't take any :-/  Clara takes tons... shares them with her friends and then deletes.  She does back up to our personal cloud here at home occasionally, but she never prints. We tried starting her on her own physical project life album last year, but it didn't last long.

It's overwhelming trying to do something with all of her photos, so we decided to just start with a "yearbook" of sorts for the dance team that she's on.  We started with the welcome party in the fall...

We could have gone the photo book route, but 1) I want this to be a place for her to collect memorabilia as well, 3) I like the instant gratification of seeing the book in progress and 3) I wouldn't have gotten to use my printer (that may be the biggest reason we went with the 6x8 album).

I just know that I loved and still love looking through my photos from middle and high school... and I just didn't want Clara to miss out on that same experience.

Supplies (images are linked to the product)....

Project Life 2015: Week 8

Two posts in one day?  Too many great things releasing today... I couldn't help myself.

I was having a hard time with this week... I just couldn't find a kit in my stash that matched the photos.  I started piecing something together and then I got the new Memory Pockets Monthly kit from The Lilypad.  It was perfect!  So I ditched the original plan and started over with Charmed.  I love it!

Once Clara's pictures from her dance competition come in, there will be at least an insert, if not a two page spread to add to this week... but for now it's done!

Supplies used this week (links on pinterest)...

Project Life 2010: Week 12

This was a week that, once I really looked at it, made me glad that I'm going back and documenting these years.  I just can't believe how much has changed since March 2010... of course the kids look different, their activities and friends have changed... but that was to be expected.  I'm talking more about the things I didn't really give much thought to.

1)  In the upper lefthand corner is a movie, a movie rented from Blockbuster which doesn't exist in this area anymore.  Whether in Chicago or when we lived in Texas, Blockbuster was where we went to pick out our movie for family movie night.  2)   Right next to that photo, is one of the kids waiting at the bus stop... the #11 Lincoln Avenue bus bus stop.  My favorite bus in the world as it went everywhere I needed to go and it pretty much dropped me off right at the door of wherever I needed to go.  A few years ago they eliminated that bus route, it was a sad, sad day.  I still hope that one day they'll bring it back, even though I don't have the use for it like I once did.

3)  It's not a big photo, but I'm talking about the little square photo of Clara and a friend eating outside.  That was taken at our local neighborhood burger place... it had been around over 20 years I think.  Last fall they lost their lease and they're gone.  I never would have thought that was coming in 2010.  And finally 4) the journaling is on the other page, but the photo is the one of Alex reading on this page.  Alex loved to read, so our routine at that time was while Clara was in ballet, we would go across the street to Borders to buy the next book in the series he was reading at the time.  At that time, I couldn't imagine a world without big giant bookstores everywhere, yet here we are.

After reflecting on these things, I am more thankful than ever that I found project life and this style of documenting life.  I'm so glad those little random photos and stories have a home!

And for these pages, I used the fabulous, brand new Storyteller Bryce kit from Just Jaimee (link on pinterest)...

Project Life 2010 - Week 4

It's been a bit since I last posted, hasn't it?  Well... I have been scrapping, it's just that it's all been with upcoming kits, so I can't post them yet.  

The new products I used on these pages, released today so I'm free to share...

I had skipped this week when working on my 2010 book because I wasn't sure what direction to go with colors.  That is an issue I have quite often with project life... finding a kit that I think can work with, if not all, at least most of the photos from that week.  Anyway, I thought the new stacked pocket cards from Just Jaimee worked well, so I used those and a few, mostly black and white, elements from the main Quinn kit.  I think it turned out okay.

In other news, I was cleaning out moving things around in my office and found some old photo CDs!!  I found one with all of the photos from my first year with my first digital camera (2003!)... I can't wait to scrap them!  I'm just trying to figure out just how many projects I can reasonably handle at one time.  Like I think I've mentioned before, my 2010 photos drop dramatically once I got off track in June when the kids went to camp.  I went from a photo a day to 10 per month for a few months.  So, maybe once I get 2010 all laid out, I can start on 2003.

Supplies (links on pinterest)...

Project Life 2015: Week 7, Saturday

Another set of pages done for week seven.  I'm trying to decide whether this is it or not.  I have a bunch of cute candids Clara took while backstage.  I'm considering an insert, but I'm not sure I want to break up this spread.

There was no photography allowed during the performance (which is great since I prefer to sit back and enjoy the dance)... but I was allowed to come in and take photos during tech rehearsal.  I actually like these better than what I would have gotten during the show.  I really love the exposed brick of the back of the stage in these photos.  For the actual show, there was a fabric backdrop.

I used lots of random stuff for these pages (links on pinterest)...

Recipe Journal: Happy Paczki Day!

One of our favorite days of the year... Paczki Day!

My recipe journal is evolving... it's now more of a food journal, documenting the stories behind some of our favorite foods.  I'm okay with that... this was always supposed to be mainly about the stories with the theme being food.  I think it will be fun... I'm excited to include things like seasonal favorites like paczki and favorite restaurants along with recipes.  I will probably continue to use "recipe journal" as my tag for this project, since that's what I started with though.  I love doing project life, but I'm really liking having a project like this just for fun.

For this project, I used Storyteller Quinn...

Project Life 2015: Week 7

I was so excited to scrap this week!  I had used the Real Life in Pockets:  I Love You Harder kit to make Clara's valentines, so since I had planned on putting her card on this spread, I got to play with the whole kit!  It actually coordinated well with all of my photos.

Jeff was back in the UK last week, so to keep with my plan of including some of his travel pics on my pages, he has a whole little section at the bottom of the first page.  He takes some good pictures, doesn't he?

The second page takes us to Friday, with some journaling about Saturday.  Saturday was Clara's performance, so that will be a separate two page spread.  I got to take pictures during tech rehearsal, so I was able to get some really good shots.

Here are the supplies that I used (links are on pinterest)... 

Valentine time!

Wow... would you look at that!  A rare non-project life/pocket scrapping post!

Nothing like waiting until the last minute to put together valentines.  Clara and I were going to do another dance inspired card, but we just couldn't come up with any good ideas.  Time got away from us.  Then Just Jaimee and Mommyish released the best kit... I Love You Harder (link at the end of this post).  Lots of great sayings for teens.  We crammed in a quick photo shoot on Tuesday as the light was fading and hoped for the best.

Here was option #1, my first choice...

And here is what the girl came up with using elements from the kit...

She won out and here are the finished valentines...

The cute bags and tape came from The Dollar Tree.

We've been doing photo valentines for so long, I can't imagine not doing them anymore.  But I'm thinking the time is coming to an end.  Next year is 8th grade and the end of class Valentine's Day parties.  Sigh... I'm going to miss this!

Here's the kit (the pic is linked)....

Project Life 2015: Jeff's Trip

 Jeff travels for work... Jeff travels a LOT for work.  But this trip was unusual.  He's usually only gone during the week, but this time he was gone for nearly two weeks.  And this was his first trip to India.  We decided that we needed a special way to document this in our project life album.

Here's what we came up with...

It started out with the idea that he would send me one photo a day, I would enter it into the collect app and at the end of his trip, I would do a photo a day spread for the PL book.  But that's not exactly what happened.  Jeff got really into it, and somedays he sent me 10+ photos!!  He would send me a bunch of photos and then an email with one line captions for each one.  I got a little behind with entering them in the collect app, but it was easy to catch back up.  Once the trip was over, we had to decide what to do with all of the photos.  I picked at least one photo a day for the PL spread and sent the entire set off to print through Persnickety Prints.  I'm going to go out this weekend and look for a nice 6x8 album with page protectors like my December Daily album, so he can keep an album of his work travels on his desk at his office.  I thought about having them printed in a bound book as a Christmas gift, but it would be a strange time frame as we missed one work trip already this year and I would have to end it early in order to get it back in time for Christmas.  I'm thinking the album and first set of photos will be a Valentine's Day gift instead :-)  He's coming back today from his second overseas trip of the year, and he still kept up with at least one photo a day.  I think it will be an interesting album for him to look back at... like everything I've been doing with scrapbooking, I wish we would have started this earlier!

Project Life 2010: Album Cover

I love it when things just come together!  

You know that designing an album cover is one of my least favorite, last things to do before printing. Well... this week the most perfect template set fell in my lap and I knew I had to use it for my 2010 album cover!

Here it is...

Ignore the black border, it's just there so you can see where the cover ends and the blog background begins.  I am really, truly in love with this cover... it makes me so happy to look at it.  I know it's similar to the one Shutterfly misaligned, but I'm thinking the wider white border will help make it look not quite so obvious if it's not 100% centered.  The template is super easy to use and it's only $1 at The Digital Press.

Here's the template set (link on pinterest)...

Project Life 2015: Week 6

My first multipage week of the year!  I guess since I do two page spreads each week, they're all multipage... but this is my first one with more than two pages.

For some reason, I really had a lot of trouble sorting this week out.  That sometimes happens when I have a bunch of photos from several different events.... when it's just one event, that's easy to separate out.  But this week was a challenge... several different "events" with more than the average amount of photos, but not enough to separate out into their own section.  Plus, I've become rather addicted to having a big photo on a page (when I have the right photo), so that takes up a lot of space.  THEN, my final challenge was picking a kit.  Last month I used the same kit for the entire month and thought I might try to continue that this whole year (one kit a month), but the kit I had planned on using, just didn't fit these photos.  I tried to make it work, I really did, but I just couldn't do it.  So, I went with a different kit (that will probably be for just this week) and a style that unlike what I did last month.  But in the end, I like it!

Here's week 6....

This week had a LOT of journaling for me.  I'm not much one for writing on layouts, but when I looked back at these pages, there's a lot of writing.  I like it though.


Supplies (links on pinterest)...