Friday, January 30, 2015

Project Life 2010: Week 6

Like I mentioned yesterday... lots of bouncing around in my 2010 project!

Here's week 6...


I had a totally different photo editing style back then!  I had to make a decision to either re-edit the ones I wanted to use or try to duplicate the style on the photos I wanted to add.  I opted to leave the editing alone on those I had already edited and attempt to edit additional photos to match.  1)  Because it was less work :-) and 2) because that was my style then... I'm trying to stay as true to 2010 as I can and if that's the look I liked then, that's the look the photos shall have!

Created with the fabulous new Storyteller Quinn collection (link on pinterest)...


Thursday, January 29, 2015

Project Life 2010: Week 13, part one

Bouncing around a bit, as the right kits come up.

Here is part one of week 13, spring break in Missouri...


I couldn't believe how perfectly this kit went with these photos!  Anyway... now to figure out what to do with myself.  They're working on a water main and water is off on our block from 8-3... I'm going to need to leave the house as some point.

Here's the kit I used (link on pinterest)...

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

26 Things: The Confession

Things did not go as planned.

Speaking of plans... remember this?  I had it all figured out for 2014.  I even got the first four "things" done.  It was not meant to be.

Instead I have this...

And I am extremely pleased to finally have a completed project!  It is not the project I started, but I love the project I finished.

I have come to the conclusion that December Daily (how it is generally thought of in the scrapbooking world) just doesn't work for me.  I really, really want it to, but I just haven't figured out a way to do it that makes sense for me.

Here are my issues...

1.  I do Project Life.  The overlap between the two books was insane.  My 26 Things book was turning out to be just a PL mini book.

2.  What I really wanted to document with this were our Christmas traditions, which are basically the same every year (which is why they're called traditions).  I didn't feel like it would be a new book each year.  What I may attempt instead is a Christmas tradition book.  I thought about printing as a bound book... but I might do it in something like a Sn@p album again, so it can be added to as things change.

3.  Christmas is the worst time for me to take on another project.  During December besides all of the running around and holiday activities, I was also trying to stay current on PL, finish a 75 page gift album and make photo calendars.


I had other issues as well.  I really tried to finish up my project as I had planned.  I was still plugging away at layouts last week to try to finish it up just for the pure sake of finally finishing a DD album.  At that point, I didn't even care that it was just a duplicate of my PL album.  BUT... then the reality set in that I had nowhere near enough "things" to fulfill my 26 things requirement.  I was already stretching things and was still 8 or 9 things short.

I had my list of possible things that I had made... but to be honest, we didn't actually get around to doing a lot of them.  The kids weren't interested in riding the Santa Train this year, I didn't get photos taken of the decorations at church, we didn't end up going to Clara's school's Christmas concert (it ended up that the band didn't perform at all, she just had to be there with her class and I had to be somewhere with Alex that night)... the list goes on and on.  December just got away from us this year.


So... what did I do?  Well for some reason, I decided to do a photo-a-day in December to post to Instagram.  I'm not quite sure what prompted it, but I started it and saw it through.  I think as I saw my original project beginning to fall apart, it upped my motivation to keep with this one.  Last week when I found out that I was still short on pages, I wanted to quit... just give up and be done.  But then I remembered my daily photos from December.  They were all organized and labeled in my collect app, so I exported them, and sent them off to Persnickety to be printed.

It was not the project I had envisioned.  But it is done.  Going forward, I think this will be my December Daily each year, and they'll all go into this same binder.  Next year I would love to add more fun cards in between the photos, but I'm okay if that doesn't happen.

I still feel the *need* to come up with a hybrid project though... but what to do that would be fun, have a purpose and no real deadline.... hmmmmm...

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Project Life 2010: Week 5

Skipping around a little bit.  I don't have the right kit yet for week 4, so I moved ahead to week 5...



I know I keep saying this, but having all of the tedious stuff done already sure makes finishing up my pages fun!  And actually, the tedious stuff, isn't all that tedious.  The fun of looking through old photos makes things really enjoyable.  It's completely different from laying out my current pages.  There are lots of photos of specific events/activities and not as many random photos like I do now.  I thought doing two years at once would feel boring since it was a lot of the same, but so far it's not.  Scrapping the two years couldn't be more different.  I think you can see some of that from my pages.  I scrap 2010 much more simpler than I do 2015.  And it's crazy, but 2010 has much more journaling usually since I was taking the text from my old blog posts.  I tend to bullet point my journaling a bit more in the current book.  Anyway... almost a month in and things are still going well.  I hope I can keep the momentum going!

Here are my supplies for week 5 (links on pinterest)...


Monday, January 26, 2015

Project Life 2015: Week 4

Things look a little different here, don't they?  Well... you know when you go to make just one minor change and that one minor change ends up screwing up the whole layout and for some reason, you can't just "undo", so you have to redo everything whether you wanted to or not?  That was Saturday.  This probably isn't the final layout of the blog, but it is good enough after the chaos I created.

On Sunday, I took a break from the blog and did my week 4 layout...


My style has changed quite a bit this year.  I really like it.  It's more of a creative outlet for me this year versus just memory keeping.  But I do worry that I mess with things too much.  Do you ever worry that you put all of this effort into your pages and one day you'll look back at your albums and hate the style of them?  Am I going to wish that my pictures were just pictures without paint splatters on them?  Trying to sort that all out right now.  I don't think it will change how I do my albums, it's just making me think more about what else I should be doing with my photos to preserve them.

Oh... the other new thing on my blog this week is a link on the upper right side to my Facebook page I made for my scrapbooking projects.  Click it if you would like to follow my projects on fb.

This week's supplies (links on pinterest)...




Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Project Life 2010: Week 3

The fun stuff is starting!  I'm still plugging away on the tedious stuff (another 18 pages laid out, ready to go!), but I'm getting to play now as well.  As I mentioned before, my plan was to get my pages laid out on templates and wait for fun kits to come out to finish them out.  That was the plan, but you know how things don't always work out the way you think they will... well, this time I think they are! I'm currently working with three different digital designers.  I wasn't always a great creative team member for them since I always scrapped current.  For example, they would come out with a Valentine's Day kit that released February 1st.  They would want examples made up to promote this kit before the release date.  I never had Valentine's Day photos to work with until around mid-month, actual Valentine's Day... so I was always behind with assignments.  The designers I work with are great and very understanding, but I still felt bad.  Now things have changed!  As soon as a designer sends out links to a new kit they're releasing, I scan through my stash of laid out 2010 PL pages and pick the week I think will work best and start to play!  I'm having so much fun!  I know I could have always gone back to work with older photos, but I wanted a plan before I did.  With laying things out in advance, I know my page numbers.  I've done three weeks with just released or upcoming kits so far... weeks 3, 5 and 6.  Nothing to match week 4 yet, but since I know my page numbers, I could go ahead and upload my finished pages into my Shutterfly album, leaving room for the missing week.  Also with laying things out in advance, I know I'm not missing the little things by just scrapping the big events (since this is a project life album).  I'm so glad this is working out the way I had envisioned!

Here's week 3...



The kit for week 3 (on pinterest)...

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Project Life 2015: Week 3

So far this year, I have used the same collection to scrap every page of 2015.  It amazes me how different each page looks based on which colors I decided to pull from the set.  I really love how this week turned out.

Here's week three...

It was a really good week!  :-)

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



Friday, January 16, 2015

Project Life 2010: Weeks 1 and 2

 Here we go!

I got so excited about my 2010 book that I jumped in right away and started finishing out pages.  I've slowed down and started pacing myself now. I need to still plug away at the tedious stuff when I can and wait for the right kits to come up for the pages I have ready.

For week one, I had the perfect kit in mind immediately... I had been wanting to play with it, but hadn't had the right photos yet.
I had forgotten just how badly Clara needed braces :-}

I kept it simple with same kit for the facing page...

Sunday of week two...


The rest of week 2...


Going back through old photos and scrapping them is a strange thing.  I'm so glad I have my blog to use for the journaling.  I'm afraid my journaling of these photos now would be biased by experience.  I so loved the photo of our Friday girl on the week two page that I put a piece of word art on it that said "love this".  We miss her so much.  But then I read the corresponding blog post and it had to do with how bad she was doing with health issues at the time. When I saw the photo, I just saw good... but the reality I was trying to capture when I took it was bad.  I'm trying hard to not to let what I know now cloud how I document these moments.

Supplies (links on pinterest)...



Thursday, January 15, 2015

Project Life 2010: Title Page and Plan

Call me crazy... but I'm actually going through with this!  I'm honestly very excited about this project and so far, I think I've got it set up to have the best chance of success.

I was bummed that 2010 was the oldest year I could start with, because it didn't seem all that long ago.  I wanted to start with an earlier year, but all photos before 2010 are trapped on a dead external hard drive at the moment :-(  Anyway, back to 2010, I'm finding that it was actually FOREVER ago!! The kids have changed so much.  It's so much fun going through these photos again.

So, on to the title page...
Very bright and cheery!  With the kids being older now, I don't use as many bright, primary colored kits as I did when they were little.  It's going to be fun working with those kits again.  I used photos from only the first half of the year since I plan on printing two books.

Now to the plan...

First I started out by going through my blog.  I finally figured out who I was writing to when I was posting to my blog back then... future me!  I had no idea that I would one day be relying on these posts for project life journaling, but it's perfect!  Thankfully, I was making an attempt at project 365 that year, so I have a photo a day for about 5 months.  That made it really easy to break everything down by weeks.  I copied and pasted the text from my blog by week into one doc.  Here's what it looks like...

(yes... I have a thousand tabs open at any given time... this screen shot runs from fb on the left, to the recipe I plan to use for dinner on the right... lol).

It's all ready to copy and paste onto the project life layouts.  Making this doc was a fairly mindless task that I did while watching TV with the family.  I didn't over think anything, just copied and pasted.

Next, I used this doc to find the photos for each week.  Working one week at a time, I brought up the photos and placed them onto templates.  Again, I didn't over think this, I just looked at the photos for the week and placed them on the templates I thought work best.  Then I saved them as layered psd files.

I have the first three weeks of 2010 completely done, but about three months laid out...

That way when a fun kit comes out, I can grab the best coordinating layout and combine the two!  I'm not worried about working within any time frame or even working in any particular order.  Knowing that the hard parts are already done (journaling and choosing photos), I'm just left with the fun stuff!

I'm hoping I've set myself up for success with this project.  Early in the year I'm so fired up about project life and find myself with more time than things to work on.  I used that New Year's motivation to plow through as much of the tedious stuff as I could.  So far, so good!

Here are the supplies I used on my title page (links on pinterest)...




Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Project Life 2014: Book Two

 Subtitle - My love/hate relationship with my second book of 2014.

I was so excited yesterday when I heard the thud on my front porch (I didn't even mind that my mailman had heaved the package up the stairs and onto our porch from the sidewalk versus actually placing it by my door).  My bright orange box from Shutterfly had arrived!  My book two was here!!  My book with some of my most favorite weekly spreads that I had ever created, the pages where I was finally hitting my stride with project life.  I couldn't wait to tear into it.

But when I did, I found this...
It made me sad.

I had used the same template (and actually the same file, with different photos) for book one and it had printed perfectly centered.  This time Shutterfly printed it down and to the right.  I was annoyed and decided to sulk for just a bit before looking at the book.  I lamented to my online project life community and they told me that Shutterfly has great customer service and to show them the cover to see if they would reprint it.  Okay... I was feeling much better.  So, I decided to sit down and go through my book.

I opened it to page one, and saw this...
Notice it?  Jeff swears that I'm the only one this will bother, but in my haste to throw together a title page for book two, I typed the wrong week numbers.  Book two is weeks 27-52, not 26-52.  It's soooo minor, but it still bugs me that I made such a dumb mistake.  I sulked again.

Then I looked through and found at least two more "major" (in quotes because Jeff didn't even notice them) mistakes I made in my book.  More sulking.

Finally, I was able to pull it together and look, really look, through the whole thing.  Those things still bug me, but overall, this book makes me so happy!!   So many happy memories and so many pages I love from a design standpoint.  I'm letting go of the mistakes.  Yes, I could probably ask for a reprint because of the cover, but my typos and mistakes within the book would still be there.  I'm embracing my imperfect book.

Besides the off-centered cover, Shutterfly came through with great printing inside..

Nice, bright colors...



Everything printed really well... even SnapChat screen shots enlarged to 4x6...

I have three "inserts" in this book.  Here's the first one.  I decided to photograph the before and after, so you can see, that it starts just as a regular printed page in the book...

And the trimmed page...
I had another washi tape picked out for this one, but I dropped it and it rolled under the couch.  Mango refused to fetch it for me, I'm not sure what good she is. :-)

Insert #2, before...

And after...

And finally, insert #3 before...

And after...
This one may be my favorite because I got to use my gingerbread man washi tape for the tab!  It fit perfectly with the pictures from my daughter's cookie decorating party.

In the end, here is what I learned with this book...

1.  Don't procrastinate with the cover and title page.  I'm proactive with my book one title page, but not for book two.  I'm never proactive with my cover, ever.  Throwing things together at the last minute when I'm trying to get things ordered before my Shutterfly coupon expires leads to mistakes.  This year all of my books will have the same title page, just with the photos switched out.  I will work to get that done as soon as I start a new book, not at the last minute.

2.  Think more about my cover.  This one goes along with #1.  I didn't think about my cover in 2014 (or 2013 for that matter).  I was in a race with the clock and I liked the clean lines of the template I used, so I threw some photos on it and called it a day.  It worked great for book one, since it printed centered, book two didn't.  I have heard that this is not just a Shutterfly issue, that other photo book companies have problems with this as well.  So, since I know this, I won't push things by having a cover that needs to be perfectly centered to look right.  I lucked out with 2013, because I chose a template for my cover that extended to the edges.  The two covers might not be exactly lined up, but with the design of it, you can't tell.  This cover was a bad choice, as it isn't very forgiving.  I have already designed my 2015 cover.  I'm being proactive about it, I have designed it with lots of white space and an off-centered design.  I'm thinking this is a much more forgiving design that I won't run into centering issues with.

3.  PROOFREAD!!!  I'm horrible about this!  I hate to proofread.  I think it's mainly because I hate to read what I've written.  I'm not sure where that hang-up comes from, but I've had it as long as I can remember.  One of my mistakes in my book, wasn't even a typo.  I accidentally marked the same dates on my weekly calendar two weeks in a row.  I just need to make sure and take a good look at my pages before printing.

4.  Bigger is not better.  I nearly maxed out Shutterfly's page limit with this book.  I think the max is 111 pages and I was at 109.  I don't like the feel of the book with it being this big.  There's nothing wrong at all with the book itself, it's my issue.  It just feels too unwieldy, with being 12x12 and so thick and heavy.  It just solidified the idea with me that I want to print three books (at least) in 2015 instead of just two.

Anyway... those are my thoughts on book two of 2014.  Doing project life is a constant learning process and I truly love it!  Looking forward to taking what I've learned with this book and applying to 2015!