Project Life: 2013 Book One

Okay... here it is!  My book for the first half of 2013!!  I am really, truly in love with this book and love to look through it over and over.  There are some things I already know I want to do differently next year, and there are some typos I missed that kill me a little every time I see them (but now I know where they are and don't look at them any more... lol!)... but to say that I'm pleased with how my first book of my first year of Project Life turned out is a definite understatement!

I printed mine as a 12x12 book through Shutterfly...

I used a template by Emily Merritt from The Lilypad to make the cover.  I plan on using the exact same thing on book 2, just switching out the photos.  My one beef I have with my cover, is that I forgot to put book 1 on the spine!  It just says Project Life 2013.  I'm going to label book 2 on the spine, but it's going to bug me a little that they don't match completely.

Cover page...

I'll be honest, I didn't put much thought into this.  I had a Shutterfly coupon that was about to expire that night so I threw some things together (Cathy Z freebies) and made the cover page.  Haven't come up with a plan on the book 2 cover page yet.

 The inside pages...

Please ignore the glares and blown out areas.  That's not the printing, it's the lighting I had on my deck when I took these photos.  Everything printed beautifully!!  I really couldn't have been more pleased!  I use my phone a LOT for PL and I was a little leery about how those photos would print, but they printed great.  So did my phone screen shots and images I grabbed from the web.

I mentioned this summer how excited I was that my son's camp allowed free downloading of the photos they took everyday.  Those printed great as well...

 ... and I was so thrilled to be able to include him in our weekly pages even when he wasn't with us!

And lastly, my oh so exciting last page of the book...

I can't believe that I'll be starting to put together week 43 tomorrow!!  First I'm having a hard time accepting that the year is almost over already and second, I'm very surprised that I've managed to keep the momentum going on this!  In fact, there's so much momentum that next year's planning has begun (I just need to find a way to take a small break between the 2013 book and the 2014 one without getting too far behind).

Project Life: Weeks 41 and 42

Well... I knew I hadn't posted week 42 yet, but I was just sure I had posted week 41.  Then I came here today and realized that I had never posted it!  That shocked me, since I do think week 41 is one of my most favorite recent spreads.  It came together really well...

On the flip side of that... week 42 is one of my least favorite.  Taking a photo of Alex's swim ribbons seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think they overpower that page.  However, I was low on photos this week, so I left it in.

Oh... I took photos of my book for the first half of the year.  I'm that much closer to actually getting my post done!  :-)

Project Life: Week 40

 CAUGHT UP!!!

That is all :-)

Project Life: Week 39

Another week done...

Project Life: Week 38

I can't believe that I'm still pretty much caught up!  I think it's having my book for the first half of the year printed already that keeps me going.  I love looking at that thing and it just validates how much I love this project and want to see it through (and do it again next year!).  I do have low photo weeks which throw me off a little... but thank goodness for my iPhone!  I usually have something to include.

Project Life: Week 37

CAUGHT UP!!!  I'm so excited to be caught up again.

Here's week 37...

Project Life: Week 36

Dangerously close to being caught up again!  To tell the truth... this is probably one of my least favorite spreads that I've done recently.  I just wasn't feeling it and struggled with photos to use.  Oh well... it's done!

Project Life: Week 35

Okay... so this isn't about my book... yet.  I haven't taken photos of it to post, but I will.  In the meantime though, I did finish week 35!!

I didn't go into this one with this color scheme in mind, but I really like the way it turned out!

Project Life: Week 34

I've stalled out on week 35, so this is the last week I currently have completed.  Was short on photos again, so I had to get creative with filler.  I like how it turned out though!  Different from previous pages!  Oh... and I got in my Shutterfly book for the first half of the year!!  I'm totally in love with it!  I'll do a post on it next.

Project Life: Week 33

This was a rough week.  I didn't take many photos and I hadn't taken any notes about what we did that week... so I had to rely on lots of filler cards and my memory!  :-)

I think I remembered enough though...

Project Life: Week 32

Our last week at Bearski :-)

We finally had beautiful weather on our last week there!  I also have a TON more photos of our trip to the cherry orchard.  It was just amazing.  I may have to do a separate post of those.

Project Life: Week 31

 Another week at Bearski...

Project Life: Week 30

At the end of our first week at Bearski this summer, we hosted Jeff's family for his parents' 70th birthday celebration.  The weather didn't exactly cooperate but we still had a good time!  I even played laser tag!  It was a lot of fun!

Project Life: Week 29

Yikes!  Didn't realize it had been so long since I had last posted.  I've had quite the time adjusting to my new laptop and new version of photoshop this summer.  I also got a little behind with PL.  I'm currently working on week 34, so I'm not too behind anymore... but I really hate being behind.  Maybe now that school is back in session and our routine is beginning to emerge, I can get back on track!

Here's week 29....

I'm not sure of the exact supply list right now, but the template is by Amy Jaz Designs (fb freebie).  The photo templates within the spread are by Designs by Lili and pretty much everything else is by Emily Merritt.  

Project Life: Week 28

This week was probably my most challenging.  I just couldn't decide how to handle it.  First off... I had a bunch of photos, but I wasn't sure how to break them up.  I ended up separating out all of Alex's camp stuff and made a 2 page camp "insert".  My other challenge this week was that I was at the mercy of other people for a lot of my layout photos.  In addition to Alex being at camp, Clara was in Missouri for the week at my mom and dad's house.  Thankfully she took a bunch of photos and my dad took some as well.

Here are my week 28 pages...

 Supplies:
Template by Amy Jaz Designs
Title Card - hey daddio by Emily Merritt
This Rocks card - ahoy by Emily Merritt
journal card - hashtags #1 by Emily Merritt
4x6 photo collages by Designs by Lili

 Supplies:
Template by Amy Jaz Designs
4x6 photo collages by Designs by Lili
Cards - hey daddio by Emily Merritt
Journal card - this week cards by Emily Merritt

 Supplies:

Template by Amy Jaz Designs

4x6 photo collage by Designs by Lili

striped paper - free by Emily Merritt

journal card - hello lucky by Amy Jaz Designs

frame 3x4 - make today amazing by Emily Merritt

Supplies:

Template by Amy Jaz Designs

4x6 photo collages by Designs by Lili

wow card - make today amazing by Emily Merritt

I'm very lucky on the camp specific stuff... Kanakuk offered several things for download (I just recolored a bit on some).

Project Life: Week 27

Having trouble keeping up with the posting this summer!  Our schedule changes every single week and I've lost my routine that I had during the school year!

I have decided to split my PL 2013 book in half since I was going to go over the page limit if I tried to put it all in one book.  Apparently that has given me free rein to add extra pages :-)  Week 27 is a four page spread now, and so is week 28.  Week 29 will be normal, but I have a feeling week 30 will be another double!  If I'm not careful, I'm going to go over the page limit with just half a year! I haven't sent the first half to print yet, because I still have to put together my cover and title page.  I'm hoping to have time to work on those over the next few weeks.  I'm anxious to see the first half of the year in print, but it'll probably end up being done after school is back in session.

Here are my week 27 pages...

 Supplies:
Template - Amy Jaz Designs
Title card - Titled Templates by Amy Jaz Designs
3x4 photo templates by Designs by Lili
4x6 photo collages by Designs by Lili
cards - hey there by Emily Merritt
Swim like a fish - summer play by Emily Merritt

 Supplies:
Template - Amy Jaz Designs
4x6 photo collages - Designs by Lili
anchor card - ahoy by Emily Merritt
frame - hey there by Emily Merritt
journal card - hashtags #3 by Emily Merritt
Adventure - summer play by Emily Merritt

 Supplies:
Template - Amy Jaz Designs
3x4 photo collages - Designs by Lili
4x6 photo collages - Designs by Lili
Title Template - Titled Templates by Amy Jaz Designs
Paper on title card and other cards - free by Emily Merritt

Supplies:
Template - Amy Jaz Designs
4x6 photo collages - Designs by Lili
Cards - free by Emily Merritt

our 2012 bearski book...

... has arrived!!!  And I'm totally in love with it.  I had a lot of anxiety around this book.  With my 2011, I just used one of the book templates on Shutterfly.  This year I decided to go on my own, and use the blank book for digital scrapbooking that they offer.  From doing project life, I have fallen in love with pocket scrapping and decided to do this book that way.  I started posting pages here on the blog, but I got behind with posting and got on a roll with scrapping, so they're not all on here. 

I had two big stresses when completing this book:

1.  Would I lose things around the edges when printed.
2.  What in the world would I do for a cover.

 Well... for the cover, I used one of Emily Merritt's page templates...

As you can see... I did lose a tiny bit of stuff on the left and right edges, but not enough that it bothers me.  The cover portion of the 12x12 book is not quite 12x12, so keep that in mind when designing your cover.  Other than the tiny bit I lost... I couldn't be more pleased with the cover and how it printed!

I'm also totally thrilled with how the pages inside printed as well.  I used a variety of different templates from The Lilypad and not a single one got cut off when printed.  You can see though, from the samples below... that some templates printed closer to the edge than others, but again, none of them got cut off (and I made no adjustments to the templates)...

The quality of the photo printing is wonderful!  Above you can see some Instagram photos and below the smaller photos were all taken with my iphone.  They all printed really nicely.

Everything below was pretty much taken with my big camera....

... and I'm thrilled with how those came out as well.

This was my test run for my project life photo book I've been working on.  If I had problems with this book, I was considering going the route of printing individual pages and putting them in an album.  But I couldn't be happier with how things turned out!  I'm excited to print my project life book now!  My only beef is the page limit on Shutterfly.  I'm going to have to break my project life book into two parts now, since I'm going to be just over the 110 page limit.  Oh well... on the bright side, that means I'll get to see half my year of pages printed in the next few weeks!!