Project Life: Week 2

here i am with Project Life: Week 2. i'm chugging along, bringing up the rear.

if you find yourself behind, like me, what i have found to be super helpful is Post It notes and a small journal. any time i hear my family say something funny, i can quickly jot it down with the date and stick it right on the page protector for that week and forget about it until i find time to work on it.

(sidenote: you can click on any of the photos in this post to view them larger)

as i sat down to put week 2 together, i kept thinking to myself........how boring. all of these everyday mundane things that we do getting rehashed and recorded in a play-by-play.

kinda like i used to do here on the blog, eh, telling about every new thing the girls did. somehow blogging about it didn't seem so boring. LOL.

but after i finished up the week, and saw it all pulled together, i realized how special these photos and stories will be years from now, whether they seem boring now, or not.

so, for those of you doing Project Life or those of you on the fence about doing Project Life, my general thoughts are: do it!

it'll be worth it. no need to wait until January 2013 to get started. start today.

here's a look at the left side of my two-page spread for week 2. i used a mix of cards from both the Cobalt Core Kit and the Clementine Core Kit.

here's an idea: if you have one Core Kit or the other, find someone who has a different Core Kit from you and ask them to swap cards. i did that with someone this last week---i'm excited at how well they work together!

this journaling card here was from the Clementine kit. it's meant to be folded up and tucked inside a 3x4 slot holding hidden journaling, but it works just as well completely open and slightly embellished. i love how the graphics on these cards aren't directional allowing the card to work with the patterned stripe along the left or the right. when open it's slightly smaller than 4x6, but that doesn't bother me.

this particular week was one where i didn't have my camera with me on a few occassions that had stories needing told. so to tell the story i dug back into some older photos. that's where i found the Target logo photo.

the dolls are ones that ashlyn saw while shopping and wanted on her birthday list. instead of trudging back to the store, i opted to do a google search for stock images of the dolls. usually these types of images are of poor quality, so i printed them small and used a Round N Round Fiskars Squeeze Punch to get them into a crisp circle shape. the clarity at this smaller size is perfect.

then i just adhered them right on top of the photo. the stickers used to embellish it a little further were sent to me for a Fiskars project by Bella Blvd.--part of their new Spring and Sophisticates collection. love.love.love. (i quickly pulled a few things out for Project Life. they are all perfect for it, by the way!)

this week i included a 6x12 American Crafts insert to tell a few stories. i typed up the journaling for the back side of the insert, adjusted the margins to fit (top, bottom and left set at 0.5" and right set at 3"), and sent it through the printer.

once that was done, i rounded the corners, flipped it over, and adhered a photo to the top and bottom. then used one of the 4x6 weekly date cards from the Clementine Core Kit to type my notes regarding the two photos.

for my typewritten notes i've been using a 1980s Brother electronic hand-me-down typewriter. it's a little finicky about holding these smaller cards in straight as you get to the bottom of the card. to solve that, i just use a temporary adhesive and adhere the card to a full sheet of printer paper, feed the printer paper through the typewriter, then type away. problem solved.

you can do the same thing with your computer printer. here's how:

1. first, type your journaling and adjust your margins to fit within the measurement of the card you're wanting to print on.
2. print onto a piece of printer paper.
3. using temporary adhesive, adhere the card over the journaling you just printed.
4. feed back into your printer and print again.
   

to add a little more color to the whole thing, i added several border stickers, also from Bella Blvd, along with a kraft heart cut with my Silhouette.

once you flip the insert, you see a longer story from the day we had to take spidergirl to the hospital twice in a 13 hour time span due to asthma attacks. no fun.

the bottom embellishment is simply one of her hospital bracelets with some stickers layered on top. (again, Bella Blvd products. thank you Bella!)

and here's the right spread. it's a mix of crappy phone photos, a free download from the Dolphin Tale movie official website, and regular photos.

journaling card here is from the Clementine Core Kit with a heart border sticker from an older Doodlebug sticker sheet....and my own handwriting for the first time in my album. i'm doing a mix of handwritten, typewritten and computer generated notes.

after downloading crappy phone photos, i put them through a small little edit process using Picnik (so sad they are closing!). they usually need a lot of brightening and color pop added. but every once in a while i get one that no matter what i do it just doesn't look right. that happened this week---the one of spidergirl holding her teddy bear. in that case, turning it to black & white helped a ton!

so, that's Week 2. done.

Confused about Project Life? Start here.

Project Life: Week 1

i, like a whole multitude of scrapbookers, have decided that this is the year i will tackle Project Life. not long ago, i made the decision to start out my project by purchasing a Core Kit---choosing the Cobalt design.

then, i was plum out of luck in finding any Design A pocket page protectors in stock. my sweet friend Sharyn Tormanen came to my rescue by sending me some of hers until they get restocked.

so, my kit arrived and then it sat and collected a little dust while i griped and whined to Sherry about how i felt paralyzed by perfection---afraid to start.

i just didn't have a good idea about how i was going to carry the project through from start to finish. i'm one of those people who likes to see a finished project in my head before i even start.

this isn't one of those projects.

while in this limbo of waiting to start i kept snapping pictures here and there. some with my canon dRebel XT and some with my crappy camera phone. i kept notes on my phone using the ColorNote app. i kept notes jotted on PostIt notes. i kept notes on my calendar. i kept notes in a Word document.

lots of places to keep notes, eh? well, yeah. i'm still figuring out which works best for me, but the truth is, i'm a busy girl on the go, so i don't always have my phone with me or Word at my fingertips.

so with notes and phone in hand and my Word document up on my screen i began to piece together the first three weeks of January by using this weekly tear-off calendar found in the $1 at Michael's about a year ago.

i printed photos, rounded the corners and stuck sticky notes on the page protectors and got busy!

when first starting to populate the divided page protectors with photos and journaling cards i was disappointed at how visually flat everything looked. it didn’t take long for me to realize i wasn’t going to be satisfied with just photos and words on lined journaling cards. i decided I still want all the layers and the look of dimension, just without all the bulk of my typical layouts.

for Week 1 in order to add layers and visual dimension without the bulk i decided to play with some new Little Yellow Bicycle product from the Saturdays collection.

i plan to combine my Cobalt Core Kit pieces with lots of other little supplies throughout the year. things like tear out ticket booklets, washi tape, clear shapes, stickers, and thinner chipboard pieces.


when i came to the placement of pictures i just simply tried to balance colors. my photos had lots of pops of red, blues and neutrals.

when reaching for products i grabbed some with color along with some neutrals. the neutral colors--beige, cream, white--help add visual interest, but not visual weight allowing the eyes to rest.


this closeup is a great example of what i mean by the neutrals. you can see how the neutral clear crown shape and the word sticker add interest to the photo without adding visual bulk.


i'll be using lots of tone-on-tone patterned papers throughout my album. finding lightweight papers will be the tricky part as the heavier weight/cardstock patterned papers will quickly add bulk.


bits and pieces from the sticker sheets, ticket books and clear cut shapes packs are the perfect products to pull from to spice up your lined journaling cards. You can see a little closer detail on how I’ve done that in this photo. at the top of the photo you see the “take it easy” chipboard piece.

TIP: for some of these thicker/bulkier pieces, insert the photo into the protector, and then attach your the chipboard on the outside of the protector. that way you are assured that the bulk isn’t going to cause a weak seam within that pocket.

okay, let’s move to the right side details. here’s a closer look at the right side all together.


just because an embellishment is layered and dimensional in the original packaging doesn’t mean you have to totally discount it for use in your Project Life album….or any other project you want to make less dimensional for that matter.

with just a few minor alterations, you can make a layered piece flat; such as i did with this “today” banner ribbon. it was originally sandwiched with two layers of foam, so i simply pulled apart the layers, removed the dimensional foam and reassembled it together with a thin glue dot. then, i even cut the banner short, removing the phrase as you see here. The phrase is still intact and ready to use on another project.


when deciding on how to layer products for this spread i made to sure look specifically for empty space within the photos. if you go back and scan through all the detail shots in this post you’ll see what I mean by that, but i think in the photo above it’s most obvious.

by embellishing the empty space you are simply covering space that has no meaning to the overall photo or memory you wish to retain.

and lastly, you might notice that i chose to type up my journaling cards. i'm just doing this using a hand-me-down typewriter. nothing fancy.

i haven't yet decided if i'll continue to type them week after week. most likely not because i love the character that hand-written journaling adds, but i had to do what my hands would allow. fine dexterity was causing a lot of pain the night i worked on it due to a rheumatoid arthritis flare and typing them was much easier for me.

and that's okay by me.

so whether you’re on the Project Life bandwagon or just doing your own thing, i hope you’ve found the details of my Project Life:Week 1 useful for how add a little ooomph to your Core Kit and how to stretch the use of your Little Yellow Bicycle products that might not otherwise seem suited for your taste!

Confused about Project Life? Start here.