Project Life 2015 – Week 18

Subtitle: Don't forget the small stuff!

I’m keeping this post short and simple (unlike my pages). No time for a lot of writing, because I’m about to hit the road again. Well, actually, I’m about to hit the air. =) This time I'm flying to New York City!

Here is my two-page spread for Week 18 of my 2015 Project Life/pocket page album:

main kit used: Hello Cutie, a newsletter freebie* by Amy Wolff at The Lilypad

main source of word art: Ali Edwards

Here is a closer look at the left side of Week 18:

Here is a closer look at the right side of Week 18:

Oh, how I love the Project Life style of scrapbooking! If I were still doing an event-driven scrapbook, I probably wouldn't have used a single photo on these two pages. No big event worthy of scrapping took place this week, BUT lots of little things happened that I want to remember. 

Because of Project Life I'm recording the big stuff and the small stuff. You know what? I imagine it's the "little" things that my kids and grandkids will most enjoy seeing when they're older. Conversely, I'm fairly sure my kids will not be enamored with the zillions of photos I have of them opening presents on their birthdays and Christmas.

Thanks, Becky Higgins, for teaching me that everything about life matters, and for giving me a means of documenting it all.

Thanks, blog followers (all several of you), for stopping by! Enjoy your life and record it! ALL lives are worth recording – that includes of aspects of your life. 

(Some photos are blurred for privacy.)

*Many designers offer freebies suitable for Project Life albums via blogs, newsletters, fan pages on Facebook, and such. Google to find them and sign up to get the freebies.

Project Life 2014 – Week 24

Here is my two-page spread for Week 24 of my Project Life/pocket page album:

digital kit used – Sunshine in My Soul by One Little Bird at The Lilypad.

Here is a closer look at the left side of Week 24:

And here is a closer look at the right side of Week 24:

other credits: Ali Edwards (Ali Edwards also sells physical and digital products in her shop on her website), Gina Cabrera, Project Life digital page templates

Each week I use a different kit so that each week will stand apart from the others, instead of having all the weeks blend together. Ha! This week I used a kit by a different designer than what I used last week. Oddly, the two kits have almost the same colors. Oh, well.

question for Project Lifers: I’m torn between whether I like big kits (such as those from Just Jaimee and Traci Reed) or small ones (such as those from One Little Bird and Paislee Press) for my PL pages.

With the big kits I get more use out of them, but it takes a lot of time to look through all the stuff in each of the big kits to find what I want to use.  

But with the small kits I often don’t have enough stuff to complete a two-page weekly spread. That’s what happened with Week 24. And that’s why I pulled in so many words from Ali Edwards. Oh, I know I could keep the pages simple, and I know that’s how Project Life was designed to work, but . . .. I really like the stuff – lots of photos, lots of journaling, and added things. (“Stuff” and “things” are technical Project Life terms.)

Do any of you digital scrappers have a preference for smaller kits or larger kits? Paper scrappers sometimes buy just one or two physical kits for the whole year. That makes for a very cohesive-looking album, but to me it would be really boring to use the same materials for a whole year.

tip for digital Project Lifers: Sign up for the newsletters your favorite designers send out. They usually have coupons to get their latest stuff at a reduced price. I can't think of the last time I paid full price for digital materials.

That’s all for now, folks! Have a GREAT week!!

Project Life 2014 – Week 23

Here is my two-page spread for Week 23 of my Project Life/pocket page album:

digital kit used – Storyteller May 2014 by Just Jaimee (This is another huge kit.) 

Jaimee offers a different (and huge) Storyteller Collection kit each month. Each collection costs about $50 if you purchase the components (like the papers, the elements, the word art, etc.) separately. BUT if you're a subscriber to her newsletter, you can get the whole shebang for $6.99. Click on her name above to go to her website and subscribe to her newsletter.

But wait! There's more! Right now Jaimee has opened the Storyteller archives. You can get any past collection at the subscriber $6.99 price. Here is a link for the archives. (You might need to be a subscriber to access the archives.)

Here is a closer look at the left side of Week 23:

And here is a closer look at the right side of Week 23:

additional credits: Becky Higgins,  Ali Edwards (some of her stuff is on sale now at Designer Digitals), Gina Cabrera

And that’s it for this week. No, that’s it for that week ~way~ back earlier in the year. I wish real life went by as slowly as the construction of my Project Life album does.

In my last blog post I said I probably wouldn’t be back until after Thanksgiving. I was correct. First, I was busy getting ready for The Big Day, and then I was comatose after everything was over. There was a lot to do to get ready for hosting our whole family; ten of the 13 stayed in our house for most of eight days. Thanksgiving week itself was very full. After everyone left, I slept for most of the next week, although I have insomnia! Even my insomnia was exhausted; it was too tired to keep me awake for that week.

Right now I’ve got to address my Christmas cards, which arrived today from Persnickety Prints. I designed them using artwork from Rhonna Designs. I highly recommend both of these companies. Chari (owner of PP) and Rhonna (owner of RD) are two of the most creative and nicest ladies you'll ever meet. They are both totally committed to quality products. And they each have an app.

See you later! I hope you're enjoying this holiday season.

Project Life 2014 – Week 10

Yes, Week 10. Yes, I know I should be on Week Twenty-Something. But “should” is a relative word.

Here’s what my friend Petra Corcoran said on her blog the other day about being “behind”:

Yep, Week 15. I’m behind but not at all stressed about that! I just want to pause and say to anyone reading this blog post that “behind” does not really exist in Project Life. You are “up to” whatever your time, life and inspiration permit and that is TOTALLY OK.  If you are moving forward with your Project Life journey then that is exactly where you should be. Whether you are going back in time or forward like me, you are moving forward. Well done! 

I couldn’t agree more with what Petra said. Well, okay, I am stressed, but obviously not enough to “catch up” quickly. And so I assume the role of the tortoise in my Project Life journey this year. I WILL reach the finish line, and I’m having fun getting there!

Here is my two-page spread for Week 10 of my Project Life/pocket page album:

For Week 10 I used Seize, a digital kit by Allison Pennington at The Lilypad:

I also used the Seize Journal Cards (a separate purchase).

Next post: Details about the two sides of Week 10. Thanks for stopping by!

Project Life is the super-simple method of memory keeping created by Becky Higgins. Gather photos and journaling cards. Add journaling on the cards. Put the photos and cards into pockets on pocket pages. Put the completed pages into an album, and you’re finished (unless you enjoy overkill as I do, and like to add lots of embellishments!). Project Life can be done digitally or physically.

Project Life 2014 – Week Eight (and a whine about photos)

Here is my two-page spread for Week Eight of my Project Life/pocket page album:

For Week Eight I used Say Yes To, a digital kit by Paislee Press:

I really like all the yellows and blues in this kit.

 

Seriously, I’m on Week Eight and in real life it’s Week . . . well, I don’t even want to check which week it is. I’ll skip the excuses, except for one. I’m blaming some of my slowness on my photos.

I take photos like there’s no tomorrow. I'm from the olden days when we took photos on film. We had to pay for the film, for the developing, and for the printing. If you were lucky, you got some good shots, but you could also count on some totally wasted ones.

One thing we did not do back then was to take multiple photos of the same thing. It was just too expensive. The net result was that most of us had few photos.

Welcome to the 21st century! I can take all the photos I want, and so I do. 

Let me look on my iPhone. Let’s see, . . . in the last 48 hours I’ve taken photos of . . .

• the dog on our bed (now THAT is exciting! Right?),
• one of the cats on a table,
• a photo in the newspaper,
• a cat on the top of the back of my chair,
• the other cat on my keyboard,
• donuts (wasn’t National Donut Day on Friday the best??),
• a poster for a music festival (no, I didn’t attend),
• a sign about a 5K (no, I don’t run),
• some grass (where did that come from??),
• my fortune from the Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet (yes, I go there often), and
• a pizza.

Sometimes I took several photos of the same thing, of course.

During the same 48 hours I also took some screen shots of things I want to remember.

Also on my phone I have photos I received. Graham sent me some from the dog park. Conrad sent me some from when he lost his mind and climbed Half Dome in Yosemite. Difficulty: On a scale of 1-10, it rates an 11. If he hadn’t been born at home, I would wonder if he is really my child. Typically in my family we don’t exert ourselves to that degree.

Anyway, that was a summary of the photos I have from the last two days. Ridiculous.

After I spent much of last Saturday and Sunday transferring over a month of photos from my iPhone to my computer*, I took a vow to do things differently.

Here’s my new plan. On Sundays, every Sunday (at least when I'm in town), after we go to church and eat lunch, I will transfer that week’s photos before I do anything else. Well, I might fall asleep in my computer chair between lunch and the transferring. That's beyond my control.

I’m hoping this plan will help me speed up my scrapping by having my photos ready for me to use.

I'm curious how others are streamlining their scrapping process to complete their PL pages in a more timely fashion. Feel free to share your ideas with me via the comments section or email. 

Last year when I was on Becky Higgins' 2013 PL Creative Team, I stayed caught up. I wonder how I did that.

Next post: Details about the two sides of Week Eight. Thanks for stopping by!

* I know I could transfer my photos with Dropbox, but I'd have to do a lot of deleting first, because I don't have that much space in my Dropbox. Until the iPhone 5s, my photos went from my phone to my computer automatically via the cloud. That no longer happens with PCs. That really irritates me.

Project Life 2014 – Week Seven

Here is my two-page spread for Week Seven of my Project Life/pocket page album:

For Week Seven I used February 2014 Storyteller Collection, a digital kit by Just Jaimee:

Here’s a closer look at the left side:

Here’s a closer look at the right side:

I’m looking at these two pages, and I’m thinking I LOVE the Project Life/pocket page style of scrapbooking. If I seem slow on doing these pages, I was even slower when I did traditional (paper) and digital scrapbooking.

My hang-up was designing each page; in other words, figuring out what to place where. There are lots of design rules to follow to give a layout a good “flow.” A properly designed page goes with the way our eyes naturally take in information when looking at a page.

That’s intimidating to me. All I want to do is put photos (lots of them!) and words (lots of them, too!) on pages to record my memories. Then I want to add some stuff so I’ll feel creative. But I don’t want anyone to throw up when they look at my pages because the design is discombobulating.

With Project Life, I don’t have to design. I just put photos, words, and stuff in pockets. Actually, since I’m digital, I put it all on pocket spaces.

Besides the kit shown above, I used this stuff I used to make these pages:

• digital template - left page: Project Life Template A (get it FREE here)
• digital template - right page: Project Life TemplateW
• “week” stamp and “six” stamp: Ali Edwards
• date stamps: Digital Design Essentials (Gina Cabrera)
• photo-collage templates (some have been modified): Tracy Larsen
• QR code maker
• word art on top of animal photos: Rhonna Design app
• “On VALENTINE’S day”: freebie from Smitha Katti (See my PL FREEBIES board on Pinterest here for more freebies.)

Fonts used:

Thanks for visiting!

PS. As I'm trying to get caught up on my pages, I am shortening my blog posts by not showing every pocket. Is this working? Can you still see the photos okay and read the words? If not, let me know. 

PPS. Isn't discombobulating a great word?? I can't think of the last time I used it. It just popped out of my brain as I was typing. 

Project Life is the super-simple method of memory keeping created by Becky Higgins. Put photos and cards into pockets on pocket pages. Add journaling and/or embellishments on the cards. Put the completed pages in an album, and you’re finished (unless you enjoy overkill as I do!). Project Life can be done digitally or physically.

Project Life 2014 – Week Six | left side & right side

Here is the situation. I’m terribly behind on this year’s Project Life album. It’s causing me stress. I don’t like to be behind, and I don’t like to be stressed.

In the past, quite a few ladies have said they, too, were behind and didn’t know what to do. I always told them to start with the most current complete week (one where all seven days are over; not the literal current week, which is still in progress). Scrap it, and then, as you have time, go back and scrap the missed weeks.

That was really lousy advice, at least for the OCD. I can’t do the most recent week, then go back to earlier weeks, then come back to the present when another week is complete in real life, and so forth. That just is not orderly and tidy! I would lose my mind.

I’m all about tidy. Yesterday I had brunch with friends in one of their homes. We all got up to leave at the same time. The next thing I knew, I was going around the table, pushing in each chair that had not been pushed in by whomever sat on it. You can be sure I left the chair backs parallel to the table. I don’t even have to think about lining stuff up. It comes naturally.

By the way, I’m a really good house guest! I leave everything in its place, including stuff I didn’t use. =)

So, I can’t go back and forth from the past to the present on my scrapbook pages. Also, I am easily distracted and can’t stay on topic (such as scrapping), as evidenced by the chair-aligning story above. Obviously, I need to find some way to go faster on my pages.

For a while I’m not going to do detailed posts about each page each week. I think you’ll still be able to read the pages, though. I’ll still give credit to the designers for their materials I use, and I’ll still list the fonts used. But I won’t show and comment on each spot.

If you have questions, please leave them in the comments below or email me.

Here is the left side of my two-page spread for Week Six:

Here is the right side of my two-page spread for Week Six:

Here’s the stuff I used to make these pages:

• digital kit: Plus One by Amy Tangerine
• digital template: Project Life Template A (get it FREE here)
• “week” stamp and “six” stamp: Ali Edwards
• date stamps: Digital Design Essentials (Gina Cabrera)
• photo-collage templates (some have been modified): Tracy Larsen
• “Sweet” word art: Penny Springmann
• “Beautiful Dreamer” word art on top of small photo of Evie: Rhonna Design app

On to Week Seven!! Thanks for visiting my corner of the blog world.

Project Life 2014 – Week Six

Here is my two-page spread for Week Six of my Project Life/pocket page album:

For Week Six I used Plus One, a digital mini kit by Amy Tangerine:

I thought I had fun doing Week Five. That was nothing compared to the joy I experienced doing Week Six! It’s probably not normal to get so excited about a digital scrapbooking kit, is it?

Amy Tangerine is astonishingly creative. This mini kit consisted only of 3x4 and 4x6 cards – no embellishments or stamps or smears or anything else. 

Although I modified some of the cards a bit, I basically used them as Amy designed them. They look like I’ve added stamps and embellishments and such, but they are part of the cards.

You would think I would have made these pages quickly, since I only used cards and photos. Didn’t happen. I am looking for my Project Life scrapping groove. (And looking and looking.)

It is helping a bit to have made some global (as in, going across all my pages, not all across the world*) decisions. For example, last year I decided to standardize my week cards in 2014. This year every week card will . . .

• feature a landscape photo,
• fill a 4x6 horizontal space,
• be in the upper left corner of the left page of my weekly two-page spread,
• include the word “week” and the number of the week made with word art by Ali Edwards, and
• include stamps by Gina Cabrera for the dates of the week.  

Whereas last year I stewed over the pesky week card for hours each week, this year I can whip out those suckers in a matter of minutes. The rest of the two pages does not come together so quickly, but I'm working on that.

There are two other time savers I’m employing this year that I also did last year.

• (except for very rare exceptions) I always use Template A (page protector Design A). Therefore, I know I need stuff to cover eight horizontal 4x6 spaces and eight vertical 3x4 spaces.
• I always use one kit. I might add word art or a few embellishments, like arrows, but I don’t bring in papers or cards from other kits.

Next post: Details about and close-ups from the left side of Week Six.

Project Life is the super-simple method of memory keeping created by Becky Higgins. Put photos and cards into pockets on pocket pages. Add journaling and/or embellishments on the cards. Put the completed pages in an album, and you’re finished (unless you enjoy overkill as I do)! Project Life can be done digitally or physically.

Thanks for visiting!

* If you're a Project Life/pocket page scrapbooker, you do know this method of scrapbooking is happening all over the globe, right? Materials are being translated into other languages and even being designed for those who are not English speaking. Workshops are being held all over the world. Please pass the word to your friends and family who have not yet joined the bandwagon. Encourage those who are PLers in their efforts, even by leaving comments on or "liking" their pages. This is important stuff, people! And it's fun, too!

Project Life 2014 – Week Five | right side

Here is the right side of my two-page spread for Week Five:

digital kit: Unscripted by Mye De Leon; digital template: Project Life Template A (get it FREE here); photo-collage templates (some have been modified): Tracy Larsen

Top row – left spot:

font: KG Fall for You; "it all begins here": element included in the Unscripted kit; ampersand, arrow: wood chips included in the Unscripted kit

Top row – right spot:

fonts: Dollie Script Personal Use, KG Fall for You; “hello": wood chip included in the Unscripted kit

Middle row – first spot:

Middle row – second spot:

I was going to talk about Peter’s love for fake flamingos, but to save time I’ll just say he really loves them a lot. Very strange.

Middle row – third spot:

font: KG Fall for You

I don’t know which is stranger – Peter’s fascination with flamingos or Destin, which is on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, having snow and ice.

Middle row – fourth spot:

graphic and font on photo: from the Rhonna Designs app

This horn is really, really loud. As long as the neighbors don’t call the police because Peter is disturbing the neighborhood peace, the loudness of the noise is worth it. Those turkey vultures are nasty-looking, destructive birds with large poop.

Bottom row – left spot:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Blake and Elisabeth are so very blessed to have an excellent photographer available to photograph their children and them, too, of course. Her name is Sarah, and she’s the owner of Sarahdipity Photography in Jacksonville, Florida. She just happens to be Elisabeth's sister.

Bottom row – right spot:

(The color is not showing correctly. It's much brighter and prettier in real life.)

At first this photo covered the whole spot. But the kids only took up the very middle of the photo, leaving lots of negative space on both sides. So I cropped the photo, added a gold mat behind it, and put it on a turquoise 4x6 card with white, diagonal lines.

Problem: Considering all the busyness on the two pages of Week Five, the card that was showing next to the photo looked bare, even though it is covered with diagonal lines. Smears to the rescue!

The Unscripted kit includes smears. To me they look like painted designs. They’re png files, meaning they have a transparent background. So, if you place them on top of a paper or card, the paper or card shows through.

Here’s what this particular smear looks like:

Again, there is no white on the smear; the background is transparent. I think it really enhanced this space on my page. And it was fun to use.

Thanks for visiting! If you have questions or comments, leave them below.

Project Life 2014 – Week Five | left side

Here is the left side of my two-page spread for Week Five:

digital kit: Unscripted by Mye De Leon; digital template: Project Life Template A (get it FREE here); photo-collage templates (some have been modified): Tracy Larsen

Top row – left spot:

font: Arial; “week” stamp: Ali Edwards; “five” stamp: Ali Edwards; date stamps: Digital Design Essentials (Gina Cabrera)

Ellie Mae is seen above romping through Outback Dog Park, the largest off-leash dog park in the whole United States. The park is in Shelby Farms, one of the largest urban parks in the country. Covering 4,500 acres, it is more than five times bigger than New York City’s Central Park, which covers only 843 acres.

Shelby Farms includes biking and horse trails, bodies of water for fishing and boating, playgrounds, natural forests, wetlands, and all sorts of wildlife. It is even home to a bison herd.

So ends this commercial message. If you're ever in Memphis, Tennessee, do visit Shelby Farms.

Top row – right spot:

font: Dollie Script Personal Use (Who is Dollie, and how did I get her personal use script?)

Our “fortunes” were as follows:

• A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.
• Every burden is a blessing.

These are fortunes?

Middle row – first spot:

fonts: KG Fall for You, Arial; "Unscripted": element included in the Unscripted kit

Pause to admire this card. My grandson in his “neigh” boots is just adorable. That arrow thing on the right side is pretty cute, too. I love the kit I used for this week’s pages, because it has so much stuff, which enabled me to fill in all sorts of blank space.

My motto: Leave no space exposed, and eat sugar. No, those two things are not related, but I’m thinking about that cake in the refrigerator. (Sorry you're not here to eat it with me, Graham, especially since you bought the cake. Wish you were here, too, Conrad, for cake eating.)

Middle row – second spot:

fonts: KG Fall for You, fonts on photos from the Rhonna Designs app

Both of these photos were originally on Instagram, hence the text on them. Mister Bucky is really so wimpy that he stands back out of Wu Chow’s way while she looks out the window. Mind you, there are four windows that go almost from floor to ceiling on that wall.

Middle row – third spot:

Quote card: free from Mye De Leon, but I can’t find where I got it. The card had all white words. With the magic of Photoshop, I changed “shine” to match the gold used elsewhere on these pages.

Middle row – fourth spot:

font: KG Fall for You

Bottom row – left spot:

font: KG Fall for You; “SCHOOL DAYS”: source unknown (a freebie from way back when I used to try to download the internet)

I would hate to think how much money I spent on supplies when I was a paper scrapbooker. Shortly after I discovered digital scrapbooking, I learned many designers generously give away digital products. Seriously? While paper supplies cost a ton of money, I could get digital stuff for free? And get I did.

I downloaded so much I had to get more memory on my computer to store it all. I also devoted much time to organizing what I was acquiring. Of course, that left little time for scrapping.

Peter and my older sons tried an intervention. They explained I could not download the whole internet. Well, maybe not, but I could try! And so I downloaded. And got some external hard drives.

What stopped the downloading frenzy? The realization that it’s easier to scrap with kits, because they contain coordinated elements. These days I’m willing to pay to get good stuff, and I'm very discerning about the freebies I collect.

Bottom row – right spot:

The “AWESOME” label is a digital wood chip. Wood elements are quite popular now in physical scrapbooking. I usually add a slight drop shadow on digital items like this so they’ll look realistic.

Peter and I have seen about 20 plays and musicals this year. Great hobby!

Next post: Details about and close-ups from the right side of Week Five. Thanks for visiting!