Project Life 2015 | insert pages

Subtitle: The importance of professional photos

Here are the first insert pages I’ve done this year:

These photos are mostly of my beautiful granddaughter Evelyn, with a few of my equally handsome grandson Peter (Evie's brother). They were taken by their Aunt Sarah (who is a professional photographer) in honor of Evie turning one.

Actually, Evie turned one on the 5^th of January, but the photo shoot wasn't until the 19^th of February. Then I got the photos later than that. I'm still thinking about where I’ll insert these pages into my 2015 album.

But I do know where I’ll have them printed – Persnickety Prints. I would never consider having anyone else do it, because their work and customer service are above excellent. Their prices are reasonable, and they often have specials.

Since each side of this insert is 8.5 x 11 inches, I could print these pages on my printer, but mine doesn’t make archival waterproof prints, so everything (regardless of size) for my Project Life/pocket page albums goes to Persnickety Prints for printing. You should see this if you’re unsure about the importance of archival waterproof prints.

Now I'll get on my soapbox about taking professional-like photos of the family. Here is the summary, if you want to skip the next two or three paragraphs: At least once a year you simply MUST take photos of each family member, as well as photos of the whole family.

Well, duh, say those of you who are making Project Life/pocket page albums, like you need to be told to take photos. What I'm talking about here, though, are "professional" photos that are intentionally staged, where you get photos specifically focusing on the members of your family, rather than only having them here and there in photos taken for birthdays, family vacations, and things like that.

Professional photos can be very pricey, but they’re so worth it. At the very least, trade photo-taking services with a friend. There is plenty of info on the internet (see Pinterest) about how to do a professional-like photo shoot. You need to know about lighting, backgrounds, posing, and such. You don't need a professional camera; smart phones take amazing photos.

Finally, read this and you’ll probably want to get these special photos printed before they fall into the dreaded ~information black hole~. Very scary.

Here is a closer look at the front of the insert:

Here is a closer look at the back of the insert:

Did you notice the top left photo on this page? Yes, Evie is wearing her grandfather Peter's baby outfit, one of the few things his mom saved. Why, we don't know. It's just a cheap little cotton onesie. Peter had his photo taken in The Outfit when he was a baby. All five of our kids and our grandson 2nd Peter were photographed in it, too.

Idea: Save some of the clothes from your children's photo shoots, so others in the family can also be photographed in them.

Happy photo taking!

Project Life 2014 – An Insert!

Week Two of my 2014 Project Life album was about Peter and me being in Jacksonville, Florida, to meet Evie, our newest grandchild. Week Three was about my second week in Jacksonville and about me returning home.

Moving right along, I was ready to work on Week Four. (Yeah, I know in real life it’s probably Week 13 or 14.) While sorting photos, I found a bunch of photos of Graham that should have gone in Week Two or Three. No way was I redoing either of those weeks. Inserts to the rescue!

Here are the 6x12 inserts I made with stuff related to Graham:

Here is a closer look at the front of the insert:

font on the top: Attic; digital template for the front: Project Life Template A (cut in half vertically)

Front, top spot:

8-photo collage template: Designs by Lili; embellishments on photos: Rhonna Designs

Suffice it to say Graham did not starve while Peter and I were in Jacksonville. She stayed home with the dog and cats. Various friends stayed with her. They all love to cook and eat.

Front, second row:

square cards: February Collection by Traci Reed; embellishments on first and third cards: Rhonna Designs

Front, third row:

embellishment on top of photos: Rhonna Designs

I use Rhonna’s embellishments a lot when I take photos on my phone for Instagram. I like her embellishments so much that I bought many of the sets on her website. Now I can add them to my Project Life photos, too.

Front, fourth row:

font: Arial; word art: Ali Edwards; 4x6 card: February Collection by Traci Reed

Have I mentioned Graham is allergic to cats, particularly Mister Bucky? It's a good thing she's not allergic to Ellie Mae, because Ellie Mae is usually found glued to Graham's side.

Back of insert:

background paper: April Collection by Traci Reed

Graham is in charge of social media for the University of Memphis RUF group. RUF stands for Reformed University Fellowship; it’s our denomination’s college campus ministry.

A few weeks before this article appeared in the Memphis daily newspaper, Graham was interviewed over the phone for about an hour. The actual article was long. It was on two different pages.

In the olden days, pre-Project Life, I would have saved both of the pages. I kept a “memory” folder for each of our five kids for each year they lived at home. I have kept one for Peter and me for each year, too. I have a lot of memory folders.

Now I’m putting things like this article in my Project Life albums. Whereas I kept whole newspaper clippings in the memory folders, I don’t always need the whole thing.

For this article I went to our newspaper’s website, found the article, and used the Snipping Tool found in Microsoft Windows to “clip” out the parts I wanted to save, including the newspaper banner, the article title, and the photo used with the article. Here is a closer look at those parts:

I also clipped the part of the article that mentioned Graham. Here it is:

I put these items together on a 6x12 blank document I made with Photoshop. I also added a background (a paper by Traci Reed) in accordance with my scrapbooking motto: leave no space blank. 

When I'm ready to have this insert printed, I'll put both 6x12s on one 12x12 page and upload it to Persnickety Prints. Then I'll sprint out to my mailbox to await delivery of the page, because Persnickety Prints is that fast.

I'll cut the page in half, and put the two halves back to back in a 6x12 Project Life page protector. As I said earlier, this insert will go between Weeks Two and Three. 

I love having my pages printed individually instead of in a bound book, because I can go back and add inserts at any time. I can also redo pages when I find I've made an error. Yep, my OCD will insist I pay to have the whole page reprinted.

Next post: Details about Week Three. Thanks for stopping by!

Project Life 2013 – Week 43 | Left Side

Here is the left side of my two-page spread for Week 43:

Top row – left spot:

fonts: Century Gothic, Bolton Titling Outline; “everyday STUFF” by Ali Edwards

Top row – right spot:

fonts: BodoniXT, CornFed; two-photo collage template by Tracy Larsen

Note the Weim Crime photo. Weimaraners are notorious for getting into trouble. There’s a hashtag on Instagram for WeimCrime.

Middle row – first spot:

font: BodoniXT; “hello fall” by Ali Edwards

Middle row – second spot:

Middle row – third spot:

font: BodoniXT

Two things about this photo . . .

I made this on my iPhone, using the Collect app. Choose (or take) a photo. Choose the date. Add a caption. Save the card for your Project Life album. My caption is {heart} Persnickety Prints {heart}. It’s easy to add little embellishments, like the hearts, with an iPhone.

The second thing about this photo is that it shows a box from Persnickety Prints. Be still, my heart. Their work is phenomenal. And so very quick!! I ordered a bunch of pages for my PL album on a Friday evening. The finished pages arrived on Monday. Seriously, is that possible?

For years I’ve been scrapping at 12x12, but printing at 8x8. Besides the fact that printing 8x8 at home is cheaper than having 12x12 printed, I couldn’t find a place that did quality work. Thank you, Becky Higgins, for introducing me to this company!

12x12 pages really bring Project Life to life! (haha) The 8x8 pages were fine when I was making ordinary pages with only a few photos. Now that I'm using scores of photos on each page, I need the larger size.

Middle row – fourth spot:

Bottom row – left spot:

font: BodoniXT

Here I used another card made with the Collect app. I probably should have done that with Conrad’s photo for a bit of continuity in this spot. But I didn’t.

Bottom row – right spot:

font: BodoniXT; three-photo collage template by Tracy Larsen

I blurred the first two photos for privacy. First, though, I made a copy of this collage and turned that layer off in Photoshop. In other words, it’s still there, but it’s not showing. After I get Week 43 posted, I’ll go back and turn off the layer with the blurred photos and turn on the other layer. I hope I remember to do it.

That’s the downside of having stuff printed vs. printing it myself. If I find a mistake later, I’m going to correct it and have it reprinted. That’s increases the cost of my album, but it’s cheaper than therapy. If I didn’t fix the error, I would dwell on it forever.

If you see an error on my pages, please tell me. Although I can spot someone else’s errors easily, I can look right over my own.  

Did you notice my new, really cool Amy Tangerine bag? It’s similar to her first limited edition one, but it has enough differences for me to justify buying it, too. Thanks, Peter! It was part of my birthday. (If you want one, get it soon. Amy's first limited edition bag sold out quickly.)

Stuff used on this page:

   * Project Life core kit – Coral Edition (digital version; on sale through 11-17)

   * Pocket page template - Template A (physical equivalent - Design A)

Happy new week! Aren't Mondays wonderful? A new week, a new start, and, for us, beautiful fall weather! All of us can rejoice that the 2000-pound satellite, which was careening toward earth today, disintegrated when it entered the atmosphere. I really hate when things like that fall on my head.

Next post: Details about and close-ups from the right side of Week 43.  

Edited to add: Please join me in praying for the victims of the recent super typhoon in the Philippines. 9.5 million people are affected. I just heard on the news that it's nighttime in that area. Many people there have no food, no homes, no services (like phones), . . .. Beyond sad . . ..

Overwhelmed | Interesting Stuff

Part one: Being overwhelmed

We’re home from our annual Destin trip. So very strange to look outside here in Memphis and not see rain, which is the norm for this year in Destin. It’s still raining there.

I had good intentions of keeping up with my Project Life pages while we were gone. I love Project Life, and I do not love being behind. Peter said I couldn’t take my computer and all its related stuff to Destin, because he was going to fill the car with his stuff I could do my pages fine on a laptop.

He was wrong. I need my big monitors. I need my keyboard. (Even though I’ve typed off some of the letters, I love my keyboard.) I need my computer chair that’s just perfect when I fall asleep at my keyboard.

Being without my computer stuff was only part of the problem. Since we were at the most beautiful beach in the world, I spent a lot of time on the beach (and running from the beach to our condo to escape the storms). Also, Graham and I spent a lot of time shopping. Destin has three fabulous malls, including a high-end outlet mall. 

Summary: I had good intentions for keeping up with my weekly pages, but it didn’t happen.

Not being current with my weekly pages is not a problem. Project Life is a method of recording our memories. There are no Project Life police who will come to get me if my pages aren’t current (or you if your pages aren’t current.) If we record any memories, that’s better than recording nothing. But my OCD makes me want to be caught up.

So, we came home. We reunited with Ellie Mae, Mister Bucky, and Woochee. We unpacked. I did some cleaning and laundry and errands. I got all of the Florida photos from my iPhone, Graham’s iPhone, and my big camera into ACDSee (where I store my photos). I added the other photos I received from the other kids during those three weeks.

With all that behind me, I was fired up to devote myself to recording our three weeks in Florida.

Oh my goodness. I have over 2000 photos. It’s a darn good thing it rained so much, or I would have had even more. What to do . . . do I do multiple pages for each of the three weeks? Use lots of inserts? Make a separate Destin album? Do multiple pages and inserts??

After collecting the photos, here’s what I’ve done: nothing. At least nothing on Project Life. But I got caught up on reading my email and my Feedly reader. I ate candy corn (my stress reliever). I organized our Nespresso coffee capsules. I went shopping for new mascara. (Of all times not to need new clothes or jewelry; shopping for those could have killed a lot of time.) I ate Asian mix snacks. I organized my earrings. I worked at the soup kitchen.

When I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I sneaked a peek at the folder containing those 2000+ photos. So scary. At some point I bit the bullet and made three folders, one for each week we were in Destin. Then I went through the 2000+ photos, copying into the three folders the photos I would like to use for my pages.

Summary of this part: I got a lot done, but no Project Life pages. Good grief. I would start on those pages now, but first I want to share a couple of things I saw when I was surfing my favorite blogs to waste time look for inspiration.

Part two: Interesting stuff

A free class is starting on September 5^th at Big Picture Classes called Big Idea Festival. 

Each day for 10 days a different instructor will guide you through three unique journaling lists, so that you'll make a total of 30 lists. The goal is to create a fun mini-album celebrating your childhood memories.

This class is a great idea for those of us who don’t have a lot of childhood photos, but want to preserve our memories from back then. These lists could also be used on scrapbook pages or in your Project Life album, especially if you’re short on photos. Or put the lists into your memory box.

The other interesting thing I found today while surfing blogs is from Persnickety Prints, THE best place to have prints made. They reviewed a new iPhone app called LetterGlow. 

It just came out, and it only costs $.99. Read about it on the Persnickety Prints blog. I bought it, because it really looks good, and I really need more apps. (Hahahaha!)

Thanks for visiting!

PS. While writing this post (and doing every other time waster I could think of), I’ve whittled my Destin photos from 2000+ down to 307! Three weeks with two pages for each week . . . 307 photos for those six pages . . .. I’m going to need a bigger album.