Monday, March 21, 2011

Project Life update

Project Life is coming along nicely for me. I've been adding in extra stuff some weeks and other weeks I'm just including photos + journaling. I love the flexibility to be able to add in extra life stuff! I also love the flexibility to not worry about having to take a photo each day. Some days I just don't. Or I forget. My weekly layouts are more of a "weekly glance" at our regular life. I'm not stressing out about having to take a photo each day. As long as the weekly layout sums up what happened throughout the week, then I'm good.

For this particular week in February, I added a few extra things to the regular weekly layout....

I included a blog post that I had written from that week. I just printed it on 8.5 x 11 white cardstock, trimmed it to 6 x 11, added some patterned paper to the top and bottom of the white cardstock, and slipped it into a 6 x 12 page protector.

Two of our kids went to the dentist at the same time, and I knew I wanted to include a lot of journaling about this visit. I added an enlarged photo to an Ali Edward's 8.5 x 11 "Story of Today" overlay template, printed it on my own printer, embellished it with some stamps and ink, and then wrote out some journaling.
I had more journaling than space would allow on the 8.5 x 11 layout, so I then printed out an Ali Edward's 4 x 6 photo overlay on white cardstock and finished the journaling on that. I put that in one of the photo pockets because the photo for that day was already printed on the 8.5 x 11 layout.
I actually ended up printing a bunch of these photo overlays (you can purchase them at Designer Digitals) on white cardstock. I have a stack of them in my little Project Life organizer and I'll regularly use them in place of a 4 x 6 photo when I want to write out journaling somewhere else besides on the PL journaling card. Yay for flexibility and awesome digital elements!

Jackson has been writing some awesome stories at school so I included an example of one on the backside of the 8.5 x 11 layout. The last extra thing I included in this weekly layout was a baseball card page protector filled with extra photos from the week, packaging from things we regularly use (such as a tea bag package and the packaging from some diaper rash cream), Valentine's the kids received, receipts from the grocery store, a Red Cross certification card from a class I took, etc. One last thing to note is that I included a Netflix DVD envelope in one of the 4 x 6 photo pockets. I just folded it in half and slipped it right in. This is definitely one of those life things that I'll want to remember many years from now!

I totally plan on keeping my Project Life 2011 layouts all in one album. For this reason, I will not be adding all these extra things every week! If I included so much extra stuff each week it would definitely take another album to be able to fit all the weekly layouts from 2011. Again, I love the flexibility to be able to add extra elements and life stuff, but I also love the flow that the Project Life weekly layouts provide with just my photos + journaling.

Now that we're more than halfway through March, it is fun to see my PL album filling up! It is already so full of memories, stories, life, and photos. It is awesome to see it coming together!

2 comments:

Matt Beers said...

Hey, Betsy! Long-time reader, first-time commenter. First off, I just want to say that I love your blog. I don't know if you've read my report, "The History of Scrapbooking," but I think it might enlighten you and your readers.

Matt Beers
www.matthewdbeers.blogspot.com


(You'll find the story mentioned above under the tab labeled "lies.")

Visel Mum Mum said...

Betsy I actually do love this post. It makes me want to get back into PL so much. As far as matt goes, Ben and I laugh at his comments ALL the time. I am sure you don't want us egging him on... but he is hilarious! I bet you are laughing (or rolling your eyes) all the time!! haha.