Project Life: The inspiration

Just recently, I've been looking at the blogs of some Project Life veterans to get me inspired to tackle it for a second time (see yesterday's post outlining my grand plan!). There are so many super inspiring Project Life spreads out there, but here are just a few of my absolute favourites...

1. Marcy Penner

What I love about her Project Life: 
light and airy photos, fun use of journaling cards and little bits of patterned paper, sticky labels with journaling on top of photos, mix of photo sizes.


2. Ann-Marie Morris

What I love about her Project Life:
clean and simple (but beautiful) approach, spectacularly colourful photos, ability to make the Project Life grid cards look effortlessly cool, awesome handwriting, inclusion of ephemera and other snippets of daily life, type on photos, washi tape and paperclips!

3. Liz Tamanaha

What I love about her Project Life:
loads of beautiful photos, funny conversations captured, photos + words (a no-nonsense approach!), different sized pockets and photos, simple journaling (sometimes just a place and date), black and white photos, fun font for journaling, doilies on kraft!

4. Jamaica Edgell

What I love about her Project Life:
Thickers (on photos and on patterned paper), smaller scale album, snippets of every day life via currents, lists, etc., Thickers, Thickers and more Thickers!

5. Lisa Truesdell

What I love about her Project Life:
stamping, washi tape, capturing the small details, using up stash, Instagram photos.

6. Kelly Purkey

What I love about her Project Life:

different sized pockets, making PL core kit her own, simple but fun embellishments, capturing life as a single girl (like me!), cutting up a large photo and splitting it between pockets, use of tweets, Facebook statuses, conversations with friends, etc.

SUCH inspiration...I love looking through all of their spreads SO much. And they've definitely been getting me excited about starting my new PL. So much so that I think I've pretty much decided to start it in September to coincide with the start of the new school year...I can't wait any longer! I think my album will be a 2012-13, running from September to December 2013 so that I can start a new album in January 2014 if I want to carry it on (I like starting things with the start of a new year!).

I hope you've been super inspired by these ladies as much as me. Don't forget to stop by their blogs and look through their other PL spreads...it's definitely worth it :)

Project Life 2013: The Plan

Yesterday, I shared a bit about what I had learned about myself and Project Life while undertaking my (unsuccessful) version earlier this year. Today, I'm going to let you have a look at my grand plan for Project Life 2013. One that won't scare me. One that is manageable. One that will look nice. One that, essentially, will allow me to finish the whole year and have a completed album!

Here's a little look at some of the products I'll be looking to get between now and starting...

My plan is to use one of the new Studio Calico Handbooks to house my PL. It's 6x8, which is a lovely little size for me. I think it'll be perfect. The Handbook page protectors come in a range of sizes...6x8, four 3x4 pockets, two 4x6 pockets, one 4x6 and two 3x4 pockets. Again, these will be brilliant at not letting me feel overwhelmed with the enormity of the project. Simple Stories has a similar line called Sn@p! and I'll definitely be wanting to get my hands on their page protectors that have a 2x8 pocket and two 4x4 pockets...ideal for Instagram photos plus a nice space for journaling.

In terms of other products that I've seen, I love the look of the new Seafoam edition of the Project Life Core Kit, designed by the lovely Elise. I love the colours and the graphic look of all the cards and I think they will be really useful for helping me to keep my PL simple and fuss-free. Whether I'll buy it as the Core Kit or try and purchase them as digital files through Jessica Sprague's store, I don't know. Although I do love the idea of having a box of goodies delivered to me! I've got a bit of time to decide, so that's fine.

I also love the other items that go along with the Studio Calico Handbook, namely the journal cards, pockets, die-cut frames and date stamp (complete with woodgrain handle...errr...yum!!).

For each month, I will use one of the official Project Life Months Dividers, which I will cut down to 8 inches in order to fit into my album. I like the fact that I'll be able to flip through the book and go straight to a particular month that I want to look at. Like I said before, I'd like to fill up the pockets as I go, rather than fretting about having to have a two-page spread for a week. That allows for some weeks to have more or less, without worrying that it'll mess up my system! I'll definitely be getting these in Seafoam to match those lovely journaling cards!

And that's the plan! I'm really excited. So excited, in fact, that I'm contemplating starting it in September to coincide with the start of the new school year. I guess it all depends on when I can get my hands on these lovely goodies!

If you're planning on giving Project Life a go for the first time, or are going to change things up for next year, I'd love to hear about it!

What I've learned | Project Life edition

This year I embarked upon Project Life for the first time, beginning way back in January at the very start of the year. To say I was excited about this project is an understatement. 

I was looking forward to the prospect of being able to tell the little details about my day-to-day life in a simpler and quicker way than dedicating a whole scrapbook page to each individual thing. Making a 12x12 layout about what I ate for dinner on a particular day just seemed a bit silly. But that sort of thing would be perfect for Project Life!

I was looking forward to making more of an effort to record those little moments that, up until then, had gone uncaptured and undocumented.

I was looking forward to having an album to look back on that would remind me of places I'd been and conversations I'd had that I would probably forget in a couple of years time.

In short, I was looking forward to documenting life in 2012.

The reality of putting it together proved to be somewhat more complicated than I anticipated, however. I always seemed to be behind and it felt like it took me at least half an hour to fill each pocket, deliberating over the vast amount of products in my stash and whether to type of handwrite my journaling, and what size I should print each photo at.  It felt like I was taking photos during my week just so I'd have enough photos and stories to fill the pockets. It felt like a chore. My excitement for the project soon dwindled.

The result: two months of completed double-page spreads, one month with the journaling missing, one month with 75% of the pockets filled and one month with 50% of the pockets missing.

Now I don't know what to do with what I've got. It looks ridiculous sitting in a whole big 12x12 album. But looking through the pockets, I can't bear to throw them away. The photos and words that I've recorded still mean something to me and tell me a lot about my life throughout those 5 months that I managed to do a half-hearted job with the project. The jury is still out on what I'll do. Perhaps I'll transfer the pages into my regular scrapbook album. We'll see.

But on to what I've learned about myself and Project Life throughout this process:

* I don't have a whole lot of time do dedicate to the project on a regular basis, mainly because of my job. Any work I do on it needs to be at the weekend ideally, and only take about an hour to do a whole week.

* My day-to-day life is very repetitive: get up, shower, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, have dinner, do more work, go to bed. That's about it in the week with maybe having dinner at a friend's house one evening. The weekends aren't that varied either, since I'm always so tired from work!

* The thought of having to fill a 12x12 spread for a month, let alone a week, scares the living daylights out of me. It just seems like too big of a job and that I will never have enough photos and stories to tell.

* That said, I also know I need to make more of an effort to take more photos of my daily life and to keep little bits of ephemera and evidence to use. I need to be more clever about what photos I take and what sort of things I document...I need to change things up from week to week so that I'm not just showing the same things week in, week out.

* I still love the whole concept of pockets to capture bits and pieces in.

* I'd love to be able to do this project on a smaller scale.

* I don't want to approach each pocket like a mini scrapbook layout. What I've got for this year is far too busy for my liking. I want it to be much more simple, along the lines of a journaling card, a piece of washi tape and maybe an embellishment. Or a small piece of patterned paper with some Thickers spelling out a word or two. Or just a plain photo in a pocket all by itself. Super quick simple is what I want.

* I still want it to look nice and like some thought has gone into the implementation of it, however.

* I don't want to limit each week to page or a spread. I want separate monthly sections but for the pages within that section to roll into each other. In other words, I want to add things to pockets as and when I have them, without having to worry about finishing the whole spread for the week before.

With all this in mind, I've come up with a bit of a plan for my new Project Life adventure. One I'm really excited with. But also one that I think is totally do-able for me and that won't let that excitement disappear.

Check back here tomorrow to see my grand plan...I'm so excited to share it with you!

Summer of '69 | Studio Calico

This month's kit is, without a doubt, my favourite SC kit ever. I ended up only getting the main this month, although I have a couple of pieces from add-on one in my stash. But the main is more than enough to make me happy...so much goodness in one kit! What I love about the SC kits is that I end up getting products that I would never have picked out for myself but that I end up absolutely loving! 

I'm just sad that I've finished almost all the embellishments up already! And those amazing doilies are all gone too! I guess I'll just have to add my own doilies and some other Woodland Park goodies from my stash to make it go further. I'm not ready to say goodbye to this kit just yet!

Here are three layouts that I've managed to make with the kit since receiving it yesterday. Yes, three layouts since yesterday...that is so unlike me! But that's how I know it's my favourite...super super inspiring.

Supplies: Studio Calico August Kit + Kikkerland Arrow Paper Clips + Woodland Park Tidbits

Supplies: Studio Calico August Kit + October Afternoon Woodland Park Alphabet Stickers + October Afternoon Woodland Park Designer Brads + October Afternoon Woodland Park Label Stickers + Studio Calico Mistable Thickers (Weather)

Supplies: Studio Calico August Kit + Kikkerland Arrow Paper Clips + October Afternoon Woodland Park Tin Pins + Studio Calico Mistable Thickers (Weather) + Studio Calico Mistable Thickers (Cameras) + Prima Teal Damask Chalk Ink + Studio Calico Mister Huey's Buttercup + Maya Road Lemon Mist

I've got a couple more ideas for pages using this kit, which I might even get done today! We'll see :)

What I've learned | Scrapbook layout edition

I've been playing around with different techniques recently, namely layering! I've been having so much fun figuring out what sort of things I like and what sort of things I don't, and I've learned so much from it.

* I can still scrap in 12x12 and actually love it, despite my flurry of 8.5x11 pages in the last year or so.

* I still like vanilla cardstock, despite reaching for white almost every time up until now.

* 4x6 photos aren't all that scary like I thought they were and I love using that size to showcase favourite photos.

* Layering is super fun but it doesn't have to involve matting my photos on numerous different papers and putting shed-loads of product under every inch of my photos (which is something I have tried in recent weeks!).

* Multiple-photo pages are awesome, especially when the photos are different sizes and orientations. I don't know why I've only been doing single-photo pages for so long!

* I love grids. I found this video by Lisa Truesdell super helpful and inspiring when thinking about how to arrange things in a grid.

* Although I'm into a bit of layering, I still love the clean, graphic look and don't want my pages to look too overloaded with product. I like clean, straight lines in places and am a fan of graphic fonts, whether that be Thickers or computer text.

* I am having a love affair with doilies and flair. Please forgive me for putting both on *every* page I make. I just can't get enough.

* I still don't like handwriting my journaling. I feel like I should be doing it, but I just can't. So I am coming to terms with the fact that all my pages will have typed journaling on them. I think I can live with that.

* Cutting my journaling into strips and sticking them on my page reminds me of my old old pages from way back when. I seem to have a soft spot for doing that again! I love how things sometimes come round full circle.


* It's ok to re-do old layouts that bug me and make me cringe. I want to be able to feel happy when I look through my scrapbooks at all my old photos, and if re-doing some of the pages that I hate allows me to do that, so be it! It's not like I've got a backlog of recent photos piling up that need to be scrapped, so why not, hey?

I can see a definite style emerging with these two most recent pages...and it's one that I'm happy with! So thrilled to have learned what I like. I feel like something has clicked with me again with this wonderful hobby. It's exciting!

Have a fabulous weekend!