Project Life 2012: Getting Started! Yay!

I am NOT a scrapbooker.  You might be surprised to know that given the sheer volume of scrapbooking STUFF that lives in my craft room.  I love the supplies.  But put a blank 12x12, or even 6x6 sheet in front of me and I freeze.  I just don't know where to start.  There are too many possibilities.

In high school, I had a couple of photo albums where I diligently saved memorabilia and photos and captioned everything.  I still have them, though they're a mess, and they were done on those sticky-page albums that are probably eating away at everything inside.  But I was almost kind of obsessive about putting stuff in it.  I'm thankful for that, because when I look through them, I find events I don't even remember, or memories I thought I had forgotten.

So maybe I have the mind of a scrapbooker, but the "art" side of it intimidates me.  That's why I started small by making cards. 

When I read about Project Life, a kit by Becky Higgins, I knew immediately I had to have it.  Not just for the big box of super cute patterned cards and stickers, though that was definitely attractive.  But because I could document our lives in a sort of "fill in the blank" way, and still have it look nice, unlike my crazy high school albums.



It's basically a binder full of clear sheet protectors divided into rectangles. You fill those different-sized rectangles with photos, captions, memorabilia, etc. The kit itself comes with cute patterned "filler cards" to make the pages look pulled together and artsy, without the pressure of creating a whole scrapbook page. More adventurous folks can create their own little art pieces to put in those squares - basically anything flat, and the right size, will work.

The geeky side of me appreciates the orderly, regular look of the pages, kind of like a grid or mosaic. But I also appreciate that it is fairly easy, if you keep yourself organized, to spend just a little time each week reviewing it and dropping things into the little slots.

I bought the Turquoise kit, because the design and color scheme appealed to me - it's not too "girly" and it's got lots of circles, words and letters as design elements.  I also bought the matching cardstock in case I wanted to get crafty with some of the pages, a box of assorted divided page protectors, monthly dividers, and a large 12x12 binder to hold the project.  Not exactly a small outlay of cash, but for a 1 year crafty project, I'm willing to commit.

Trying to find links to these items on Amazon now, and failing, because they're all sold out, makes me glad I bought these back in October!

I was apprehensive (and also sick!) so I put off setting up the binder and pages. And then I realized it was already January 2 and I needed to be photographing and capturing the stuff we were already doing in the New Year. So a few nights ago, I opened everything up and got started.

Rather that doing a traditional 365 (or 366, in the case of 2012!) project, where I'd have the pressure of getting a decent photo every day, I decided to do this weekly, so each 2-page spread would cover a week in our lives. If we have a particular exciting event, the whole spread could just cover that. Otherwise, I'll have bits and pieces from what we do that week, even the mundane stuff like taking baths or eating jellybeans. (Both on deck for Week 1!)

There are several established scrapbookers who do Project Life and share tips, and one of them was using post-its to label what goes in the squares (brilliantly simple!). So I did that for the title page, and for the first half of the Week 1 page.

Here's what I've got so far:

not pretty yet, but at least I started it!

I picked out some filler cards, but the nice thing is that since none of this is *stuck* on paper, I can swap things out if I get a better idea.  But it forces me to put *something* there.

I'm still working out how to print the photos for each week.  My home printer isn't good enough for something I hope we'll keep for a long time.  There's an option to print from an online gallery to a local Target or Walgreens, so I'll probably look into that.  I'd like to stay "caught" up so I'm not working on more than 2 weeks at a time.

I'm really excited about this, because I think it'll be really fun to work on as the year progress, and because it'll be so awesome to look through it when it's done.  And the heavy page protectors mean that T can look at it as well!

If you're doing this too, let me know!  I'd love to see what you've got, and share tips on how to make this easy and fun.