Project Life: March 2012 Catch Up

I'm diligently working on catching up with Project Life.  Last night some friends came over for Craft and Cocktails, which really was just Craft, Chat and Pig Nose Pretzel Chips with Mascarpone Cheese (yum) and the odd glass of wine so I used that time to work on Week 2 of our April Ireland trip.  But before I post that, I'd like to post all 5 weeks of March! Click on each photo to see a larger version.

March was an exciting month for us.  T said goodbye to her daycare friends and teachers and started her new preschool.  TJ celebrated his *redacted* birthday.  We got ready for our trip.  We had a date night at Canlis.  It was the end of the first trimester of my pregnancy with Baby X' and we finally told everyone about it. T had her last physical therapy session and we said goodbye to Miss Carrie, her therapist for the last 18 months. TJ quit his job.

Feb 27-Mar 4 - endings and beginnings

Mar 5-11 - short on photos!

Mar 12-18 - art projects and Kirkland waterfront

Mar 19-25 - more art projects and Canlis

Mar 26-31 - Baby X' goes public and TJ quits

I needed to *do something* about the huge binder my Project Life pages live in.  Thinking it would be fun to be extra-crafty, I bought an American Crafts chipboard binder. It mocked me for months with its incompleteness.  I wasn't sure where to begin with decorating it, or how to cover it with something durable. (Sometimes my crafty aspirations get the best of me.)

I debated just buying another binder which didn't need any covering, but decided to get over my fear, and try *something*.  If it gets trashed, I can get a new binder later.   So I used some of the Project Life coordinating cardstock, some phenomenal adhesive sheets from ThermOWeb, letter stickers, rub-on transfers, and a bunch of Mod Podge decoupage glue to seal the whole thing.

sometimes a girl just has to face her fear and pick up the damn glue

Not bad for a first try, but it wasn't perfect. I didn't cover the entire binder surface with those adhesive sheets because they're expensive, so when I used the decoupage glue, the paper that wasn't stuck to the sheets bubbled a bit. However, it looked better once everything dried, thought not as perfect as I would like.  I cut the ribbon for the edges too short so it's already starting to fray at the edges.  A better trick would have been to fold it over the bottom, or use Fray-check.

I did the same thing with the inside covers and the back, with varying degrees of success.  The back bubbled horribly and looks awful.  I tried to sand it a bit to make it look "distressed" and now it just looks like it got run over by Bubba's truck.  I'm not sure what to do about that, and whether a second layer of paper will make it better or worse.  Sigh.

But I love this project.  It's gotten me to jump headfirst into scrapbooking.  Since I'm capturing a little of T's preschool work each week (usually), I don't feel bad about throwing away the steady stream of papers coming into our house.  I'm starting to explore all the great crafty resources online - there are people who offer free printable cards that fit perfectly into the slots of the page protectors, as well as those who post great ideas about *what* to put in if you're short on interesting stuff or totally flaked out on taking photos that week.

One thing I discovered after perusing others' Project Life layouts online - I'm primarily approaching this like an annotated photo album, while other more seasoned scrapbookers are much more crafty about the whole thing.  They have tons of journaling, embellishments, and whitespace, while I primarily fill the slots with photos and then use what's left to tell the story.  I've noticed as I get more practice,  my crafty skills are increasing and I'm having more fun with the non-photo slots.

So yay.  And every week, as I get closer to reaching that elusive state of "being caught up", I feel a pretty hefty sense of accomplishment.  I have tangible evidence of my craftiness to hold in my hands.  *That* is why I do this.