Project Life: Back to Reality Edition and Finally Caught Up!

For the past several weeks, I've been working hard on my Project Life scrapbook pages for both the previous week, and an "old" week from April/May.  Since it's a chronological scrapbook, with a two-page spread for every week, my anal-retentive project manager self needed to make sure I got "caught up" and accounted for every week.  Because the sky would fall if I skipped a week or two, you know :)

Kidding aside, it was actually fun, once I let go of the guilt and stress about being "behind".  I thought about it as a big chunk of FUN and an easy way to spend time being crafty, without the hassle of having to come up with a new project from scratch.

And flipping through the completed pages - more than half a year's worth - is really rewarding.  Not only do I get to remember all of the "everyday" bits I would have forgotten otherwise, I have an amazing way to see how much T has changed in just 6 short months.    Not to mention a huge sense of accomplishment for getting all those pages completed.

I'm also getting better at the "crafty" bits and things look a little more pulled together in my recent pages, instead of delightfully random and mismatched.  I haven't been paper crafting long enough to have a signature "look" but I love trying out different things and refining what my aesthetic might be.

OK, that's a little pretentious.  Really, I just love glitter, glue, paper and stickers.  A lot.

Here are the pages I've done for the weeks after we returned from Ireland, from late April to Memorial Day weekend.  This officially gets me caught up, which warms my little heart.  Now I can just focus on getting each week done!

As always, click the photo to see a larger version.



April 21-29: getting over jet lag, washing the car, and loving Instagram

April 30- May 6: Seattle Children's Museum, felt board and having fun with washi tape and die cutting



May 7-13: Our 7th anniversary zoo trip, making pizza, and picking an actual color scheme this time!



May 14-20: Hangin' at home, cake pop and lots of crafty filler since I had so few photos



May 21-27: Crafty goodness and more car washing

On this last spread, my lack of spatial abilities resulted in me having to redesign the first page.  Each week's page starts on the *back* of the 2nd page of the previous week.  I forgot about this, and did the May 14-20 spread on two pages, like I usually do, forgetting that the 2nd page should actually be on the *front* of the already-done May 21-27 spread.  (This is the problem with getting behind and skipping ahead.)

Luckily it was an easy fix and I could convert the original Page 1 of May 21-27 into what you see above in a matter of minutes, without losing much.  It forced me to edit out a few photos that were not remarkably different.

I love that this project is making me *use* all those wondrous supplies I've been hoarding and collecting.  And each weekly spread is simple enough that I can usually finish it in an hour or so, but can spend more time if I want to get all crafty with it.

The other unexpected result is that all this time being crafty is helping me arrange my new craft room in an optimal way for me to actually see what I have and use all of my tools.  I've gotten a lot more use out of my Silhouette machine and my Cuttlebug embossing machine due to where I've put them on my work table.

Thoughts?  Tips for me?