Tuesday, July 10, 2012

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?


8 comments:

  1. I would love to do this Project Life weekly thing. The only problem is my weekly life is rather boring. Get up, work, work out, eat, go to bed. Nothing interesting happens in between.

    If you can, would you bring this to Saturday's scrap. I'd love to look through the whole thing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jenn - are you kidding me? You're always out and about, *and* taking photos. You have way more going on than we do. One of the things I try to include each week is a photo of something crafty that I made. You could do that with your photography, or a layout you particularly liked, etc.

      To make it easier, you could also do just one page per week instead of 2, and then do extra pages when you have trips or events. It's super flexible.

      One idea I read online was someone who started it on her birthday, to document her year. I thought that was cool.

      Yeah, I'll bring it on Saturday. Maybe I'll even bring the stuff to do last week's pages :D

      Delete
  2. Love your pages! I totally agree that Project Life is really great at making you use all the stuff that you've been keeping around!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks! I love, love, love your post on organizing your weekly spread. I'm looking forward to spending some time reading your blog ;D

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  3. I like the journaling. I think it's really cool to see your handwriting splashed across the patterned paper. Personally, I think comp journaling is great but it takes too long and PL needs to be easy for me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OK, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks it takes too long ;) I figure I'm already spending a bunch of time selecting and editing photos, so it's kind of annoying to have to go back and deal with journaling, printing on labels, etc. too. But then I see Cathy Zielske's PL, all nice and clean, and I wonder if I should do the same ;)

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  4. love your pages! I handwrite all mine, too. I don't have the best handwriting, but you know what? It will be cool to look back on what it looked like. AND, I get the pages done! I did score a typewriter with the intention of typing my journaling, but somehow, even that hasn't happened yet!

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    Replies
    1. I *just* learned how to change the ribbon on my ancient typewriter this week so I'm going to start trying that, because I think that'll be a good compromise between all the formatting needed for computer journaling vs. handwriting everything.

      Thanks for stopping by!

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