Project Life 2013: The Ides of January

Yeah, it's my second Project Life layout of the year and I'm already "behind".  My goal is to post the layout a week after the time period ends, to give me time to process my photos and gather all the details on what we did during those 2 weeks.

This time I ran into some technical and parenting difficulties.  First, our home network suddenly got ridiculously slow, so accessing photos over wireless through Adobe Lightroom was PAINFUL.  I'd click on one photo, go get a cup of tea, come back and it was still trying to load it.  We haven't yet figured out the issue - I believe part of it is Lightroom 4.3, but there's also something going on with our wireless network or our Windows Home Server.

What I did discover, thanks to my smart hubby, was using a wired connection to the router made it about a million times faster.  Which means I need to do my photo processing on the couch in the living room, but whatever. I can live with that for now.

The parenting difficulties were courtesy of the divine BabyM. She just turned 4 months old, and for a week or two, things got worse rather than better. She started crying *more* and didn't want us to put her down, and would nap *maybe* 15 minutes at a time during the day.  Only if she was sleeping ON somebody. Yeah, that was fun.

The past few days have been a lot better, so I think she was probably just working out some stuff. It's hard being a baby.

So I finished my mid-January layout yesterday and even photographed it during daylight hours, so the photos are decent.  Hooray!  (Click to see larger versions.)

Jan 14-27: Book of Mormon, ceramic penguin painting, dancing like planets

Jan 14-27: art projects, cute baby faces and some craftiness

Closeup of minor craftiness - stamped Studio Calico calendar card 

This layout was pretty low-key and came together quickly, because free time around here is quite limited.  I came up with the color scheme first because I wanted to use that cute red arrow card from the January Studio Calico Project Life Kit.  I chose red, black, white and silver, and dug through the rest of my stash to find the simple black and white "remember" journaling card, some scraps of red and white chevron paper and chevron washi from my December holiday album, and the very cute grey and black "wheel" pattern paper from Amy Tangerine's Sketchbook line.

I got an idea from the Studio Calico forums to keep a little tray of miscellaneous die cuts.  When I cut out something on my Silhouette machine (love that thing!), I use the rest of the paper to cut out other shapes from my library that I might use later, so I can use my scraps immediately.  These "extra" die cuts go into my little tray, and I poke through it when I'm working on a project.  I also put miscellaneous die cuts from collection packs in that same tray.  

I found the cute black camera, the red bracket, and the little red scalloped square in my tray and figured they'd be perfect for this layout. I like to label photos or "explain" them so these die cuts are dual-purpose as little journaling spots.

The white pen used is my *awesome* Uniball Signo from Amazon.  This is hands down, the best white pen I've found - not streaky, very opaque and a joy to write with.  (Yes, I'm weird like that about pens.)  I've had this one for a few months of regular use and it hasn't gone dry yet.

I am trying to use my vast collection of stamps, so I put them out on my desk in plain view. I stamped the calendar card with hearts to mark the days covered in this layout - I stole this idea from someone online, but sadly can't remember who.

On the red chevron card, the fading "love" stamp is from a new set from Studio L2E. I used my favorite black Versafine ink, and then just stamped it 3 times without re-inking. I think there's a fancy word for this technique, but I call it "lazy stamping", heh.

It took me about an hour to put together this layout once I decided on the color scheme. Project Life for me is primarily an annotated photo album, so the pictures and stories are the most important. If I have a little room for craftiness, that's cool. If not, there's always next week.

Now I'm off to sort and load photos for the past 2 weeks, while the Small Ones are both asleep (at 7:30pm, it's a miracle).