Project Life 2013: Space Needle Wedding Letterpress Style

I finished this layout last night and it was hard. Nothing was coming together the way I wanted, my handwriting was terrible, and I messed up some journaling cards that I loved. Sigh. That's the way of creativity, right?

I've learned that if something is bothering me on a layout (or any creative project) that time won't fix it. That thing will *always* bother me, every time I see it. So now I know to listen to my intuition and fix it. Maybe that means I have to completely re-do something, but it also means the end result will be pleasing to me.

So last night when I was working on it, I struggled. I was anxious to get it done before bed so I could blog about it today. But I wasn't in a state of "flow". Every pocket was hard-won. But I'm fairly happy with the results.

I used the lovely letterpress invitation from Allison's baby shower as inspiration for the color scheme, then gathered up matching journaling cards from Studio Calico, the new Me and My Big Ideas line from Michael's (love those things!), and the new striped vellum paper I got at Daiso, the awesome Japanese dollar store we have downtown.  I've also been making a more conscious effort to use my stamps rather than just collecting them.

These pages cover our Big Outing to ride the Seattle Monorail and go up to the observation deck on the Space Needle, our friends M & T's wedding, and multiple trips to local parks thanks to our stunning weather.

I made some progress in figuring out my printing issues from Adobe Lightroom - I set Lightroom to manage the color instead of the printer, and now the photos are brighter and more true to what I see on-screen.  I still need to tweak the settings, but am much happier with the results now. (Click for larger images.)

Apr 22 - May 5: Wedding, Space Needle, Parks

Apr 22 - May 5: Babies & Penguins

Here's a slide show of my 2013 pages, including close-ups.  If you can't see it, click here to view my entire 2013 Project Life gallery.