2014 Project Life

 Finally decided to stick with Becky Higgins' Project Life products for my 2014 Project Life Album.  

I chose the Honey Album and Core Kit that you see here.  

I had thought about going smaller and use a Simple Stories 6 x 8 but decided to stay with the Becky Higgins line.  This will be my fourth or fifth year now doing Project Life.
Do you do Project Life, Project 365 or similar scrapbooking project?  What are doing in 2014?

Project Life Week 1

Week 1 left side

Week 1 right side

2013 Week 1 Project Life and Project Real Life

Project Real Life started last October and about 2-3 weeks into

the class it felt like it was something I should do at the

beginning of the year rather than the end.  

I didn't have the time to really put into the class anyway so

that worked out well.

So here I am starting Project Life 2013 with 

Project Real Life. 

Another great reason for doing this now is I don't have to have a third year of snow and bird pictures filling the first 2 months of my Project Life album!

 Project Real Life is a Big Picture Class (BPC) by Becky Higgins.

The first week's theme is Begin with the End in Mind.

What I have in mind for 2013 is to complete things.

Finish books, fill empty picture frames, do all the little things

on my "to do" list for the house, finish projects, finish classes, and more.

I originally was going to have "Complete" as my One Little Word OLW) for 2013 but 

it felt too limiting.  With further reflection and research into various words

I chose "Seek".  More on that in other posts.

Nothing fancy here.  More journaling than I usually do which is a good thing.

I did some stamping on the date card.  Added two fortunes to the date card from fortune cookies we had on New Year's Eve.

I numbered the journaling cards so that the reader could follow the story.

I added a journaling card with my OLW word and definitions.

The quote card and theme of the week cards from Project Real Life 

are in the layout as well.  

I'm using bits and pieces from 2 different year's Project Life supplies along with an extra album I ended up with. 

I'll eventually add my goals sheets from Project Real Life in between Week 1's pages.  For now I'm using them as I work on Week 2's materials.  

Did you set any goals or intentions for 2013?  What are they? 

December Daily/Journal Your Christmas

The top two photos are a few of my foundation pages in my December Daily/Journal Your Christmas album. I'm using templates from Ali Edwards for these journaling cards and then embellishing them.  Since I didn't not get much journaling done in last year's December Daily album I added Journal Your Christmas (JYC) to my process this year.  Two days in to the class and I'm amazed at the amount of information and material that Shimelle provides. If you're interested, check out www.shimelle.com
I apologize for the slightly dark photos above - its always an adjustment this time of year as I get the lighting figured out.  It gets dark to early and today we didn't the sun at all.
The next photo is a shot of Becky Higgins' 6" x 6" Small Envelope Pages.  I found out these fit in the Sn@p! albums very well.  I was looking through all my stuff for items to use in my Sn@p! albums for December Daily/JYC and 12/12/12 when I figured that out.  Also, in Becky Higgins Small Variety Pack Page Protectors there are 5" x 7" page protectors - the 2 vertically aligned ones work in the Sn@p! album also.
The last photo shows the chaos my room is in right now.  Those are photos I'm gathering for the 12/12/12 event at Big Picture Classes.  We're creating a mini-album showcasing photos and memories from this past year.  All around the photos are Christmas/Holiday items for embellishing the December Daily/JYC album.
Are you doing a holiday album this year?

2012 Project Life Blog Hop begins Sunday, February 5th at 8am ET

Hi!  Thank you for stopping by my blog for the 1st Project Life Blog Hop!



Week 2 Left hand size
Core kit elements used



Week 2 right hand side
Added birthday card directly to album using 3 hole punch to punch holes
"birthday "tag added - adhered to Close To My Heart Flip Flap Memory Protector

Week 2 right hand size (again) without birthday tag and card

Week 2 right hand side one more time with Close To My Heart Flip Flap
Memory Protector flipped to show photos underneath

Week 2 right hand side close-up of Close To My Heart
Flip Flap Memory Protector on horizontally oriented photo

Week 3 through 4 left side

Week 3 through 4 right hand side
Pocket in upper right corner holds a journaling card from Simple Stories Year.O.Graphy with
a saying I clipped from a calendar and distressed with Tim Holtz Distress Ink.

Week 5 - one page - not finished

If you would like to see Week 1 its featured in my previous blog post for February 4th. 

The first 5 weeks of the year has kept me a little off-balance.  After being away the first week of the year I came home to 4 new Big Picture Classes that started while I was away.  The last 4 weeks have been playing catch up on the classes and household stuff.  I'm starting to feel back on track but unfortunately the picture taking for PL has taken a back seat.   That's why Weeks 3 & 4 are combined and Week 5 is quite brief.  As I mentioned in the previous post about Week 1 I really want to keep 2012 to 2 albums so I want to be more selective about which photos I put in the album.  I also want to find ways to include more journaling - to do that I need to work on my page layout and jotting down some thoughts during the acutal week. 
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you are able to leave a comment!  If you would like to see more of my 2012 Project Life journey please sign up to follow my blog. 

To continue on the your blog hop journey visit Donna's blog next.  Go here:
http://www.joyfullydonna.blogspot.com/

Here's the entire list of blog hop participants if you want to start at the top and work your way through the entire list.

Jill              http://jillconyers.com/

Margie      http://xnomads.typepad.com/

DonnaB  http://donnasprojectlife.blogspot.com/.

Sharon   http://projectsofmylife.wordpress.com/

Noelia   http://www.noeliaevangelista.typepad.com/

April     http://capturethememories.blogspot.com/

Brooke http://everysnapshot.com/

Lynn    http://www.crafty-creativity.blogspot.com/

Donna  http://www.joyfullydonna.blogspot.com/

Project Life 2012 Week 1

 2012 is my second year doing Project Life (PL).  I don't have any hard & fast rules for how I do this. Week 1 found me visiting my son, DIL and 9 month old grandson in Seattle.  I was happy to do some baby-sitting while I was there and I snapped a lot of photos of Owen.  So there are a lot of pages for this week!  I also use divided page protectors for creating 2 baby albums of Owen (one for me and one for Owen and his parents).  I usually put Owen's photos in the baby albums but these I'm including in PL since its was about my visit there.




 



 For these pages I'm using a mix of items from Becky Higgins PL Core Kit and Simple Stories Year.O.Graphy collection.  The 2" border at left is one of Year.O.Graphy pieces.  So easy to do - just cut and slide into the pocket!  I tend to shoot quite a few vertically oriented photos so I need to use a variety of divided page protectors like this one.  I use page protectors from Becky Higgins, We R Memory Keepers and American Crafts.





 

 

Page on left is same as the one on right.

Different photos are showing on right with the use of Close To My Heart Flip Flap Memory Protectors.

 

Page above still needs some work. I want to do farm animals for embellishments on the 2" paper strip. Haven't found exactly what I want to do yet. The 2 pages above are the same page but the one on the right shows a Close To My Heart Flip Flap Memory Protector in the bottom right hand corner flipped up so I could include more photos.  Its great that these work both horizontally and vertically.

2" paper strip needs embellishment yet

Added children's menu directly to album by using a 3 hole punch to punch holes.

Right hand with menu page turned.  Simple Stories Year.O.Graphy pieces on bottom of page along with receipt from dinner.

PL Core Kit and Year.O.Graphy pieces mix well together on this page.

 



Arrived home in western NY to snow!  No suprise there although it has been quite a warm and generally snow-less winter here.  Very unusual but appreciated. 

Notes to self - need to include more journaling and try to stay with a select few photos that show the best represent that time period!  I ended up with 2 very full albums (probably should be 3) last year.  I just have a hard time leaving out photos of Owen!

Hope you enjoyed my first week!





Project Life Tuesday

 
 I've been inspired by Jessica at The Mom Creative to work on my Project Life so that I'm caught up by the end of the year.  You can check her blog out at http://www.themomcreative.com/ and follow the progress of her Operation Project Life Tuesday.  She also discusses a variety of topics and provides a lot of good information and links. 
The photo on the left is the left side page of the most current week that I have done.  This is the last week in September.  I frequently use the small pockets in the middle to cut one 4" x 6" photo in half & place it side by side.  You need to trim a little from the top and end but it works really well I think.
                                                                     

The second photo shows the right hand side of the week & as you can see I have a lot of items just punched and placed directly into the album.




                                                                                                                                                                               In the third photo I've turned all the items that are on top of the right hand page protector.  There are two more cards (one was too large for the pockets and was punched & placed directly into the album) & 2 photos along with movie ticket stubs, library check-out list, & a restaurant receipt.  On the left you can see part of my calendar page from my Ditto album.  I use that to keep track of the things we do or that I want to write about.

Life Jessica I'm pretty thin on journaling throughout the album and plan to add more.  I'm happy with where I am with this album - its so much more than I would have had with a "traditional" album.

the creative process??

So this is what my table in my craft room looks like this morning!  In parts of the room it looks like Christmas has exploded all over! And of course, Santa has his elves and I have my helpers too!  This is Patch, one of two cats.  And they both love to check out what I'm doing and think my "toys" are better than their toys.  And you can just see a little bit of the dog bed under the table for our dog, Lily.  She's not quite as interested in the creative process as the cats!  Thankfully. Here are a couple more photos of the pages in my December Daily/Project Life album.                                                                                                                            

I love how easy this page was.  A piece of cardstock and 3 pieces cut from Simple Stories' 25 Days of Christmas collection.   This page is located in the week of Christmas for my favorite Christmas Day photo.  What I am now finding so exciting right now is wondering how these "foundation pages" will change once I add the photos, journaling and final embellishments.   Right now feels like the 'present shopping' phase and afterwards will be like the 'present opening' phase!  Pretty cool!

On the left side is one of Becky Higgins Design A pages with just a few of the 25 Days of Christmas collection pieces.  This page will be filled with photos and other pieces of the collection or embellishments once I finalize the layouts.  On the left side is a 6" x 12" page protector with one card piece from the 25 Days of Christmas.  Right now I'm thinking I'll use this for memorabilia - ticket stubs, etc.  We'll see how it actually ends up.
Are you doing December Daily, Project Life or both?  I'd love to hear what you are working on.

December Daily & Project - Title page and more.....

 Here is my title page for the December Daily section of my Project Life album.  As it stands right now all of the elements are from Simple Stories' 25 Days of Christmas collection.  The calendar block in the top 4" x 6" pocket allows the kraft cardstock of the following page show through.  The top vertically oriented pocket on the right side of the page protector has a 4" x 6" transparency overlay in it with a sheet of white paper (for now).  The bottom vertically oriented pocket is empty and both pockets will eventually hold some photos. 

 Besides the 25 Days of Christmas Collection I am using Ali Edwards' December Daily 8.5"x 11" overlays.  I am not a digital scrapper so I printed the overlays on to kraft cardstock from the pdf files that are provided.  You can find these at http://www.designerdigitals.com/    On the right is one of Becky Higgins Design A pages.  You can find Project Life information on Becky's blog at http://www.beckyhiggins.com/  As I mentioned in a previous post while I use mostly Design A pages in my Project Life album I need to add page protectors that have vertically oriented pockets as well.  In this page the elements are all from the 25 Days of Christmas collection.  What I wanted to point out with this photo and the following photo is that on the right side you can actually see elements on FOUR other pages.  The red/white stripe page is the next set of 8.5" x 11" December Daily pages, the red flower below the "TOGETHER" card is the next vertically oriented page protectors and the red flower with the white paper is another transparency overlay on the fourth page!  Just like with acrylic albums you can have layers showing through and adding depth/dimension to the look of your project.  Love this!   

I received a question about my 8.5" x 11" pages.  The flow of my pages are like this
*Design A page
*December Daily pages in 8.5" x 11" page protectors  (however many days in that week=number of pages
*WRMK page protector with two 4" x 6" vertically oriented pockets
*December Daily pages
*Repeat starting with Becky Higgins's Design A page protector
I hope that helps clarify the page set-up. 

A closer look at a Design A page

 Would love to hear about and see how you are doing December Daily.  Please leave comments and/or your blog address.

A closer look at a December Daily page (Day 12)



Project Life and December Daily

Are you doing a December Daily album along with Ali Edwards?  Are you also doing Project Life?  Are you doing two separate albums or, like me, incorporating December Daily into your Project Life album?  Over the next few days I'll show you my progress in developing my December Daily pages in my Project Life album.  I'll also show you some of the items I've using.  This is so much fun!

I am starting with Ali Edwards' December Daily Layered Templates.  I originally purchased the 6" x 8.5" size but didn't like the size so I  purchased the 8.5" x 11" size as soon as Ali developed it.  I am not a digital scrapper so I like that Ali offers pdf files with some of her Designer Digital designs.  Above you can see that I printed them out on kraft 8.5 x 11 Reflections cardstock that I purchased at Michaels (one just opened up here a few weeks ago!).  I added a piece of printed paper (see next paragraph for details) to the rectangular box next to the number 1 and placed a wooden snowman that I found at Michaels (12 cents!) in the wooden products section.  So far I've done pages 1 through 13 so I have more to do.  Pretty easy so far! With the 8.5" x 11" kraft cardstock I have a variety of options for the  photos I put here.  I can get two 4" x 6" horizontally oriented photos in the space remaining.  I can place a 5" x 7" photo here or a cropped 8" x 10" photo (anything 8" x 8" or less will fit here).  There may be other options but I haven't thought this through any further.  I'll be checking out other options when I print my photos through Shutterfly.  I'd like a collage photo somewhere but that may be on 12 x 12 layout added in somewhere.  This is what makes Project Life so great - its flexibility and adaptability to what you have or what you want to do.

My second product choice was Simple Stories 25 Days of Christmas Collection.  I love the Simple Stories Collections.  They are perfect for Becky Higgins' Project Life page protectors and other We R Memory Keepers page protectors.  I use mostly Becky Higgins page protectors for my Project Life pages but since I have many vertically oriented photos I decided for this project to alternate this We R Memory Keepers (WRMK) page protector with Becky's Design A page protectors.  The WRMK page protector also has room for a 2" x 12" paper strip to the right of the holes.  The Simple Stories Collections come with 12" x 12" sheets that you cut apart for the pieces that you want.  There are various choices that you can make depending on what page protectors you want to use.  You can check out 25 Days of Christmas and the other Simple Stories collections at http://www.simple-stories.com/
I'll replace some of the items in the pockets in the page protector above and put in my 4" x 6" photos.  The item in the lover right pocket is a transparency that will go over the photo I place there. This collection allows me to move things around until I'm happy with what I have.  I will add more embellishments and journaling once I have my photos in place. 
Thanks for stopping by!  I look forward to your comments and hope you stop back or become a follower to see more of my December Daily process.

Week 10 Project Life and One Little Word Blog Hop



Left side page

  For those of you that are participating in Becky Higgin's Project Life this year I wanted to show something I did on this layout that I've been stuck on for awhile.  Left side page is pretty simple, cut some cardstock for the title card and journaling cards, added some pre-made embellishments and letters.  This is the only page so far that I didn't use a weekly title card that came with the kit.  The right side page I added one of the diecuts I showed you yesterday.  I made this little guy with Cricut's Baby Step cartridge.  I used a Flip Flop to make the hinge between the diecut and journaling card.  The diecut (this one was made at 6")stays outside the page protector.  As you can see in the third photo this give you room on the


Right side page

 journaling card to write.
Also, wanted to let you know that tomorrow is our monthly One Little Word blog hop.  The blog hop starts at 11am EST so I hope you'll join us for that. 


Right side page with diecut lifted up to see journaling card