Project Life 2012: Week 3

Week 3, the 2-page spread as you open the album.

Close-up of the left-hand side...generally keeping with the bottom left is Friday, upper right is Saturday and bottom right is Sunday. Title card in upper left is Sydney & the birthday girl grooming one of the ponies. Little scrap of ephemera, the label from a new toy of Sydney's.

Close-up of the Week 3 title page.

Back-side of the weekly title page is a collage of the Saturday event and on the right is the Week 3 long-journaler.

Back of the weekend long-journaler, is the weekday long journaler. On the right, I'm also including the party invitation and some 5x7's.

Back-side of 5x7's and Sydney's art.

The back-side of Sydney's art is an enlargement of a special event at her school this week and I also inserted the invitation that she had made for us to the event. I made sure to center the enlargement so I could just slip the invitation in right along with the enlargement in the page protector.

And the final page in the spread, the weekday photos. Generally I try to include 1 photo from each day of the week (since I got into that habit last year) but this year it's no hard & fast rules and if I miss a day I'm not going to panic about it.

Project Life 2012: Week 2

Here is a look at the 2-page spread as you open the album.

Close-up of the left side. Upper left is my version of a "title card". Also some ephemera...my favorite stevia that I add to my morning coffee.

Week 2 title page. We signed Sydney up for gymnastics, ballet, tap dance class.

Back of the title page is some art by Sydney and also on the right is this week's long journaler with the photo enlargement.

Close-up of the long journaler and a look at the right hand side of the spread.

Back side of the long-journaler and a look at the final page of the spread.

Close-up of the last page of the spread. This side generally represents the school-week Monday-Thursday.

Project Life 2012: Week 1

Here is Week 1. This is the 2-page spread as you open the album.

Here is a close-up of the left hand side on the spread. In general, I still try to have the bottom left photo be Friday, the top right Saturday and the bottom right Sunday, but there are no hard & fast rules. The top left spot is what I consider to be the title card still but instead of using the PL title card, I generally have this be a photo, usually of a sign or inanimate object or something like that. Since I date my weekly Title page, I no longer have to actually include the week's dates on this title card.

Here is the weekly title page again, blogged about this page on the previous post.

On the back side of the weekly title page, is a collage of the event we went to on Saturday for a chance to add more photos from that event. After that is a 6x12 long journaler (Ali Edwards template). Since I'm approaching this as a weekly spread, I decided to do my journaling as a weekly summary instead of daily journal cards. So far, I'm able to get all my weekly journaling onto the 6x12 lay-out. And I like a chance for another large photo.

Here is a closer look.

And the other side of the long journaler...more journaling & another large photo.

This week, I also included an American Crafts 3-up for some additional photos I wanted to include.

And the back...

And finally, the last page of the spread. You can see by doing the journaling as a weekly summary on the long journaler, I am able to add so many more photos, which I love.

Project Life 2012: Weekly Title Page

A look at the first 2-page layout of the year. I am going to be doing a weekly approach rather than a photo-a-day approach like I did last year. So, the first new component I'm adding this year is a "Photo-of-the-week" on a title page.

The title page is either my favorite photo of the week or the one photo that kind of captures the main story from the week.

Once again, my weeks will begin on Friday and end on Thursday so that the first days captured (generally the left side of the album) is of the weekend and the right hand side of the weekly spread is the Monday-Thursday stories.

The title page also captures the dates of the week. The template is from Ali Edwards Week In The Life series.

Other uses for the journaling pocket

I wanted to share some other items that I am tucking into the journaling pockets:

My latest obsession: Skinny Cow Truffle ice cream bars (only 100 calories!)

Here, you can also see my mid-week journaling process using post-it notes. I keep little reminders on post-it notes all week, then actually journal the whole week at once after I've printed my photos.

Capturing those little cereal boxes that my daughter loves:

I also used the title pocket to place a nice e-mail that I had received.

My other favorite: Strawberry Shortcake gum!

Ironically, we also went to a Strawberry Shortcake themed birthday party this week, so I added some stickers to the title card. I'm infusing my album with a lot of "stuff" from my daughter's 3-year-old world.

I used some Valentine's embellishments in February:


Love note from my husband:


My daughter little valentine's that she gave her school friends:


Movie tickets:

I also had put an additional photo on the title card

Here, I put an additional photo in the journaling pocket, and also some park tickets in the title pocket:


And a business card from a service I used that week.


What other items are you inserting into the journaling pockets?
I'm still enjoying this process and loving Project Life!

Project Life: Week One

I am absolutely LOVING Project Life. I am using the Amber Edition design this year.

This is the left side of my WEEK ONE layout.

I started on a Friday, so that my left side can always be Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The reason for this is that I usually take extra photos on the weekends and I plan to include those photos in extra page inserts within the middle of my weekly layout. I'll show an example of what I mean later in this post.

So, my right side will always be Monday-Thursday. Basically, I didn't want my extra page inserts--which are most likely going to be weekend photos--to appear before the actual POTD with the journaling.

This is how the album looks including the extra page inserts within the middle of the weekly layout. My only "rule" about this is that the extra pages within the layout have to be smaller than 12 x 12. They can be 11x7, 5x7, pocket pages, anything I want...but I think I will always have them be smaller than 12 x 12 so it is all encompassed within the week that it falls into.

In this case, I am also including my "One Little Word" layouts in my PL album as well.

So, this is what it is like if you were just flipping through the album:
Left side (Friday-Sunday)


A 5x7 extra page... in this case, my OLW cover page:


A pocket page (on the right)...


An 8x10...


A 5x7 page protector with some enlargements....

And, an American Crafts page of 6- 4 x 6's...

I've decided not to round the corners of my photos... at least for right now, because I am trying to keep this simple. Although I like the look of the rounded photo corners, I really don't mind the uncropped photos either so it just isn't a big enough deal to me to warrant taking the extra time. Maybe I'll round the corners next week and decide after that. What are you doing?

Right side of layout (Monday-Thursday). Within the bi-fold journaling card, I've stapled the current business card for both myself & my husband.

I don't think I will have this many extra pages within my layout every week, but most weeks will likely have something (daughters art work or long journaling, etc..)
so I've already purchased an extra Amber binder with the expectation that I'll need to have 2 albums for the year.

This is so fun, I am loving it!