Project Life Tuesday

Hello -

I'm back again with another installment of Project Life Tuesday.  This past weekend was cold and rainy (45 deg on Saturday and we are looking at 90 deg by Thursday....yikes!)  I had hoped to spend Saturday & Sunday holed up in my craft room catching up on Project Life & the past 3 episodes of Secret Life of the American Teenagers (such a bad show but I can't stop watching it) and a few good movies, but my plans were foiled (although I did have a good weekend anyway!)  So instead of sharing my next installment of 2013 PL I am sharing weeks 18 & 19 of 2012.  Still doing fine with the fact that I am behind a few weeks months in 2013 but I do hope to share some 2013 with you next week.

2012 Weeks 18 & 19 (April 28 - May 11)

Left Closeup

Right Closeup

This was a very busy 2 weeks with lots of activities and fun stuff.  We had a:

• birthday celebration
• a good look at Bob's "freedom 'stache"
• camping with the Boy Scouts (which re-affirmed the fact that I don't like to camp)
• my sorority's 50th anniversary and time spent with long lost friends & sisters

Thanks for stopping by!  Are you behind?  All caught up?  I would love to hear what you are working on...

Tracy

BTW...did you see my new For Sale tab up above (underneath my picture)?  I am cleaning out my stash (making room for more ?) and have alot of items up for sale.  I would love if you took a peek...new items will be added every week. 

Linking up again this week with the Mom Creative...check it out for some great PL inspiration every Tuesday!



Project Life Tuesday: weeks 2 & 3

Still behind.

Still catching up.

Still loving Project Life.

For some reason I was lacking in the photo department despite it being the beginning of the new year and my renewed vow to be better about taking more photos.  As I am planning my current PL spreads that seems to be the norm, not sure why but I am working on fixing that.  No worries though I was able to do a one page spread for both weeks 2 & 3. 

2013 Weeks 2 & 3 Full Spread

 2013 Week 2

 2013 Week 3

Waiting for a reprint for the bottom pocket, I mistakenly printed a 4x6 instead of an instagram.

So glad I have taken a shot of Kelsey's different colored bands every month. Love the consistency and looking back each month.

Week 3 title is a download from September Blue.

Still trying to determine the best time/spot to take photos...I can't avoid the glare.

Products used: Becky Higgins Clementine Core Kit (retired), Studio Calico So Cal kit Santa Monica Add On, CTMH Notice the Details and Comments Stamp Sets. Tabs, stickers, alphas, etc are from all different Studio Calico Kits...I combine them all once I receive the kit and dig through to find what I like...I only keep the papers together. Snow flakes are from CTMH...really old...love PL for using up my stash.

and.....

I had 2 inserts this week!  Actually they were 2 8 1/2 x 11 layouts I created and just slipped right into my PL binder.  I have decided that I am housing everything together in one album as PL seems to be my main scrapbooking outlet these days.

Pretty much killed whatever was left from my Studio Calico County Fair Kit on this.

This was a play JT was in and I wanted to highlight it a bit from my weekly pages.

Need to place a page protector order for uniformity, until then the Avery page protector will do just fine.

The second insert was all about the teenage girl's shoe of choice.  I was going to just put it in a pocket but since I had a B side to fill I thought I would document the UGG obsession in a little more detail.

and...

that is week 2 & 3.

This week:

I have plans to work on the catching up process.  I will be posting 2013 spreads on Tuesdays and 2012 on Thursday or Friday each week.

I'm linking up with The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday.

For more information on Project Life...check out this site.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Project Life - slowly but surely

Hello again Mr. Blog, it has been a long time and I thought it was about time I dusted off the cobwebs and started paying a little more attention to you.  I do miss sharing my PL pages, muffin recipes and little tid bits with you...but life has been so crazy lately; good, busy crazy, but crazy nonetheless.

It seems so many things that I love to do have fallen by the wayside while managing 2 kids in sports, a husband recovering from shoulder surgery, studying for my teacher licensing exams and just daily life.  I am still finding a little time for creating but I did fall behind and I am trying so very hard to catch up on not only 2013 but 2012 as well.

So where am I?  thankfully a bit farther than this post will have you think.  I am complete through week 29 of 2012 and planned and ready to print the rest of the year.  I am currently working on week 5 of 2013 but planned and ready to print up to last week.  But I am ok with that.  I work slow and I am lucky if can carve out a few hours a week to scrapbook.  My current goal is to complete 2 spreads a week -  one for each year.  If I can squeeze in a bit of extra time then I will add another 2013 spread in.  I will get there...slowly but surely.  The key is that I am completing my spreads and documenting our life, I'm not stressing about it and I am doing what I love.  And while I am living our life, I am throwing all my PL rules (because the beauty of PL is there are no rules) out the window...there are weeks that I have taken 1 picture...I am combining weeks, I am doing 1 page per week or 2 pages, adding inserts...whatever feels right, whatever works.  And to simplify the process I am using my Studio Calico kits.  I just grab a kit and work with those papers and the embellishments out on my table....it seems to be working for me, and that is a good thing. The added bonus is I am using up my stash and killing kits...something that has been eating at me for awhile. 

While I don't plan on sharing every page I have completed, I would like to share a few times a week.  So today, I have week 1 of 2013 and week 14 of 2012.

Week 1 2013 full

week 1 2013 left

week 1 2013 right

Week 1 didn't see as many pictures as I had hoped despite making a commitment to myself to try and take a photo a day.  Kelsey pulled the picture of the ball dropping in Times Square off the internet and since the pictures I was attempting to take of my tv didn't come out too great we used that one.  We spent alot of time on the slopes over the holiday week with the kids.  The papers used are from Studio Calico's Story Hour main kit and Encyclopedia Add on and Becky Higgin's Clemetine Core Kit. I pull my embellishments & alphas out of the kits as I get them and mix them all together so I can't tell you where those come from (sorry).

week 14 2012 full

week 14 2012 Left

week 14 2012 right

Week 14 (2012) was a busy week and thankfully I was able to record most of it in pictures.  This is one of my favorite weeks (although you will notice I will start saying that alot with my 2012 pages).  Week 14 brought a North vs South (our 2 city middle schools) Spirit Night basketball game with Kelsey playing in the pep band, both kids having their artwork displayed at the district's "Into the Arts" festival, Kelsey purchasing her own iPad and a deployment.  I used the Clementine Core Kit and Studio Calico's Elmwood Park.  The cute little house stamp is from Unity Stamp Co.

No promises, but I hope to be posting PL updates again this week (I am shooting for Tuesdays & Fridays).  If you have any questions or comments I would love to hear from you.

- Tracy

~ I will be linking up today with The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday

~ Project Life is a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. There are no rules and it can be anything you want it to be. For me, PL made me fall back in love with scrapbooking. For more information, go to Becky's blog here.

Project Life: on getting behind and catching up (part 2)

Last week I wrote about how I was several weeks behind on Project Life (you can read that post here) and the reasons why I wasn't about to let myself give up and how I was committed to catching up.  I have slowly but surely been doing just that.  Today I wanted to touch briefly on that process and share some of my caught up pages.  In a way I am a bit happy that I fell behind and needed to catch up as it got me into a great groove and helped me form a process by which I can get my pages done weekly in no time at all.

My week:
My week runs Saturday to Friday.  I started the year going Monday - Sunday because I really wanted to keep my weekends together.  Halfway through the process I realized that if I had any chance of keeping up with this project for the long term (and after this epic catch up I love PL even more so that answer was yes) I had to change my week to accomodate when I scrap.  Truth be told, I scrap mostly on the weekends and sometimes manage to sneak a few hours in during the week.  I decided to end my week on a Friday so that I could upload the pics Friday night or Saturday morning and send them to print locally to have for Saturday afternoon/Sunday.  That way I can get them in the pockets, start to work on them over the weekend and finish it during the week.  This still allowed me to keep my weekends together which was my original goal.  I plan on keeping this format for 2013 as well.

My process:
I created a folder for each of my weeks on my computer.  This way when I upload my pics from my camera or phone I can just scan through those pics by date and pop the ones I want to use in PL into the correct weekly photo.

Note:  Because I was doing an epic catch up I also created folders for 4x6 prints, instagram pics by size and photoshop prints.  I use photoshop for putting my smaller pictures on a 4x6 canvas so I can print them locally instead of at home.  This way as I was going through a weekly folder I just copied the pics and dropped them into the correct folder.  Once I did all my manipulations in photoshop, I moved all the pics to the 4x6 folder and uploaded them all to Shutterfly to print.

Once I got the pictures into the folder it was time to plan the pages.  I used planning pages very similar to those used by Marcy Penner.  Below each template I listed the type of each photo that I had (4x6, Instagram or 3x4) and then penciled in what was going into each pocket and the size instagram photo I wanted to use.  (this was the point that I moved my photos into the appropriate folder for printing or photoshop...I wouldn't really need to do this if I was caught up and just working one week at a time). 

All along I had also been collecting bits and pieces of everyday life in 8 1/2 x 11 page protectors labeled with the week right in my album.  I was able to pull each of these out and see if I had anything that I wanted to include with that week at that time.  If I did, I just slipped it into the appropriate pocket at this point. 

By planning my pages this way I could tell if I needed to combine more than one week to fill up the pockets.  I do have some weeks that stand alone but I have a few weeks where I just didn't have enough photos so I combined several weeks to tell my story.  I am so glad that I got over my need for perfection and convinced myself that it was ok to combine weeks.  It has made this process so much easier.

Week 10 & 11 (left):

Weeks 10 & 11 Right:

Weeks 10 & 11 were about St. Patrick's Day and the festivities around here, deployment preparation ad everyday life.  Here I used lots of Clementine Core Kit, October Afternoon Woodland Park label stickers, Basic Grey Picadilly Chipboard Sheet (SC County Fair Kit), a homemade quote card and lots of goodies I received in a happy mail package from Jenny G.  And yes, I just realized that my journaling cards in the first photo are switched...just made the change in my album...oops!

One pocket at a time:
Once the photos arrived I took my planning pages and just inserted the photos into the appropriate pockets.  After the photos were in, I went through my weeks one pocket at a time adding journaling cards, mounting pictures to cardstock or 3x4 cards and adding bits and pieces here and there.  I kept it simple using my Clemetine Core Kit and one Studio Calico kit at a time.  This limited my choices which is good as I tend to get overwhelmed with the amount of supplies that I have.  Once the spread was done, I either put the kit away or continued to use it for the next spread. 

I did save my title cards for last.  I found it eaiser to take the stack of title cards from my Clementine Core kit and go through each week to find the card that complemented the colors of that spread the best.  I then lined them all up and added the weeks and any embellishments.  The title cards for weeks 8 through 15 took my about 45 minutes to complete.

Weeks 12 & 13 Left:

 Weeks 12 & 13 Right:

Weeks 12 & 13 saw lots (and lots) of baking, everyday life, the first pedicures of the season, Blue and Gold banquet and a band concert.  I also included the program (not shown) from Kelsey's concert.  I simply put it into a 8 1/2 x 11 page protector, trimmed to size and sealed with washi. Here I used the Clemetine Core kit, more of my SC County Fair Kit (Basic Grey Picadilly Chipboard, SC Wood Veneer Alpha, October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers - Gray), washi tape and the coveted chevron paper from Echo Park (SC Elmwood Park Kit).

Where am I now:
When I started my catch up process the last full completed spread I had was a combined week 6 & 7.  By the end of this week I should be completed up through week 33.  I am waiting for weeks 24 - 44 (up through November 2) to come back from Shutterfly.  I plan on working on those while working on the current week.

This week and next I will share some more of my completed pages and touch on some of my lessons learned in this whole process and my plans for 2013.

If you have any questions about my process...let me know. 

I would love to know...are you behind?  Do you plan on catching up?  Any tips for catching up, keeping up, and not falling behind?  Let me know.

Project Life is a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins.  There are no rules and it can be anything you want it to be.  For me, PL made me fall back in love with scrapbooking.  For more information, go to Becky's blog here.

I am linking up with the Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday.

Project Life

Have you heard of Project Life?  It is a concept designed by Becky Higgins to document your everyday life.  I had heard of it a few years ago, about the same time I attempted and failed miserably at Project 365 (one photo a day).  I guess I viewed Project Life as a way of scrapbooking your P365 photos and therefore didn't think twice about it. 

But then I heard about it again, and again and thought that maybe it was something I would like to try but honestly, I was a bit hesitant.  I have this hang up with going outside the box and that is what I considered Project Life to be. (My whole fear of Journal Your Christmas/December Daily which I also failed miserably at last year is a whole other post...let's us just say it started and ended with panic attacks over album size!)  I was a traditional scrapbooker afterall.  I enjoyed the creative process.  I love the embellishments and the pretty paper.  I wasn't too sure Project Life was for me.  

Truth be told.  I wasn't actually a traditional scrapbooker either.  I wanted to be.  I used to be.  I still consider myself one but I haven't been able to sit down and complete a layout in a longer time than I wish to admit.  I miss the creative process.  I miss the pretty paper.  I miss documenting my family's life.  All that missing makes me sad.

Earlier this year (May I think), I got it in my head that I would start Project Life.  I was following Ali Edwards' take on it and swooning each and every time she posted.  I was still torn but decided I would take the jump.  So I started collecting bits and pieces.  I started taking more pictures of the everyday things and not just the special occasions.  I ordered an album to house it all and some photo sleeves.  I scoured the web for inspiration and that was it.  It sat. 

I can't explain why.  I think I was hung up on it being May and I really wanted to keep a whole year together (that out of the box hang up again).  Going back to the beginning seemed overwhelming to me and I didn't want this process to be overwhelming, but...I wanted to do Project Life.  I want to do Project Life and so I finally am.

I spent the last week or two going through my pictures from January through now.  I organized my favorites, or those from the events I want to document, into weeks.  Not approaching my picture taking for Project life from the beginning left me with quite a few weeks where there were no pictures or only a few.  For those weeks I will be doing two weeks together or in some cases (like January) I plan on doing a month in review.  The great thing that I have learned about Project Life is that there are no rules, you approach it how you need to and make it work for you. 

I am (im)patiently waiting for my pictures to arrive (so happy I was able to take advantage of a great print sale on Snapfish).  I plan on going through and doing the easy weeks first.  Those that I have all my everyday filler items all ready to go.  Then start with the present and work backwards.  I think organization is going to be the key.  I think working in chunks of time, one week at a time and not getting overwhelmed with finishing it all at one sitting is going to be the perfect mindset. I have already starting cutting bits of leftover patterned paper to use, and journaling cards as well as pulling out flat embellishments from my stash.  I am ready to go and have a solution to my hang up about not having a year in one book. 

I am excited to start and will document my weeks here as I go along.  Just please bear in mind that they will be all over the place.  My only goal for completion is to be done with this album and ready to go from the beginning for 2012.  I think that is doable.  Although I am using what I have in my stash for my 2011 album (with the exception of the photo sleeves and album) I am seriously considering ordering the Clementine Project Life kit when it is available on Amazon...we'll see.

I am working on pulling together a list of blogs that I frequently drool over when they post their PL updates.  These are my main source of PL inspiration and the reason I have decided to take the plunge....or stop wishing (gawking) and just do it.  Stay tuned this week for a post with that list.

Wish me luck. 

and on a side note...my Week in the Life album is almost done and one of the main reasons I fell back in love with the Project Life concept.  I will share soon. Oh and the JYC/DD fiasco I mentioned above?  Well, I might have conquered my fear on that too...I will be trying again this year...more on that to come soon as well.