scrapbooking – Mirthful

I’ve almost done December Daily for two years now. This year I think I may actually do it, since I’ve started putting a foundation together, which is much further than I’ve ever gotten before. I’m trying to mostly use stash I already have.

I’m a Journal Your Christmas alumni, so I’ll be getting prompts all though December, which is useful. I never actually DID the journalling, but I purchased the class in 2009, so now I get the prompts every year. Isn’t that nice? I’m thinking it will be possible to use ideas from that for the days when there’s little or nothing worth documenting happening (and since we both work full-time I know there will be days where all we have time for is the bare neccessities to get us through the day – I’ll document at least one day like that, but it might get repetitive if every weekday Monday to Friday goes: “Had breakfast, went to work, worked, went home, had dinner, put the lass to bed, zonked out on the couch, went to bed”). Shimelle’s prompts are great and though they are meant for scrapbookers you could also just use any old notebook and write, if that’s what you want. The focus is on telling the story, and not just of THIS Christmas, but of your childhood Christmasses and any other stories you want to tell. The class is highly recommended.

So far what I’ve assembled is an album, purchased with the intention of doing a Week in the Life, and never used for that purpose. I still want to do Week in the Life, but December is soon here, and the album is red. So there. It’s a We R Memory Keepers three ring album for 8,5×11 page protectors. I had a few page proectors to fit, but I’ve put in an order for some more, one of the purchases it’s hard to get around.

The album. It be red. — Oh, and the album

I’ve also purchased Ali’s overlays and templates. The latter are really great, and I can see myself playing around with them and using them for other projects, too (I tend to resize and otherwise modify templates all the time). Since my pages are going to be rather larger than Ali’s 6×8,5 I had to resize the overlays, but they came out fine. With a little trial and error I settled on resizing to 8×11, which alters the overlay’s proportions slightly, but not so much as to be noticeable. As our printer tends to default to A4 rather than Letter, this meant I could print with the minimum amount of adjustment. I also recoloured to a darkish red. I managed to make do with the cardstock I already had by mixing in some offwhite with the whites (pale gray, pale beige and pale purple).

I’ve also gone through my stash and found some things that might serve as embellishments.

I had two packs of the journal tags, the contents of one pack in the front, the others are still in their packaging.

I’ve got a lot more chipboard letters, though not much of it is in the correct colours. The “winter” and “frosty” are from a lot I purchased off a member of scrapping.no a while back, so I have no idea where they’re from, but they are perfect. Well, except for the colour, but the nice thing about chipboard is it’s easy to paint.

Stuff. Might use some of this, might not.

I also dug out some patterned papers and picked out the ones that were both Christmassy and that fit the colour scheme.

From left: Taylor “Ever Green” and Show-Offs “Deck the halls” from Daisy D’s, Fruitcake “Berry Branch” and “Snowed In” from Basic Gray and Holiday Collection “Alpine Snow Lace” from KI Memories. The Basic Gray ones have a near solid colour matching back, I might use those for some days. I’ve since cut strips to fit the bottom rectangle of the overlays from these, I’ll pick whichever goes with my pictures and other embellishments on the specific days.

I’ve got some stuff coming from Bananafish that will definitely be used, too. I purchased some supplies for Project Life from her just after the summer and fell head over heels in love with the wonderful little bits and pieces when they arrived, so I ordered more, including some Christmassy items, which will come in handy.

I really love what Ali is doing with the Hambly transparencies, but I think I’ll make do with making my own somehow (I’ve got some nice thick ones meant for laser copiers). I also like the baseball card size page protectors used to hold stars and other little embellishments, and since I have few of these I may be doing something similar. We’ll see.

For inspiration:

Ali Edwards’ Flickr set for December Daily 2010
Foundation pages Flickr set by Heather
Christina Tryon’s blog – she’s doing Journal Your Christmas, too
Ruth’s foundation pages
Nicole’s foundation (LOVE that cover)
Mel’s mini book foundation (I really like that format, too)
Ashley’s December Daily inspiration board on Pinterest (I should make one of those!)

Like pretty much everyone else I know, or have even ever heard of, I’m behind on my “getting photographs into albums”. The backlog is overwhelming, so I’ve learned to focus on a few projects at a time, but even in that context I’m sadly lagging. I got a photo book printed with digital layouts for both sets of grandparents of the lass’ first year in time for Christmas that year. 2007, that is. I finally got the same done for them for 2008 some time last year. May, I believe. I had originally planned on going though and redoing some layouts and adding a few more before having our own version of 2007 printed, but finally decided that would probably never happen and that having those pictures on paper was more important than my exasperation with the look of some of those pages (the first digital layouts I ever did, some of them ain’t pretty). So I got them printed when Shutterfly had a promotion, and the lass was thrilled – and so was I.

So, in terms of digital layouts, I’m working on working on 2009… It’ll be done sometime.

In the meantime, though, one of the things I don’t like about digital scrapbooking is how difficult it is to incorporate ephemera. I’ve always collected it all: Ticket stubs, programmes, flyers, labels and so on, and I have never really found a good way of keeping it sorted and relevant.

And then Ali Edwards started sharing how she is using Becky Higgins‘ Project Life, and I was sold. Well, I spent a couple of weeks checking out the products in the relevant shops, adding them to the cart, then leaving before actually ordering, only to return a few days later and repeat. And then I suddenly realised I probably had everything I needed in my stash. And I was right.

I had an American Crafts three ring 12×12 album, I had page protectors in various shapes and sizes and divisions and I had paper, plenty of paper. I went with a basic week layout of a double spread of six 4×6 photo pockets, which is similar to the official Project Life spread, except the middle pockets in that are subdivided again. This works, though. Every week I start adding ephemera as the week progresses, frequently moving it around quite a bit before actually calling the week done. I pulled out a series from Junkitz in two colourways and precut a few 4×6 pieces, useful for journalling or for sticking pieces of ephemera to. I’m also adding a few snaps from the Instax, whenever I remember to use it.

Adding extra page protectors to hold larger images or ephemera

Some weeks I add one or more extra page protectors to hold larger images, artwork the lass does or larger pieces of ephemera. Here, for example, is a newpaper article about a charity event at the lass’ daycare to benefit disaster relief in Japan. A local recording artist, very popular with the kids, had a mini concert and so I also have a signed photo of her in another added page protector. I use the technique Ali Edwards has demonstrated of sewing on the page protectors to make them fit if you don’t have the correct size.

Some weeks there are more photos and journalling than can be housed in the 12 spaces, and then I add more page protectors for that as well. In this case I added one 8,5×11 divided into two vertical 4×6 and one 8,5×5,5, allowing me to house a few pictures taken in portrait rather than landscape format and to add a bit more journalling.

Now, to make this work, there are a few things I’ve decided from the start:

I just tag the photos when I upload them and then print in batches every few weeks on my home printer.
I don’t do any processing to the pictures on the whole, in a few cases I’ve cropped a portrait to a landscape, that’s it.
If all I have from an important event is a blurred picture, I use it.
I do a lot of the journalling by hand. My handwriting ain’t pretty, and it’s also partly illegible, but it’s better than nothing, and nothing is what I’d have if I set out to do it all on the computer.
What I have is what I have. Some weeks I remember to get the journalling done immediately, some weeks I don’t. I aim to get it done within a few weeks, but I found myself doing the week before Easter yesterday, and I know I’ve already forgotten details. However, something is better than nothing.
I use my blog, and more importantly my private blog (available to family and friends) to source journalling. The latter is where I try to get down the strange things the lass says.

Last week I started using Evernote on my phone to jot down notes when we’re out and about. We’ll see how that pans out, but making a note there is much less work than adding a blogpost from my phone, so I think it’s a stayer.

There is much to love about the Project Life approach, not least of which is that I now have a place for some of those photos I take that are not family related. When I work on layouts for photo books I tend to either focus on the lass, keeping the grandparents in mind, or on specific “themes” such as the trip to the Gambia. The last few months I’ve been travelling to Oslo more or less every week for workshops on a project, and this results in pictures that don’t necessarily have a natural home in any of my other projects. For Project Life I’ve started trying to take pictures of the various hotel rooms I stay in, for example.

Instax picture and photos from my travels for work

And, of course, I now have a perfect home for some of the lass’ artwork. I’ve tried to keep examples along the way of course, but this way I not only get to display it, I also get it in context, so that even if I forget to date a certain piece, we’ll know when it was done.

In short: I love it.

And, yes, some of Becky Higgins’ original products are now on their way. Looking forward to playing with the various page protector layouts especially.

If you want to see more examples of how people are making Project Life work for them, check these out:

Becky frequently showcases other bloggers on her blog
Ali Edwards shares her spreads every week
Cathy Zielske occasionally offers some great inspiration
As does Meagann on her blog Cherish the Ordinary Everyday
So does Mrs Boom at Messily Ever After
And there are some lovely pages at Simply Autumn, too

All now in my Google Reader. There is also a free community at Big Picture Scrapbooking. If you have tips for other Project Life inspiration, let me know.

Tag: scrapbooking

December daily

Project life