Scribbles From My Scrap Studio – 2017 February

Here we are 8 weeks into 2017 and I am finally sharing with you what I am doing for Project Life this year. I have an on again/off again, love/hate, forget/remember, fun/hassle, relationship with Project Life. I adore the philosophy of making scrapbooking simpler, but like many others I was sidetracked by too much irresistible product. To be honest, I should never have purchased a single core kit. As a stash kit counterfeiter, I am contrite that I literally “bought” into the idea of needing dedicated supplies.

I embrace the idea of recording daily moments for a whole year – but I worry that it can seem so “daily” or even “weekly”. A year is a long time. Only parts of the last few years have Project Life pages, mostly I have succeeded in using it for trips in connection with full 12 x 12 layouts.

I was stalled out on how to approach 2017. I could not get started, feeling a bit overwhelmed with the thought it could be unsustainable. That is, until I saw this video by Becky Higgins studio:

Set Up to Scrapbook a Year in Under 1 Hour!

In this video (just a minute long), the good folks at Becky Higgins simply showcase inserting a whole year of the new Project 52 – Fresh cards into an empty album. Each week has 2 pages - simple.

Yet not simple enough. Maybe week could have just 1 page. That is when it hit me that those pages (Design A) are split right down the middle. What if I put 2 weeks on a page instead of 1. Then I would only need to fill 4 slots per week – 1 weekly place card, 2 photos and 1 other journal card – and I would be done with the week. In fact, I could even do a single photo a week and use filler cards for the rest. Brilliant, you say? Am I the first person to see the page split in half like that or tackle it in this “less might be more-likely-to-finish” way?
 

 
I decided to commit. Will it work, you wonder? If you know me at all, you should wonder!  Here is the current state of affairs. I started with the previous Project 52 core kit, plus a set of 12 specialty cards. (I am showing you this digital image because it is easier to get a flavor of the kit. I am using physical product.)



I have put all the weekly page cards into the album. I have sorted half of the remaining core kit into my journal card holder. I downsized by half the items I had stored in my Raskog to matching colors and likely usuable items.  This reduced a bit of visual clutter at my Project Life desk, and encourages me to use bits and bobs from my scrap desk and that case of crop stuff I showed you last month.
 


Here is just a sampling of my pages thus far.  I am up-to-date through last week – Valentines Day.

 

 

Quick Pocket Notes:

· I used New Year’s Eve – New Year’s day photos for the title page.

· Most of my journaling is done on the computer and printed on the weekly place cards. I set up blanks in Microsoft Word with both left and right justified margins.

· On Week One, I cut a slit in the back of the protector so that a tab could pop through for a photo that faced back, and I popped the camera on the outside.

· I printed one free downloaded card that I have had for a couple of years.  All my downloads reside in one place in my photo gallery, so they are easy to peruse. I altered it by adding text to suit my story.

· It is okay to go bigger once in a while, on a week of vacation I expanded to use 2 1/2 pages or  5 vertical columns – by inserting a 6 x 12 divided protector. (Part shown above.)

· Clear stickers on photos, and transparencies over color cards add lots of interest.

I conjecture that the key to Project Life may be doing just enough to get by, enough to tell a story over the length of a year, but not so much that you are spending all your scrappy time on it. After the first week, I have only been spending about an hour each week to choose and print photos, journal a bit, add cards and embellishments.

Now, while you keep wondering if I will stick with it, I am wondering what you are doing with Project Life? Anything? Anything, at all?