Project Life 2014 ~ January x

Hello and here is the first post of my journey with Project Life this year. Having failed miserably last year to get going and stay, I really wanted to give it a try this year. I have got alot of scrapbooking paper all ready and a whole trolley set aside just for this project, however this month I got slightly waylaid again and in the end I decided to go for a month of digital scrapbooking.

And here are 3 of the layouts I created.

I have ended up doing single pages throughout January, one because I didn't want to force myself to make double page spreads straight off and two because even though I thought I had taken lots of photos, it ended up that I really hadn't.

For the layouts, I used the two free Becky Higgins templates, this is template A........

They are really easy to work with in Photoshop and as they were freebies, they didn't break the bank either. I had previously purchase a minikit of Maggie Holmes minikit which was on a special offer and only cost about £6.00 and I have used it throughout the pages in January. It uses alot of pinks, blues and lemons which I loved. It has a vintage feel too.

I also used the banners from Serendipity Designs and circular tabs from Studio Calico's Coppermouth collection. The circular numbers are from Becky Higgins Project Life Cherry edition.

I have completed weeks 3 and 5 as well but have as yet to make my title page as I haven't decided what to go for. If you would like to see any of the pieces I have collected for my Project Life project on Pinterest, you can see my board here.

How are you progressing with Project Life? I would love to hear.

Project Life 2014 x

Oh dear, so honest admission time here, I truly failed at Project Life in 2013. There were a number of reasons for this:

• my health took a nosedive pretty early in the year and although I took lots of photographs, journalled and kept memorabilia, I never really got into the swing of documenting my life the way I should have.
• motivation. Although I loved the process of getting the pieces together to save and remember, when it came to the actual putting it all together, I found it really tough going trying to make pages. 

Over the last few weeks, people who have completed Project Life for the first time like my friend Abi or who have been doing it for a number of years like Cathy Zielske and Elise Blaha have given a lot of hints and tips, plus reviewed their processes of documenting their life over the year. If you are digital Project Lifer and want some great tips on organising your stash then Erika has some lovely tips.

One of the things I felt I needed was some jollying up so when my parents asked if their was anything scrapbooky I wanted for my birthday I had just had an email from Big Picture Scrapbooking about this class

So I asked if I could have some money towards it and they paid for it. Which was really lovely of them. So I will be taking part in Project Real Life because real life can be pretty messy and you need a push sometimes.

I am going to have a good think about how I plan and set aside time to complete my pages. Like Abi I feel that pushing yourself to do too much each week can be hard so I'm going to aim for 1 page in a week and if there is more then that is a bonus.

I was invited to join a Facebook group called Daily Snappers which is set up with a year of prompt words to encourage you to take photographs everyday. I actually do takes picture almost everyday anyway so this shouldn't be so hard and I will use this resource as encouragement and prompter but not give myself a hardtime if my picture that day isn't anything to do with the prompt. I think that will be a good motto to stand by ''Don't give yourself a hard time''.

Part of keeping up with Project Life will involve doing the weekly project ''Currently'' with Kristin Tweedale of Rukristin Papercrafts. I began taking part sporadically last year but it is such a simple but very effective way of chronicling certain aspects of your week that it fits perfectly with Project Life and keeping me focused. This year Kristin is going to be doing different coloured cards each month so that will aid with colour coordination on the pages.

I have also been looking at some of the helpful ideas on Pinterest about Project Life and as I already have a board dedicated to the project have been adding extra bits and bobs. There is so much help and support out there. There are amazingly talented bloggers who have produced some fabulous digital freebies to share as well as products to purchase. I may do a combination of digital and paper work as the year moves on.

So I hope you join me as I take another stab at this project for 2014.

Project Life Album and title page 2013.

Ok, ok I know I made a banner telling you when and what I would be blogging this year but sadly the Bipolar season hit when I least expected it well I NEVER expect it, so all my plans went out of the window. I am now playing serious catch-up on life and the Bipolar is not over by a long shot. However, I am trying to find points of time when I feel motivated, to actually come here and try and keep some semblance of normality alive, not least because it means I feel a sense of achievement and I know you guys will have something interesting to read.

Here is the kit I am using from a previous post.

So here is a little intro to the album and my initial thoughts. Below is the decorated album I have completed. I used some patterned paper pieces left from another project and added some camera Washi tape, twine, a journalling tag, a paper doily and a rose, leaves and chipboard butterflies and a wooden dragonfly. I the used some pink glittery Thickers and black lettering for the album title. I liked the red patterned paper primarily as it has the days of the week and months on it which is exactly what Project Life is all about.

I decided to keep the title page very simple and I thought this picture of my local sewing shop's front door fitted that perfectly. It is a new year and a new door opening. I simply printed the photo in 8.5 x 11 and added the title in glittery pink thickers.

I hope your projects are moving forward well and I will be back soon to share my work so far each week.

Glitter Girl challenge and a catch-up

Hi everyone and welcome back ME. Life has had a rather busy sting of late so all my lovely blog plans went slightly out the window and into the snow. Yeah it SNOWED! Did you notice?

Anyhow, I am now back and managed to do this week's Glitter girl challenge. This week was all about colour and how to use patterned papers when you've got a photo with loads of colour. I actually had a photo with a big colour of grey and so used that as my starting point. It's a collage I did when I made lil sis's 40th birthday album. I got some small pictures on it which I thought I would use at a later date and it felt just right for this challenge.

So here is my layout......................

The picture is about 8 x 6 from Boots and I loved all the little images. Because the predominant colour was grey I felt I could go with quite bright patterned papers and went for a bright floral design and then added in some accents of pink, red, yellow, blue to highlight colours with in the collage pictures themselves.

Although you can't really tell, the thickers are black glittery letters which I felt was good for a birthday/celebration layout.

If you want to see Glitter Girl's video you can watch it below..........




Also it Snowed and South Horrington looked like Narnia. Willow being the cat she is went out playing and I caught her for another layout.............

I am a little behind with Project Life because of life events but I sat down and watched some online TV the other day and made a load of card inserts of the right size ready to get it organised. One of the things I have decided to do is add in my Project 365 photographs each week as a collage which is really easy to produce using Picassa.

Here are my collages for weeks 1 and 2.................

I'll be back to explain the week 2 and week 3 choices probably tomorrow. Picassa is really great for screen captures too.

Anyway hope you are all safe and warm wherever you live and I am counting the weeks down to our bloggers meetup in March.

Project Life 2013 - the kit.

 

 Hi everyone and welcome to my first Project Life 2013 post. So Project Life is a back to basics way of recording and remembering your everyday life initiated by Becky Higgins. Becky says that all you need are a binder, page protectors and photos/memorabilia and notes to get started. What else you do to your story is up to you.

As this is the first I have decided to talk a bit about my kit which I have put together.

I didn't want to spend any money on new things, although I may need to but more page protectors and card to print on, and so I have primarily shopped my stash, of which there is ALOT!


I found a. 8.5 x 11 inch folder by American Crafts which is  D-ring album. I like these albums because they are easily available and you can get page protectors in a variety of styles to fit them. The album already has some normal size page protectors in it and I also found a pack of 6 x 12 inch page protectors which I will cut down. For variety I wanted some divided page protectors but couldn't find anything online until I searched on UK Scrappers and a lady there suggested some pages from WH Smith which are designed for trading cards. The packs are £6.99 so I bought one set to see how I get along with them first. Although if you can buy online they are half price.

I then went through my patterned papers and pulled out papers which I really liked, no distinctive colour scheme, style or design just things I loved. I also pulled out some plain cardstock in different colours and also some plain Kraft card. Next I hunted through my stash for a variety of different letter stickers. I have found lots of tiny letters in differing colours and some larger letters too. I also found some sticker sheets which phrases on them which you can see below..............

Next I decided to find some key stamp sets which would fit well into the journalling ideas. Here are the ones I have chosen....................

The top stamp set is a freeby from a magazine I found. The one next to it is by Elle's studios and features a numbered journalling block which is no longer in their shop I'm afraid. The one bottom right is by Ali Edwards for Technique Tuesday and features 2 journalling blocks and finally the Stamps Away set is called ''Journalling'' but again I can't find it online either.

I then went wild looking for embellishments which include some buttons, washi tapes, tags, brads, stickers, gems, glimmer mist, ribbon etc and the whole kit looks like this.............

The clear box is a 12 x 12 box which is about 4 inches deep which is full and then the clear bag is also packed full. I am putting everything together in a flash shopping bag so I know where everything is. I will of course be using punches and stamp paraphenalia too.

Finally I have made a Project Life Pinterest board which has all the ideas I've found and also products I will be using. You can find that here. There are lots of downloadable pieces online so if you're doing Project Life you may find the board useful. I have also joined the Project Life Community on Big Picture Classes. It is completely free to sign up and you can access the forum where loads of other Project Lifers give help and hints to fledgings like me. I have also been to Becky Higgin's site where again there are loads of tips and if you want to buy her products they are also there too.

Some well-known Project Lifers include Ali Edwards and Cathy Zielski who often give great hints, tips and downloads and tutorials too. Well worth a look.

I have also signed up to a free daily diary page called ''OhLife''. It is gr8 because they email you every evening to remind you to complete your journalling for that day. All you do is reply to the email and hit send and your diary is saved and stored ready for you to start writing up your journal cards in your album, how clever is that?

So my next plan is to decorate the front cover and make Week one and I hope to show those later this week. Hope this post has also helped you learn a bit more about Project Life and how you can get involved.