aud stuff

Project Life Weeks 13 and 14

Week 13: my first week created with the Digital Project Life Honey edition — LOVE these colors and patterns. Bright, cheerful, bold. So fun to work with. Still doing a lot of scanning and digital manipulation. For example, on the card about Cami’s recitation of the Preamble, I created a Wordle of the text and then clipped it to the speech bubble card. Creates a fun graphic that I think looks better than just the text written out. For Cassidy’s art show, I scanned her certificate and used it for the text instead of writing something myself.

Week 14: This week was a little more basic. Less embellishing, and what was used was just placed directly on top of my photos.

Project Life Week 12 and an insert

Playing catch-up right now. I’ve got everything sketched out with my notes sheets, so that helps when I get behind. I’m also enjoying some great new kits, like the Kraft and Honey editions from AC Digitals. Here’s a look at Week 12.

Our weekends for the next month or so are going to all look the same, so one of my big goals in the upcoming month will be trying to find ways to make soccer tournaments all look different… I started with our first one on this week’s insert. I used half a page for Cami’s tournament and half a page for Cassidy’s trip to State Governor’s Cup.

#projectlife weeks 10 and 11

I got a little bit behind but I’m slowly catching up. Weeks 10 and 11 here. Just 3 weeks and an insert to finish up over the next couple of days to be back on track. Still loving this project and putting all these bits and pieces together.

I always seem to get to a point in the middle of creating these layouts, when I’ve got my photos in place along with my basic journaling and filler cards, but I still haven’t added all the little accents and embellishments. That’s usually the point where I get really frustrated and hate what I’ve put together so far. I usually just have to tell myself — Done is better than perfect — and then move on. And then suddenly, once I’ve added a label here, some word art there, a few more embellishments here — that’s when it all comes together and I’m back in love with it.

#projectlife week 9

…and that brings me up to date on this project. Feels good to get back on track.

#projectlife week 8

Still loving this project. Grabbing some physical items and scanning them in this week, like a note from one of Cassidy’s teachers. Also heading to the internet to find logos, ads, and other digital memorabilia to help flesh out these pages.

One of the things I’ve changed is my date card. I wanted to do some inserts (Valentine’s Day, Hoover Dam, etc) but adding an extra page into a digitally printed book is not easy. It throws off the pairing of the weeks unless your insert has a front and back, which mine didn’t. So to solve that issue I decided that I’d do a large card to kick off the start of each month, but the weeks within each month would be marked by smaller date cards and more emphasis on keeping up with dates on individual cards when needed. That way,  it doesn’t really matter if my weekly spreads are together, because the larger date cards set the “month” and I can just have however many pages I need. That’s also useful when we have weeks where we just don’t generate two whole pages worth of “stuff.” It’s a simple solution that just required me to approach the project from a different perspective — always a good thing.

#projectlife Week 7

I’ve had these pages half-finished and sitting on my desktop for a couple of weeks now. One of the things I’ve been trying to do is drop my photos in just as soon as the week is finished — or even while the week is still on-going. It helps me get started and gives me a good idea of what kind of fillers I’ll need for the week — sometimes I need search out more “stuff” and sometimes I have to make some major decisions about just which photos to include. I’ve included a Valentine’s Day page as well, which will just be an insert — I’ll talk more about my inserts in my next post.

Book Recommendations: Fairy Tales and Auto-Buy Authors

Today is Tell a Fairytale Day. I originally had planned to create a great list of fairytale novels that I LOVE, but then I discovered that The Hub had pretty much written my post for me already. So just go read their post and then check out those books — I back them all wholeheartedly (except the Sheri Tepper novel, I didn’t care much for it). Tam Lin and Jack of Kinrowan are two of my TOP 10 favorite novels of all time.

In the meantime, Epic Reads posted their Tuesday Top 10 topic over on their Facebook page, and I really liked the topic so I thought I’d use that for a quick post today. 

They wanted to know whose books you automatically buy when they are released, without any research, reviews, or reservation. Here’s my Top 10 (in no particular order):

1. Maggie Stiefvater

2. Neil Gaiman

3. Tim Powers

4. Johnathan Carroll

5. Charles de Lint

6. Patricia A McKillip

7. John Green

8. Melina Marchetta

9. Libba Bray

10. Cathrynne M. Valente

So now’s your time to share? Who are some of  your “auto-buy” authors?

Project Life: caught up

So I’m finally caught up with my Project Life spreads. I don’t think I even got started until the last week of January or so. It feels nice to have those early weeks completed though — I kept worrying that I would forget something.

Still sticking with the same basic product lineup, although I found a great set of 3x4 card freebies from Miss Tina, plus some fun photo templates from the Persnickety Prints blog.

Here’s a look at the left side:

I’ve spotted some new products over at Pixels & Company that I’m going to have to try out. I’d also like to get my hands on a couple of the newest PL kits from Becky Higgins — particularly the Honey and Kraft editions. I don’t think they’ve been released digitally yet, so I’ll keep patiently waiting.

Here’s the right side:

Project Life: Week 1 and Week 5

I am still loving this project so much. Here’s the full spread for Week 1:

I love that with digital pages, I’m not hampered by the physical pockets. That makes adding images like the book cover composite on the right side so simple. This was something I had created for my blog, and I just tucked it right into that spot.

I really love that I can be as detailed as I want — when I have the time — but if I’m feeling a little pressed for time and needing to get caught up, I can save the details for another page.

Truthfully, though? It’s those little details that really make my heart content. :)

Here’s a look at Week 5: we spent part of it at home and part in Vegas, so that’s how I split the pages again.

I’m using my scanner quite a lot. I scanned in a couple of our boarding passes from the flight, one of the cashout tickets from the casino, and a brochure that showed the floorplan of the hotel where we stayed.

I’m also using a lot of digital images from the web — logos and other bits and pieces. With digital, again it’s really easy to layer items without adding bulk. For example, on the page below, if you’ll look closely at the fondue picture, you’ll see that I actually used the Max Brenner sketch that’s part of his logo. I just extracted the line drawing, changed the blend mode to overlay, and put it right on top of the photo. It’s an awesome little detail that I love and that is so easy to do with digital.

Project Life: Week 4

I’ve long toyed with the idea of using Project Life (or some version of it) to capture memories. I love seeing all the different ways that other people have put the project to use in their own lives, but I’ve never been able to drag some papers, elements, and photos onto a digital canvas and get started. (While those little page protectors are really cool, there is NO WAY I am bringing more physical scrapbooking stuff back into my house. Nu-uh.) 

Part of it is a natural rebellion in me that keeps me from doing what everyone else is doing, just because everyone else is doing it. (Oprah’s Book Club is a perfect example. Or Harry Potter — I was YEARS behind on that phenomenon.) Another part was the indecision — what colors to use? What layouts? Being unable to decide meant that I was unable to start.

All that has changed. Last night, I completed my first Project Life spread: Week 4. And now I can’t stop looking at it. I’ve pulled the images up on my computer multiple times today, just to stare at all the little details that capture MY LIFE during this past week. I love it. I absolutely love it.

Suddenly, all the things that had kept me from scrapbooking — finding a way to pull together all the little moments of our lives, coming up with a page design, figuring out what stories to capture — don’t seem to matter because this project is made up of bits and pieces. A few overarching design constants keep it pulled together, but it doesn’t have to be all matchy-matchy. 

I’m using a kraft paper for my background, pulled from the Dayplanner collab by Paislee Press and One Little Bird. Valorie Wibbens’ Journalers and Journalers Vol. 2 give me mini-canvases to use within my 3x4 and 4x6 blocks, which is great for breaking up the design into smaller elements. Gennifer Bursett’s Snippy Alphas and the fonts Brain Flower and KBSothinteresting help keep everything uniform from page to page too. I’ll also be using Gennifer Bursett’s Check It cards and her Photo Journalers on each page. 

I really love the colors in Liz and Peppermint’s Dayplanner collab; they work really nicely with the filter that I use on almost all of my pictures when I run them through Instagram, so that kit will remain a constant from week to week. I also really love Gen Bursett’s Made of Awesome kit, Count on Me from Deena Rutter, and Mod Pop from Robyn Meierotto. In Review elements from One Little Bird will probably show up often too. Beyond that, it will be a matter of just pulling bits and pieces from whatever kits spark my interest and support what’s going on each week.