This was election week. I went with a red (mostly) and blue theme. 🙂

I added an insert because I had several instagram photos this week and I wanted to include them all. I have the hardest time leaving out pictures, because they usually tell different stories, they aren’t just the same shot in many copies, and using inserts is ideal for me.

This wasn’t an instagram photo, but I cropped it square anyway. 😉

I rarely use black&white pictures, but I do love the look – I just have to remind myself to try it out more often!

I wore a pretty outfit to a concert but DH didn’t want to take a picture of me, so I took this shoeless self shot to at least have something to remember it by.

And this is all for Week 46! 🙂 My mom has been here for the past 10 days, so I’m a bit behind: Week 47 is halfway done, and as soon as my mom leaves 🙁 I will get back to working on it. And December is starting soon – I can’t wait to put some Christmas goodies to use in my album! 😉

Still catching up on posting the latest weeks up on the blog. This is the week when I started being current again: Week 44. 🙂 It was Halloween week.

I started with some digital journaling cards by Digital Design Essentials and then just added some of the grid journaling cards, both in 3×4 and 4 x 6 size. I cut down the 4×6 to 4×4 to fit in the pockets on the right side. The photo pocket pages I used are Design F and the 3×3 design by We R Memory Keepers.

My color scheme was orange, black and pink. Nice for Halloween! I used some cuts that I made with my Silhouette digital cutter.

Here are the detailed shots.

I think this title card was perfect for Halloween week. 😉 Spooky but not scary. 🙂 The “beware” card went very well with the journaling, since we had a rough day indeed that day! The title was cut from a paper from the Crate Paper Snow Day collection. I bought it a couple of years ago and it is much thicker than the papers they sell today! It gave me some trouble cutting in the Silhouette. 🙂

Each year I put together a calendar for our families (I’ve been doing this since 2009!) and have them printed by Artscow because you just cannot beat the value. So in September/October I’m usually cranking out all the calendar toppers to place my order before Christmas gets too close. 🙂 I got my calendars and they turned out just great! I added piece of the shipping slip on the journaling card, along with a stamp by Ali Edwards stamped with Ranger Tim Holtz Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink Pad.

Here I used a handy stamp alpha by EK Success.

Lots of instagram shots are finding their way into my album! 🙂

Stepping Stone alpha stamp (numbers) by Studio Calico/Hero Arts.

I bought my mom’s Christmas present! I added the sticker that came with it on my card, along with a picture from the website, and I used a snowflake stamp as a border to go with the Christmas theme. 🙂

I’ve been adding more full size pictures in my Project Life album, and I love it!

I love cutting vellum in my Silhouette!

I love these 4″x4″ slots – perfect to fit instagram photos!

After cutting this pretty snowflake out of vellum, I needed to make it stand out, so I sprayed a journaling card (cut down to 4×4) with brown mist.

Here I combined some letters cut with the Silhouette and Studio Calico alpha stamps.

And that’s it for Week 44! 😉

 

On Catching Up..
I have recently changed the way I approach my Project Life album, and I’m excited to be sharing more recent pages soon! Before the summer I fell back with my PL, and even though I heard advice from several people who had been able to catch up by working on the current week and then working backwards, I stubbornly refused to work current, and kept working chronologically. Since I use different type of protectors, I didn’t want to be locking in the design of the previous week by working on the later one. (how stupid is that?? 😉 But I kept at it for months!)
The problem is that once you’re behind, you don’t really have a strong motivation not to fall even more behind. You’re already behind, so what’s another week going to do? The result is that I let an entire month go by without completing a weekly spread! So a few weeks ago I decided to give this new approach a try: work on the latest week, and work on the older ones at the same time. It has been going well so far: I started with Week 44, then caught up with Week 43, and completed Week 45 on time. I haven’t finished week 46 (last week) yet because I was away on a business trip, and I’ve been super busy since I got back, but I have about half the pictures printed out already.
My mom is arriving later today for a 2 week visit, so I will likely fall behind again, but I want to keep up this method because I know it will help me get caught up faster.

Style Change
One thing I noticed when I compared the albums of scrapbookers I admire with mine is that I have so many photos in mine that I often have to make collages to fit all the pictures. Collages are great, but I love having bigger pictures in my album. So I’ve been moving towards larger pictures, even if it means I need to add an insert. I’ve added an insert for the past couple of weeks, and even though it will make my album bulkier in the end, it makes me happy.

What Next?
11 months in, I’m still excited about this project, and I cherish my album dearly.
I will keep doing PL in 2013 as well. I have too much fun stamping in my album to give it up, but I have simplified my style (I don’t try to color match as hard as I used to) and I make extensive use of the 3×4 and 4 x 6 Grid Cards. Another common theme I noticed in the pages I admire is that all of them have a white border around pictures, so I think I will start trying that look in 2013.
Photographing and blogging my pages is a huge time commitment, but it’s a good motivator too, so I plan to keep doing that as much as possible.

What’s your approach with Project Life?