2018 Project Life – Part 1.

There really is something so freeing and inviting about starting a new album for the year. To try a new format and size and to improve on things that may not have been working for you. Of course there’s no real reason that you can’t change things up during the year, but it’s much easier to start with a clean slate. There’s also the allure of not yet being ‘behind’, of being able to document things that just happened and haven’t yet had the chance to become mixed up among the weeks.

Format

I’m documenting in a 9×12 Messy Book. It’s got white and black polka dots on the outside and a gold circular spine label that I haven’t done anything with yet. A Beautiful Mess no longer sell scrapbooking supplies but Studio Calico also make albums in this size. 9×12 is much bigger than the 6×8 and 6×7 albums I used in 2016 and 2015. The size allows me to document more photos in the way Project Life was designed, slipping photos and journalling cards into pockets. I do a week per side of the page and am planning at this stage to use the same page protectors for each week. This gives me three or four 3×4 vertical photos and one or two 4×6 horizontal photos per week. In weeks where there is more to document, (trips, special occasions, day in the life etc.) I would like to do smaller inserts like Ali Edwards between the weeks. One of the things I like about the 9×12 albums is that you can use 6×8 inserts without having to punch extra holes. I’d also like to purchase some 6×12 page protectors at some point for this purpose as I like the way they look within the bigger album. I’m trying really hard to stick to a scrappy budget this year though so I’m going to have to wait a while before I can justify them.

Title page and January

I decided to subscribe to Ali Edward’s new Stories by the Month. Each kit comes with a little stamp, some journalling cards and some chipboard stickers. I’ve also picked up quite a few Studio Calico kits when they’ve gone on sale and have been using a mixture of these journaling and filler cards. The weekly word art is from Paislee Press and comes as PNG and JPG files. So far I’ve been printing them on journaling cards but plan to also print them on photos for weeks where I want to use two 4×6 photos. I really love the way everything’s turned out so far but would like to put a little more journalling in the album going forward. I purchased Ali Edward’s Storytelling With Project Life class and have been very slowly working my way through the videos. I’m really looking forward to putting more of her steps in action over the following months.