February 25, 2012

Studio Saturday- Project Life Catch Up ¹

by Wendy • Project Life, Studio Saturdays

I to apologize ahead of time for the poor quality of photos for this post.  I should have known better and taken these photos during the afternoon hours instead of when the sun is setting and the lighting in my art room is poor.  I had to use the flash and so that is why you will see the flash spot on some of the photos.

It was an exciting weekend last weekend for those of us participating in Project Life.  Amazon (the only place that sells PL) finally received the new shipment of all of the PL goodies that have been sold out over the last few months.  I don’t think that Becky Higgins could have predicted how popular her line would be but everyone and anyone was clamoring to buy this stuff once it was released.  Unfortunately, most of the core elements of the PL kit were sold out until this past weekend, and so those of us who started the project on January 1 had to make due with what we already had on hand or until those items were restocked.  Within a matter of hours after the PL kit pieces were listed on Amazon, they were sold out.  I couldn’t believe it, but I am glad I went ahead and picked up a few of her things because I would have been left high and dry had I waited.  I wasn’t completely sold about her page protectors but everyone raved about them so much, I decided to get a set.  I also bought two of the core kits.  One of those kits I will be sharing with my sister who is also doing PL.

I just got caught up with my album last night.  So far I am keeping things pretty simple. I am okay with that but I am feeling the need to up my style.  I don’t want it to look like any run of the mill photo album but I don’t want it to be complicated either.  The layout below is from the last week in February.  I realized after I uploaded all of my photos for this post that I actually don’t have a picture of the complete layout.  I was feeling so special about the little sub-page with the Chinese lions in it, that I completely forgot to take a photo of the layout.  Anyway, that was the week of Chinese New Year.  I had a newspaper from a Chinese restaurant in Houston, so I cut out one of my favorite ads, sprayed it to keep the newspaper from yellowing, and put it in a 6×12 page protector that I cut down.

The next week was when we went to California.  I didn’t want to have to worry about trying to figure out how I was going to shove a bunch of pictures into a layout, so I printed out 6 of some of my favorite photos to put in a page protector and then I used My Publisher to print out to 12×12 scrapbook pages.  I embellished the photos very simply only including a receipt, writing on a photograph, and adding a button to the last photo.

We took advantage of Disney’s PhotoPass program and purchased several photos of us taken at the character meals.  These were about the only times we could get shots of us as a family.  I included two of these photos.  I left them in their paper frames and they fit perfectly into an 8 1/2x 11 page protector.

My Publisher offers a digital scrapbooking and printing service and I took full advantage of it for these next two pages.  They are super pricey but I am happy with the quality of the prints.  They offer pre-designed layouts and I thought the one below was perfect since I wanted to showcase a lot of photographs.  All I had to do was drop and drag the photos into the spots, add some journaling, and order the page.  I like the results, although I am kicking myself because I misspelled a word and now I am totally distracted by it every time I look at the page.

One of the products that I bought from the Becky Higgins line is the pocket envelope pages.  I love, love, love to collect memorabilia (just ask John and he will roll his eyes at you.  He usually has to figure out a way to haul all of my stuff back from trips.) and so I knew that these were a must for me.  I added maps, receipts, extra photos, and some other goodies from our trip into the pocket page below.

I knew the week of Valentine’s Day would be short on photos, since I was in Ft. Lauderdale for a conference.  I ended up with a lot less photos than I thought because I didn’t get the opportunity to take as many photos on my trip as I would have hoped.  In this layout I used the new core kit, Amber, along with some various items that I had in my stash.  I also included a little valentine that Catherine made.

This last week I decided to be very simple with the layout.  I am not sure I like it this simple but I’m happy that it’s done.  I’m sure that if I keep up with this album there will be a mix of more elaborate layouts and more simple layouts depending on what’s happening at the time.  I didn’t add any extra embellishments to the photos except for the little one in the very middle where I added text to the photo itself.  I used the core kit, Clementine, as well as a list paper that I had in my stash.

Right now I am only doing one page protector worth of photos and journaling a week.  I didn’t want to get overwhelmed with having to fill two of these page protectors up, especially when I have had a week like this past week where I took so few photographs.  Again, I am sure there will be times where I have multiple page layouts.  That is the beauty of this project.  It is what it is, take it or leave it.  I already have two months worth of our year chronicled and that makes me very happy.  Catherine loves to look at photos, so I know this will be something that she enjoys over and over.  So far I am happy I jumped on the PL bandwagon!