Category: crafty

This is a quick Project Life spread for you! It’s from the weeks of January 27 to February 9, which was just me on maternity leave and also included my birthday.

Left hand side:

Right hand side (the black and white striped card is from Big City Quiet):

That’s it! My favorite thing so far is the week in review cards. Typing them up is super easy because I already write down the events of each day in a journal, and I can include most of what happens this way. If I want to write something more in depth then I will use a whole journaling card to do so, but usually this does the trick and I can just let it and the photos tell the story!

More Project Life! I’m trying to get caught up with posting so bear with me. This is the week that Liam was born, so it all revolves around that plus settling in to maternity leave. This spread took me the longest to complete, mostly because I had to narrow down soooo many pictures, but it was still pretty quick. Here is the full thing below, without the inserts:

And here it is with them:

Left hand side (the photos are pretty self-explanatory):

That gold heart sticker is actually what they use for babies to keep the monitor on them in the hospital. The lactation consultant gave it to Meredith when she visited us so it’s pretty perfect.

Even though I didn’t actually do birth announcements until a few weeks later, I thought it was more appropriate to include it here. I stapled it to a sheet of vellum so that it would fit in a 5×7 page protector, and you can still see the details on the back.

Then I used a regular 8.5×11 page protector for this souvenir record of birth with his footprints.

On the back of that I printed out his birth story and tucked it in.

Here’s the right hand side:

I’m loving doing circle photos like this, especially when the background is distracting, and then journaling around the edges.

Looking at this makes me so happy!

Here we go, first real spread of this year!

This might not be exactly representative of the way the album will look from here on out, because I printed the photos before Liam was born and before I had nailed down the aesthetic for the album. But here you can see some of the things that I intend to carry out.

For example, you can see the plain white date cards and how I’m not rounding corners anymore. I like the squared off look, it’s one less step that I have to do, and I’m not using as much of the core kits anymore so it’s not a big issue for consistency.

I’m also using these week in review cards from Paislee Press. I’ve decided to type them so I can fit more on it, and with this extra journaling I have to do even less embellishing on the photos themselves. Simple and fast is the name of the game!

Hey, remember when I was super pregnant? It’s so weird for me to look at pictures of myself with that huge belly now. Below you can see an example of how I’m going to use vellum for journaling.

Overall this spread is pretty neutral and moody but I like it! In the future I want to try bordering some of my photos with white, and doing some circle photos as well. I’m going to continue the plain date cards and week in review journaling, too. More soon!

Hey, so I am actually totally caught up with Project Life now, but I am behind on posting! The reason for that is because I put it all together in just a few days, and the title page was the last thing I completed. First I want to share it with you, and then I want to talk about my plan for Project Life this year.

I’m really happy with this title page! The big “2014” and the “hello twentyfourteen” printables are from Caylee Grey. As for the photos, I wanted pictures of us but I’m not very good at making posed portraits look anything but cheesy so I decided to take pictures of each of our hands, which is also personal but a bit unexpected. The only one I really struggled with is Meredith’s because she wouldn’t cooperate, so I grabbed this photo when she was distracted. I don’t love it, so I’ll probably replace it when I can get a better one where the focus is her hands and not the toys.

So now for my plan! Even though when I go back to work soon I will have more time than before, lately I am all about simplifying. I don’t want this to be the ONLY creative thing I have time for in my life. Therefore, I’m embracing the minimal approach, and it’s lucky that I like the look. Here is what you can expect from this album:

>continuing with two weeks per spread

>consistent plain white date card

>typed week in review cards

>no rounding of corners

>lots of photos with very little embellishment

>including white space like borders and circle photos

>no new core kit, but using filler and journaling cards from the ones I have left over, plus extra printables I find that I like

Tomorrow I’ll be posting my first real spread of the year, so you’ll be able to see what I mean regarding some of the above! After getting caught up I can say confidently that I love this new approach (even though it’s not TOO different, but every little change matters). I think it’s going to be pretty easy to keep up with and so far I love the way it looks, too!