2014 Blog Plans

I have something exciting happening on my blog in 2014!

Each week, I will have a prompt for your Project Life spread. You are welcome to use the prompt to complete a layout and then share a link to your project in the comment section. The deadline to enter will be at the end of the month and then I will choose a few winners to send some scrappy goodies to. You can create a new layout or submit a page you've already completed that fulfills the prompt. My main goal is to share ideas and help people when they get stuck in a rut.

I wish you all a happy, healthy new year!

Quick Links 12/29

Here are a few more links to some goodies for PL inspiration! Just click the photo to check out the sites.

Hello Forever Project Life Journal/Planner pages Freebie

I just love Marcy Penner's Hello Forever shop- she has some great printables on there! These are her signature Project Life Journal/Planner pages...for FREE! Many scrappers have these printed and bound at their local office supply store.

Page Lifter by Elise Blaha Cripe

If you watched Becky Higgins on Creative Life, you know now how important that little plastic piece in the binder is. It's called a page lifter and makes sure that your page protectors lay flat when you close your album. I love how Elise Blaha Cripe covered it and made it part of her album.

Becky Higgins' Freebies: Jade Album Label

Check out Becky Higgins' Freebies page on her new blog! There are some great holiday card templates, PDFs for the different page designs, album labels for the spines of your album, printable quote cards and wallpapers for your phone or tablet. So fun!

New Year's Printables List from Lil' Luna

Lil' Luna has a collection of free printables for New Year's that would be great for Project Life inspiration or just for fun on Dec. 31.

Quick Links 12/22

Here are some fun things I think you might enjoy to use in your PL layouts or for inspiration. Just click on the photos to visit the link!



Make a Tiny Origami Santa from How About Orange

Aren't these little guys adorable?! I think they would be super cute to add on a gift tag you made from the Holiday mini kit or Merry and Bright. Or even in your layout about when your kiddo visited Santa or with your Christmas Eve journaling card.


Write.Click.Scrapbook has Amy's Christmas Questionnaire for Kids

Amy wrote a post sharing some questions she asked her son about Christmas. When you visit the blog, click the photo to see the questions larger or download the PDF she included. I think this would be a fun way to include your child's handwriting in some filler cards for December pages, December Daily, or an insert celebrating the holiday.



30 Handmade Days- New Year's Printable

Speaking of questionnaires, Mique from 30 Handmade Days is blogging about her fantastic New Year's Resolutions printable for kids. I think this would make a great insert for the first pages of your 2014 PL album.



Two Peas in a Bucket Weekly Project Life Videos

If you are looking for some inspiration for your 2014 PL layouts or just need some background noise while you're catching up with 2013, I would definitely recommend Two Peas in a Bucket's weekly Project Life video series. I might do a PL video marathon this weekend since I'll be finishing up 2013 and creating my title page for 2014.

I wish you all happy holidays and a prosperous new year! I hope to share more with you in 2014!

Scrapping Wrapping

Hey all! I am working on updating my December Daily but in the meantime I've been wrapping some Christmas gifts! I was super inspired by this project by Marcy Penner in the Studio Calico gallery. I pulled together a bucket of supplies and got to work.

Here are the gifts I wrapped...aren't they pretty? And they are SO easy!

I used turquoise tissue paper and wrapped silver cord around it. I added the sparkly snowflake tag, some turquoise gems, and a large gray tag. The cord, snowflake tag and gems were all from Target. Seriously- they have some AWESOME embellishments in the gift wrap department at Target this year.

This one uses kraft wrapping paper, red cord from Target (comes with the silver from above), a plain off-white tag, some washi tape, and a glittery star tag (from last year at Target). There is a "to" and "from" on the back of the star.

This one has kraft paper with red raffia (from Target of course! Comes on a roll with pink, green, and red), wood veneer star from Studio Calico, a silver "A" from the dollar bins at Target, and silver polka-dotted washi from Michaels all on an off-white tag.

Love this one! I have a baby shower coming up and was so excited to embellish the gift. This box is from the regular gift wrap aisle at Target. There is twine from the holiday gift wrap area at Target, a small yellow-striped bag (from Studio Calico- I stapled just the front of it to the orange tag so it could hold the gift receipt in it), a large orange tag, a small off-white tag, various sequins from Studio Calico, a silver "B" for baby (from the dollar bin at Target), and a paper clip bow from Studio Calico.

Just think of all the cute stuff you have leftover from Project Life that you could use to embellish!

How cute would any of these look with a tag on top? Or that "B" card for a baby gift?

 

How about that "Future" card for a graduation gift?

 

 

What about that adorable "Love" card or those polka dots from Jade?

(I'm biased- this is my favorite kit so far!)

 

Love that "You" card with the heart...and that black and white woodgrain is one of my favorite cards ever! Any of the cards in this kit would be great for a background underneath a shipping tag.

 

What about the black or red "I Love" cards from Sunshine? Or that orange or light blue "Today" card? And that confetti card would be great for a background! Love that one!

 

The possibilities are endless...and beautiful!

December Daily: Title Page and Day 1

Happy December!
I finished up my title page and the page for Day 1 today. Since I print at home, I can share my progress with you. :)

 

I put the "December" wood veneer an "2013" flair badge from Studio Calico in the first pocket. I used the transparent snowflake paper with a black and white polka-dot background behind it. The bottom 4x6 pocket includes pieces from the Finnley Whatnots by Glitz. Nothing is permanently stuck down except the "December" pocket items since I'm not in love with it. I am hoping that the bottom 4x6 can have a photo of my family from this season in a 3x4 or 4x6.

 



I used a Tim Holtz label sticker on some Finnley paper with stickers from Glitz. I also have a tiny wood veneer heart from Studio Calico. Today we began December with a family tradition- meat pies. We make pies with pork and onions and then freeze most of them to eat Christmas morning. We learned today that this is a French-Canadian tradition from my husband's grandmother's side of the family. This year we made 16 full-sized pies!

Project Life Mini Album: Vacation

My order from Persnickety Prints arrived today! I recently uploaded some photos of a cruise my husband and I took for our anniversary and ordered some 3x4 and 4x6 prints from PP. I usually print from home but I knew this would be a large undertaking so I was glad to have been able to do a big upload and order.

I pulled my photos, a Becky Higgins Kiwi Mini Album, Olive Core Kit, and two pens to create this album. I wanted to go simple and done with this so I could check it off my to-do list.

Here is a video of my process.

Project Life Mini Album: Vacation

One thing I did forget to share is that I cut two of the page protectors out of the book. I didn't have photos to fill them up so I cut out two of them from the middle. Blasphemous, I know, but my album is complete and I love it!

Becky Higgins on Creative Live

This week Creative Live had Becky Higgins on for a three-day workshop on cultivating a good life through Project Life. She highlighted some products, talked about how PL came to be, and shared stories, ideas, and examples of how people are using PL. they also talked about digital scrapbooking, journaling and taking photos.

If you are interested, they are extending the free rebroadcast of all of the segments this weekend only. You can purchase the series for $99 while it is rebroadcasting but then the price goes up to $149. I would recommend checking it out for free but I don't think I would pay $99 unless I was new to scrapbooking and Project Life. Here is a link for the rebroadcast: http://www.creativelive.com/watch2

I watched live on Wednesday since I was home with a sick kiddo and I was pleasantly surprised with the content. I couldn't imagine how Becky could talk for three days about putting photos in page protectors but it was much more than that. Parts were slow because she had to stretch out the segments but there was a lot of food for thought. Here are my takeaways:

1. Begin with the end in mind. She said this repeatedly. It made me think about why I am doing Project Life. For my kids? For me? For future generations? I think it is a little of each for me. I want my kids to see how much I love and value them. I love being creative and feel energized after some time in my craft room. I want to have photos of everyday life and everyday objects to show my grand kids what life was like for my family. 

2. I have a lot of project ideas! I want to keep current on my PL, do a mini album for our anniversary cruise this spring, make an album for my dad with the photos he found, work on my son's school album, and get my old photos out of the box. Sheesh! Priorities!

3. I am *this close* to canceling my PL subscriptions and going super simple with my PL for 2014. I can use my embellishments when I want to make a project or layout. We'll see. Becky made the simple aspects of PL seem very tempting. 

I hope you have a chance to check it out- I laughed and cried and was very grateful to know that there are people just as crazy about Project Life as I am!

Video: December Daily Kit Pull

I've finally finished my video of my December Daily kit pull. In my previous post I told you a bit of the direction I am heading but here are the things I've officially pulled to use this year.

December Daily Kit Pull on YouTube

December Daily?

How many of you are documenting December? Are you using a separate album or putting things in your Project Life pages? I have been thinking long and hard and have finally decided.

Ali Edwards trademarked the December Daily concept so I checked out her December Daily posts here. She is using the exclusive Studio Calico December Daily kit but the price tag was a little too steep for me. The products are lovely and the way Ali has prepped her pages has convinced me to do a separate December Daily for 2013.

Here are the reasons why I am going to do December Daily and Project Life:

1. I have plenty of supplies to use for both projects. Plenty.
2. December is a special month for my family- both of my boys were born in December. Apparently I can't have babies in any other month. My youngest was due in November and still waited until December to make his appearance into the world.
3. I know I will take a million photos during the holidays since it is our favorite time of year.
4. My plan is to take photos of everyday life and holiday happenings and not care if I have the same pictures in both albums. It's just not that big of a deal to me.
5. I love looking at my past years' December Daily albums during Christmas.
6. It will be easier than putting a lot of extra pages into my PL album.
7. I love the Snap/Studio Calico Handbook type of mini albums and page protectors so I can't pass up an excuse to use them!

I've already shopped a tiny bit (even though I have plenty of supplies) and here are a few things I picked out:

Glitz Finnley Collection- look at that adorable deer!



Midnight Core Kit- don't you think this will go well with the Finnley Collection?

Red Snap Binder from Simple Stories- I also purchased extra page protectors (4 3x4s, 2 4x6s, and 1 4x6 with 2 3x4s)

Holiday Mini Kit from Becky Higgins- I am pulling the Christmas cards out of here to use in the album or with PL

I will pull a few other items out and hopefully get a video together for you soon!


Project Life Iris Storage

 

Here's a little video to show how I am storing my Project Life kits.

You can find these Iris cases at Michaels (reg. price $39.99) or at Amazon ($23.19 with free shipping).

Quick Enabler Alert!

Amazon just put several Project Life Core Kits on sale at weird prices. Weird but fabulous! I'd recommend picking up Seafoam or Jade at these super low prices- less than $20!

 

 

There's an App for That

One of the other ways I keep organized in PL is to use technology. I use ohlife.com to record specific journaling for each day. Every night at 8pm (which is when I scheduled the site to email me) I get an email from ohlife that says "How was your day?" I reply to that email and it saves my journaling to a website. I also make a note if I took a photo that day. It is VERY helpful when I get behind in PL because I can look at the website and remember the specific dates of special events and have journaling to copy from that day.

Here are some other apps that might be helpful for you:

momento

Day One

Project 365

My365

Collect

Gratitude365

And a few other fun apps that you might enjoy for PL:

Instaweather

PicTapGo

A Beautiful Mess

Instagram

So- what apps do you recommend? Please post a comment with your favorite!

Planning Notebook

At the beginning of the year I made this video about my Project Life Planning Notebook. I had the best intentions of making more videos...and I promise I will!

Here is how I keep track of my Project Life weeks and plan my page layouts. During the week I really don't have a ton of time to sit and do a layout. I take little snippets of time to pick out pretty washi one day or go through some stamps another day...basically steal away a few minutes just to get a little artsy.

Now that we're over halfway through the year, this notebook is an awesome reminder of what a great year we have had. I love having a "rough draft" of my PL to look back on. It also helps immensely when I get caught up in actual life and need to catch up on my PL spreads.

Now...What You Want!

***Enabler alert! You will want to spend money after reading this post!***

In the last post I shared what you need to start Project Life. This post is the fun stuff. The stuff that you will want to have!

A great Project Life stamp set can go a long way. You can reuse the stamps and many sets come with fantastic captions for your photos. The one above is Daily Details from Elle's Studio and is on sale at Two Peas in a Bucket for $11.24! I also love Storyteller Flashback from ki Memories, Kelly Purkey's For the Record, and Shimelle Laine's Nailed It set.

Another plus is a roller date stamp. You can get one at any office supply store or you can hoard every one that American Crafts has produced because you might need one of the tiny sentiments. Not that I did...but here are a few from AC.

 

Label stickers are always a good idea. I love these from Basic Grey- they have others that coordinate with their latest lines. My other go-to brands are Jillibean Soup, American Crafts, and My Minds Eye.

Alphabet stickers are a great staple to have for your title cards on your spread. These adorable ones are Thickers from the new Amy Tangerine line. I love this set and this set by Amy Tangerine, too!

Then there are small embellishments like flair badges (the ones above are from Studio Calico), shaped paper clips like these, brads like these, or enamel dots like these.

 

It seems like so many companies are jumping on the bandwagon and I can only assume that there will be more and more fun products to come! 

Project Life Must-Haves

Hello everyone! I've created this blog to share my Project Life, inspire you with ideas, and encourage those who are just starting out or needing a little boost to keep going.

With my first post I thought it was important to share the "must-haves" for Project Life (or "PL" as it has come to be known) for those that are just starting to venture into the world of pocket scrapbooking.

One of the first things that is helpful is a Becky Higgins Core Kit. The one pictured above is Jade (one of my favorites!) but there are MANY other kits available to suit your needs. Of course you don't need to get these kits- you can always cut your own scrapbook paper down to 4x6 or 3x4 to fit the slots. I am a core kit addict (I have Cobalt, Olive, Seafoam, Jade, Sunshine, Kraft, Midnight, Honey, 5th and Frolic, and Vintage Travel...plus the Baby Kit for Him). You can also look on scrapbooking message boards for swaps or partial kits. The cards in these kits can get repetitive so many people sell 1/3 or 1/4 of their kits for a lower price. Many other companies have now come out with 3x4 and 4x6 kits or "cut apart" sheets that are 12x12. Check out Echo Park, We R Memory Keepers and Simple Stories.

 

 

 You will also need some pocket page protectors. These are Becky Higgins "Design A" and the most common pages you will see in the PL world. I love mixing and matching the designs of page protectors so I am excited that Becky will soon have designs A-Z! I have used other page protectors from Echo Park, We R Memory Keepers, Simple Stories and Me and My Big Ideas (MAMBI). There are pros and cons to each (some have a tight fit on the 3x4 cards, others are pricey, some are not a very heavy weight plastic) but I don't mind. I just look at the format and choose what works well for my photos for the week.

 

You will also need a 12x12 album to house your pages in. I find great ones at Michaels and use my 40% off coupon...or, better yet, wait until they are on sale and you can find them for a steal!

You can also get a mini album if you are just doing a small themed project. The Becky Higgins Project Life Mini Albums come in a rainbow of colors and have 20 pages sewn in. It can hold eighty 4x6 horizontal photos/cards and eighty 3x4 vertical photos/cards.

The last "must-have" is a pen of some sort. I like the American Crafts pens myself because they come in different sizes (.01, .03, .05, .08).

 

That's it! That is really all you need to make a Project Life-style scrapbook. Of course I'll be back with more that you'll want to have soon!