project life: week two

Here's week two of project life. I really like the look of mixing elements from the core kit with items I already own and random "found" items. I also love the Valentine's Day themed products starting to make an appearance. So cute.

I love adding little bits of journaling on labels stickers directly on the photos. Super easy way to add info without wasting a whole 3x4 journaing card. I don't necessarily pair my 4x6 photos with 3x4 journaling cards every time, so this is a nice way for me to include extra details.

I love being able to include photos from Instagram now that I have the new iPhone. Honestly I included those pics from my old 3GS in last year's album too- I know some people are really particular about scrapping only "the best" photos, but I'm totally okay including fuzzy, blurry photos if that's what I have. I'd rather inlude a grainy picture than none at all.

A fun litte thing I did this week was add a screenshot of Pinterest to my layout this week. I spend quite a bit of time looking at pins, so I wanted to be sure to include that here. I'll most likely include more screenshots from Pinterest in the coming months- it'll be cool to see how the things I pin change over time.

project life: title page & week one

Okay, finally jumping in and sharing some photos! Here's the title page for my Project Life 2012 album. I love the enlarged photo- this look was inspired by the lovely Kelly Purkey.

The photo is from a couple of years ago,but it's one of my all time favorites of our little family. My fabulous sister Christy took it for us as part of our engagement shoot. Makes my heart happy. The two title cards at the bottom are from the clementine core kit (currently sold out). I love this kit- the style and colors are just my style. I added a couple of simple embellishments to personalize the page even more. I glittered a chipboard letter "C' and glued it to the cute clock page on the left. On the right I inked a chipboard heart from Jenni Bowlin and placed it on top of a tag from Bananafishstudio. Finally, I added the 2012 with gray stickers from my stash.

Here's a quick look at my week one layout.

This year I wanted to mix elements from the core kit with items from my own stash. I found that I loved that look when I saw other people's work such as Lisa Truesdell and Marcy Penner. I also found that since starting project life I don't make as many "traditional" layouts, but I still love buying and exploring new products. This helps me use those items instead of just letting them gather dust. So it's a win-win in my book!

Here's a close-up of the left side:

And here's a close-up of the right:

I love how this came together. I'm making more of a conscious effort to not only include memorabilia, but to explain why I'm including it. As you can see we also renewed our Costco membership and I finally have my own card (!) so I hope that will help me stay caught-up week to week. Last year I ordered my photos online from shutterfly.com and scrapbookpictures.com, which has sadly closed. I loved the quality of the photos and the ease of having them delivered, but I didn't like waiting. Plus I would batch several weeks together to make the shipping cost worth my while, so I always felt behind.

So there it is! I'm actually pretty caught-up right now, but I didn't want to share all of my layouts in one huge post, so I'll be sharing a little at a time.

hello march

Today started out gray and rainy, so I wasn't able to photograph my Project Life layouts. Hopefully tomorrow will be clearer so I can start posting those shots. For now, I'm still tinkering with the blog set-up and brainstorming a list of future projects. I was listening to an old Paperclipping Roundtable episode where Ali Edwards discusses "story," so I'm excited to start working on some layouts that tell more of my own stories.