Getting Started with Project Life Scrapbook
The first time I bought a Project Life Album I was hooked! So much easier than a traditional scrapbook – which I used to love to make!! Today I’m sharing with you my experiences my first Project Life Album and all about getting started with Project Life Scrapbooks.
Am I like the last one to hear about Project Life?
I started scrapbooking just after my youngest child was born in 2003. I loved scrapbooking! And for a few years (2 or 3) I dedicated Tuesday nights to scrapbooking. It was a “girls” night. My four daughters would scrapbook their own albums, too, and we would put on a “chic flick” (i.e a Hallmark movie) and just have fun.
Around 2010… maybe 2009, my life became more hectic and it was increasingly harder and harder to set that time aside each week until we just no longer did it.
I still had the desire to scrapbook, but the thought of pulling all my supplies out and setting aside a few hours each week to do one or two layouts was overwhelming aside from being nearly impossible with my schedule. I’ve carried around this sadness and guilt – knowing our photos were just sitting there, not looked at because they weren’t organized.
At the beginning of this year I discovered the joy of Instagram. I’ve mentioned before how much I love Instagram! I fell in love with how easy it was for me to document the everyday moments of our family’s life.For the last few years as life became crazy and so hectic, sometimes I felt like our life was mostly about “work” (chores) and in my mind I knew we had fun – probably a lot of fun – and good memories, but in the day to day craziness sometimes it didn’t feel that way.
Instagram gave me a way to “tangibly” remember all of the wonderful times we have together – the simple things and the big things that make our family life special. I added photos almost on a daily basis since the first week of January. I love going back and looking at the photos.
The only problem is, my kids and husband rarely ever look at them, so Instagram is mostly for me.
So, anyway, over the last few months I had seen references to “Project Life” around Pinterest, and had seen free printables labeled “Project Life,” but I’d never thought much of it – not enough to get more information until June when I came across this article and I suddenly knew, this was the kind of scrapbooking I longed to do.
Within days I had ordered a few supplies, figuring I could still utilize all of my stash of scrapbooking supplies, but I wanted it to be easy to get started, so I started with the basics.
I purchased the Jade edition journaling and title cards from Becky Higgins Project Life Kit. I also purchased Pocket Pages: Design A and the Small Variety Pack 1.
A couple of weeks later, while we were in Knoxville, I got the chance to go to Michael’s and I purchased an album (Kraft edition) and some SN@P products, as well as a couple packs of sticks that were on clearance sale. I had a $25.00 gift certificate, courtesy of my Mom at Christmas time that I’d been saving all these months until I knew exactly what I wanted.
This past week I had photos from the month of June printed. I took hundreds of photos {as always} and chose my favorites – whittled them down to about 100. I know that Project life was designed with using way less photos per month, but I wanted to include all of my memories!
I’m planning to go back and print photos from the rest of the year and slowing working on the first five months of 2013 as I keep up with the current weeks.
It took me one afternoon to assemble all of the photos and then I went back the following afternoon and added journaling and a few embellishments. And the month was done! I would have loved to add more embellishments – just because I like them, but at the same time I didn’t want to spend too much time getting it done. I don’t want to feel frustrated with it. I figure I can always add more later or just get more creative with future pages. But then again, I don’t have to.
And you know what, I’m so happy about it. I love my new Project Life Book.
It’s like a Photo Journal – the story of our life.