Project Life: Week 6

After missing last week, did you think I'd fallen off the Project Life bandwagon?  No way!  I just had a major snafu with the online photo development at Meijers.  I do not recommend using them, the colors came out way too dark and the photos were all grainy.  They reprinted them but their quality still left a lot to be desired, all together a really terrible experience and it's not like they are even very cheap. 

I tried them because I had hoped to save myself a weekly trip to Costco or the ink it would take to print at home.  With the time it took to go there twice, because of course I didn't think to check their quality at the store, I would've been too rushed to try and finish the pages in time for last Tuesday.  As it is, I ended up reprinting them again at Costco to finally have prints of good enough quality for my pages.

From now on I will be posting a week behind, which I've decided will actually be a lot better for me.  Then I won't feel like I'm under pressure to get the last photo taken on Saturday, put everything together in time for Tuesday, and get the the actual pages photographed and edited.  You've probably notice I edit out a lot of personal details and any neighbor's for privacy.

I'm not like some Project Lifer's who work a little bit at a time all week long.  I need to have all my photos at once so I can figure out what I want to use and where to put it. I do upload photos almost daily and journal ahead of time, so it's really just laying things out I do all at once but it can still take longer than expected and be time intensive at the beginning of the week...time I do not always have. 

Now that I've got that off my chest, here's a closer look at the week.  I've incorporated some digital frames & titles (all freebies: frames from karenika and photo template from paislee press) as well as some journaling directly onto the photos.  I love how it looks and know I'll be doing that a lot more in the future.  It also frees up more space for including photos and other fun stuff in the bottom pockets, another look I love, like the pictures of two art projects ER brought home that are way too big for including in an insert.  I learned how to include the Facebook status update about playing peek a boo with LB in his carrier on Theresa Marie's blog. 

I tried my hand at stamping, and broke out a little alphabet set I got for just a dollar at Michael's. I've always liked the look of stamping but never had the patience to learn all the techniques. Stamping the titles was a fun way to get the look without a whole lot of effort.

Just be sure to clean your stamps between colors and don't try shortcuts and just wipe off like I did. The reddish bits on the green art tags don't bother me because of the red in the tag, I kinda like it. But there will be times I'll want it to be cleaner.  I was at Archiver's cropping last weekend and an employee suggested a baby wipe.  It worked really well; even cleaned up some ink from previous weeks on my date stamp.  She said that should be a fine way to get the job done with my cheapy sets that weren't a big investment.

The little recap tags with bulleted journaling for each day are also something I tried for the first time.  Normally I have a lot I want to write, because the stories behind the photos has always been my main focus for scrapbooking.  But even I have times when there isn't a lot to add. 

For the one longer story I wanted to include I did an 8.5X11 scrapbook page insert.  The digital recipe card is from the Holiday Recipe Collection from Shabby Princess, it's one freebie that I've used time and time again. 

On the other side of the inert I put LB's immunization record from his 6 month well baby visit on the 9th, matting it so there would be more contrast between it and the growth progress sheets I also included.  I cut those down, stapled, and matted the last one on cardstock.  They ended up being about half the height of the record sheet.  Using a dry erase marker, I marked the height and drew a line with a ruler across the protector.  Then I slid a self healing mat into the protector and cut along the line with an exacto knife and ruler.  The opening is slightly wider than the growth chart sheets.  To prevent the cut from ripping open further, I used a hole reinforcer over each end.  Now both inserts are easily accessible.



Linking up to The Mom Creative and One Happy Mama.