Project Life 2013: June 9-15

Hello!  If you're here visiting from Busy Being Happy's Saturday Project Life Blog Hop, welcome!  Thank you for visiting.  I hope you enjoy seeing how I incorporate Project Life into my memory keeping process.  If you enjoy Project Life too, I'd love to come visit, please leave me a link to where you share and I'll be sure to pop on by!  Thank you to Michelle for featuring me this week.

June 9-13, 2013

This is week's  Project Life share is rather long and photo heavy because it was a packed week!  It is spread out among three full double page spreads and there are three inserts!  I have been contemplating on how to make Project Life work better for me and since I tend to scrapbook thematically it seems to make sense for me to group pictures from one event and give them their own divided pocket page protector layout.  We'll talk about that more later, for now here's how the week starts out, looking like a typical double page Project Life spread

As you can see from the dates stamped most of the week fit on this spread, Sunday - Thursday.  I used supplies from Doodlebug Designs, their bright and cheerful Flower Box Collection was perfect.  I had picked up their Simply Put 4X6 Album Inserts Pad awhile ago and was excited to finally use it.  I really like how it gives you an layered look without any effort.

I will add a little journaling on the "so happy together" card.  That pictures to the left of that card are from the dinner we had shortly after getting out of school.  It was a request of ER's that we celebrate with some "cheese on fire" at the coney island style restaurant by my parents.

One of my favorite pages of this spread is the flower vine added on top of the picture of my daughter with the Botti Bot we reviewed.  I think it looks pretty and balances out the flowers on the pre-printed Simply Put card.

Oops, I just noticed one card is slipping out of it's pocket.  Sorry about that, let's just imagine it's in place.  For this half of the page I cut the "life is good" card and used some of the multicolored chevron pattern to decorate one of the Becky Higgins' grid cards, used on the opposite side.  I used some different bits of left over papers printed with grids to make the other journaling cards on this side.  The borders are all from various past Doodlebug Design collections.

June 14, 2013

On the Friday of that week we had dress rehearsals for my daughter's dance performance.  I love the pretty costumes and it's my only opportunity to take pictures of her on stages because flash photography isn't allowed during the show.  At first I was trying to cram all my favorites into a 6X12 insert but it wasn't making me happy.  By the time I included all my pictures I had absolutely no room for any embellishments or making it look pretty.  Anyone who's seen my craft area knows I have a  wealth of stuff.  It was begging to be used.

I've love the Vintage Bliss collection from Simple Stories!  It's so beautiful, dainty, and feminine.  I cracked my collection pack open and got busy!  I only needed to use a little but it made a big difference being able to spread things and use full size photos.

The flowered photo overlays are my favorite part of the layout.  I mean besides my sweet dancer.  I did still include a photo collage, made the old fashioned way by cutting actual pictures down to size - imagine that, not done digitally?!  It was a good way to use some not quite perfect shots I had already developed.

Turning this into an event based spread instead of doing an insert makes me feel a lot more satisfied because then if I have several pictures I can use them and not feel like I have to shrink them all down or resort to photo collages all the time.  Plus one of my favorite parts of this craft is getting to make things pretty and use all the supplies I've collected.

It also helps keep the bulk of my book down a bit, because I find that too many inserts make the middle bulge, with the end not as thick since previously my inserts tended to be shorter than the 12X12 main pages.  I know a lot of Project Lifers prefer to keep inserts smaller than 12X12 and sandwich them in between the double page week spread and for a long time, that was what I thought I had to do too.  I will probably do that again from time to time, depending on the number of pictures and where it falls in the week.  But for now, it feels freeing to break free and try something different.

July 15, 2013

Saturday was the actual dance recital and I took even more pictures, of course!  Favorites ended up on their own half spread with more Vintage Bliss.  The show tickets totally clashed with the colors so I made a little envelope to pop them in, so we can save them for later.  Journaling about the show to be added.

Here is how the recital day page looks in my Project Life binder, did you notice the glimpses of the chevron pattern?  I changed out the aqua binder for the absolutely awesome new Honey edition binders now available at Michael's.  LOVE!  Here is where my smaller inserts come into play.  The blue program from the show went into one.

Flip past the program insert and there's a smaller 5X7 with the card that LB made with the dot painters earlier in the week.  I purposely made it so that it would fit into the 5X7 for saving.  I washi taped on a little card to the top and stamped the title on it.

On the other side of the card is a picture of Brad and the kids from the 15th, when we celebrated Father's Day with our families.  The "I'm so lucky" sentiment is punched from the Rad Dad mini collection, available digitally.

Behind the 5X7 insert with LB's card and the picture of Brad with the kids is another 8.5X11 with a fill in booklet ER made for Daddy and the card she dot painted, opened up into full size to reduce the bulk in the album.  Since half of the card was blank, the backside of the card when it was folded, I added a little pic of the kids out to lunch with Brad on Father's Day.  The "So glad" sentiment is also from a Rad Dad card.

After the three insets from another divided page protector type layout with pictures from our Father's Day celebration at the bottom and in the 4X12 opening at the top is a section about my MIL turning 70.  "Remember" and "Dad" are from Rad Dad.  These are still pictures from the same day as the recital.

Filling in the 4X12 space took a little creativity, since I only had one good picture of Norma with Brad and the kids.  I used some washi, thickers, stickers, and even some stamping to fill in area, while still leaving area for me to add some journaling.  Usually I like to stick with premade things to save on time, but I really love how this collage turned out, especially since I don't think composing collages is my strong suit.

Thanks for sticking around for my long Project Life post!  I hope you enjoyed, the next one will be fairly involved as well because it's about our first mini vacation trip of the summer.  I had a lot of fun working on it! Sharing this post at The Mom Creative.