Laura Vegas

I'm finally ready to share a few months of my 2021 Project Life album. But before I do, I thought I would do a few short blog posts sharing a bit about the three main things that go into my albums – filler cards, photos, and journaling cards.  

Anyways. Let's talk about digital journaling cards. 

As much as I love color, I'm drawn to all black and white journaling cards. It's just simple and easy, and they look good paired up with the monthly title cards (which are also black and white). I don't even have to worry about a journaling card matching my photos, so that saves me a ton of time. Once I get all of my photos added in for the month, I move on to the next step. I tackle the journaling cards next, and then once those are in, I work on adding any filler cards.

I simply flip thru the pages in my PL album and start typing up journaling cards. I don't necessarily do them in order, or one spread at a time. I might type up and print just a few for one month, and a few for another month. I slip them into the pockets, even if they might need something added to them later. From there, it's easy to see where else I'll need journaling cards, and where I want to put my 2-3 filler cards for the spread. 

I use Photoshop to open up the journaling cards and type in my journaling. I create a huge majority of my journaling cards simply using digital brushes, stamps, or even PNG images of cut files. But I also use lots of digital journaling cards from In A Creative Bubble (I love her Recorded series of black and white cards), Ali Edwards, etc. 

I do a LOT of copying and pasting when it comes to my journaling. So many of my photos are ones that I've shared on Instagram, so I can pull my journaling from there. I simply open up Instagram on my laptop, and copy the text from there, paste it onto my digital card, and edit/format it as needed to fit the space. 

Once I finish a journaling card, I save it as a PSD file. Just in case I need to go back to it. Because belief me, I've had too 😉 There's nothing worse than having to start all over, so always save your working files as you go. All of these digital cards are sized to print as 3×4's, so you don't have to worry about sizing them. 

The one thing that I do, however, before adding them to my page to print, is I go in and add a small grey border around the edge of the card. Because if you put several white journaling cards on a full sheet and print them out, you'll have a hard time knowing where to cut to make them all 3×4", and have everything where it's supposed to be. I can fit 5 journaling cards on a sheet of 8.5×11" paper. I started using the Epson Premium Presentation Matte Paper to print journaling cards or anything digital on several years ago and have just stuck with it. 

So, I think that's about it. For me, this works great. I'm knowledge when it comes to Photoshop and working with digital products, so it comes easily to me. If you're new to Photoshop or working with digital products, there's a small learning curve – but it really is easy once you get the hang of it. Maybe I'll try and put together some sort of tutorial, walking you through doing a few of these cards. No promises, but I'll try if there's any interest.

If I missed anything, or if you have any other questions, feel free to ask in the comments 🙂

I'm finally ready to share a few months of my 2021 Project Life album. But before I do, I thought I would do a few short blog posts sharing a bit about the three main things that go into my albums – filler cards, photos, and journaling cards.  

Next up, photos. In full disclosure, I copied and pasted (and then edited/added as needed) this from a blog post I did about 4 years ago). When it comes to creating layouts, my go-to method of photo printing is to print them myself on my photo printer. It's easier for me to print as needed, when it comes to layouts, since I never know what size/orientation I'll want my photos until I'm ready to create a page. Or I'll decide to use a photo collage, which means individual little photos would be of no use to me. 

However, when it comes to working on my Project Life albums, I go the other route and order my photos. I believe it's been about 4 years or so since I learned of the FreePrints app, and have been using them ever since. More on that below. I use 9×12" album for my PL albums – the pocket page protectors hold 3×3", 3×4", and 4×6" photos. 

I use my iPhone for 95% of my photo taking these days. I also edit my photos on my phone, using the PicTapGo app. I am pretty good about editing photos as I take them, and I'm also pretty good at deleting any photos I don't need on a daily basis.  

So what I've been doing for the last several years (basically since I started back up doing PL) is ordering my photos at the end of each month. I wait till the end of the month, and then do one big photo order. This is also when I ask both my girls to send me any photos they have for the month, so I can add those into my order as well. 

I had tried a few different app/sites, as far as ordering photos straight from my phone. I was most happy with the FreePrints app. You can get up to 85 prints a month for free, and all you pay is shipping. The shipping isn't super cheap (it never goes above $9.99, even if you add on more photos – which btw, are only 10 cents each and a great deal!), but it still worked out to less than I would pay for those prints if ordering from a lot of other sites. Plus, it was super easy to use and it's a great way to get those photos off your phone and printed. 

You can pick them from your camera roll, or even off your Instagram account, Facebook, and/or Dropbox account. I usually use up my free 85 prints just ordering my photos from the month. But since additional photos are only 10 cents each (and the shipping doesn't increase at all after the $9.99), I like to try and add on some extra pics for other album projects I have going on. 

The majority of my photos from each month are set up as 3×4" pics. I use Photoshop to combine two 3×4" photos onto a 4×6" print. I do this for ALL of my photos for the month, even if there are some I don't think I'll use. There are usually a few photos that are in landscape orientation, that can only work as 4×6" photos. But I will usually look for a few photos that can also be printed as 4×6" photos, in addition to being printed as 3×4" photos. I don't have a ton of 4×6" pockets to fill each month, but I do have a few, and I like to have options as far as the photos go. 

Each month I pretty much order any photos I took that month. I even order some of the photos I take of scrapping projects, since I have been known to use them here and there. I'd rather have ALL of my photos in front of me for the month, even if it means I pull some out and toss them. I tend to include the majority of our photos in my PL album, since it's my main way of documenting life these days. If I do have photos that I don't end up using, I will either toss them (if they're just not all that important or maybe they're duplicates) or save them in case I want to use them for another project. 

Once my order arrives (usually, in less than a week), I cut apart the prints with two photos on them. Back when I did PL in the weekly format, I would sort out the photos by weeks, using my phone as a guide to let me know when they were taken. Since I do a monthly format now, there's no need to sort anything out, since I order a month at a time.

All of those photos above are random photos I've taken of my desk over the last year or so when it's time to work my photos into my PL album. That's how I start. I spread out all of my photos for the month, keeping any of Sarah's and Alyssa's photos next to each other, and my photos together. 

In the photo above, you can see some of the 9×12" pocket pages spread out at the top, with a few photos added into them. I pull out a few to start out with, as I know the pocket page protector designs I always use – and then I'll pull out additional ones as needed, which always depends on how many photos I have to work with. I just start slipping my photos into pockets, playing around with placement on each "spread" within the month until it's to my liking. I have a good system for where my photos go, knowing that I'll add "this many" journaling cards to each spread and "this many" filler cards. 

Once I have all of my photos added in, I place all of my pages into my PL album. For me, it's always a huge win once the photos are in the album. Then I can pull out the album here and there, whenever I have time, and work on the journaling cards. 

I'm finally ready to share a few months of my 2021 Project Life album. But before I do, I thought I would do a few short blog posts sharing a bit about the three main things that go into my albums – filler cards, photos, and journaling cards.  

First up, filler cards. They're very important in my album, since they're the only additional thing I add into my album, other then the photos and journaling cards. I keep my PL albums very simple. Photos, journaling cards, and filler cards. No extra embellishing, no stickers, no chipboard – basically, no extras at all. Unless you count the random piece of washi that I will add to the bottom of a journaling card, here and there, that ends up with some blank space on it.

Back in 2018, I ended up using filler cards from the Project Life app for about 90% of my album (I started using them exclusively about 4-5 weeks into the year). It somehow just worked for me, and simplified the process. While I have a collection of older Project Life cards (from kits by Becky Higgins, when they all had rounded corners), and random cards from different manufacturers, I found that sticking with the cards that I had printed from the app was really easy to do. 

I set them up using the PL app, adding two 3×4" filler cards to a 4×6" print. And then I upload them to my photo order, and have them printed as photos, and then simply trim them in half when I get my order. I print the majority of my photos using the Freeprints app, so they are printed on a thinner photo paper than when I print photos at home. But I don't mind these being on thinner paper, and I love the matte finish on these. 

I've been using a lot of these same Project Life app cards for years. I've used them in my albums the past 3 years, and I'm still using them in this year's album. A lot of them are basic patterns, tone-on-tone patterns, and lots of black and white patterns. I have no problem using some of the same cards year after year, or even using the same card a few times within the same year.

I know not everyone would be ok with doing it that way, and once they use something once or twice, they wouldn't want to use it again. But for me, I'm totally fine with it 😉

I just added another huge batch of these filler cards to my last photo order, which you see in the photo above. They just need to be trimmed in half. A lot of these are Project Life app cards that I've already used at some point in last year's album, but I like them enough to use them again. I just look for designs/colors that I know I will use. I also save these 4×6" prints (with two 3×4" cards on each) in folders on my laptop, so it's really easy to pull out the ones I want to re-print and add them to photo orders again. 

I have also been working in digital filler cards from other designers as well – I did this a little bit in my 2020 album, and am using more of them in my 2021 album. I use the same process as I do for the app cards, printing two 3×4" cards on a 4×6" print – I just use Photoshop to do this when it comes to using digital cards from my stash on my laptop. My main go-to sources are Ali Edwards, In A Creative Bubble, and Studio Calico, with others mixed in from other manufacturers.

I'll take the time to put together a ton of these every few months. I copy all of the cards that I want to print into a folder on my laptop, so that I can work from that one folder when it comes to putting them on the 4×6" prints in Photoshop. Once I have them all ready to go, I plop everything into my “to print” folder in Dropbox, along with any actual photos I need printed, and then I simply order the entire folder of photos in the Freeprints app (I've been printing my photos monthly with them for years). Super easy.

Once my order comes, I trim them all up, sort them by color, and add them in with my current cards. For any of the cards that aren't really one specific color, I keep those all together. I do find that there are certain colors that I don't have a ton of choices for – red and green specifically. Not sure why that is, but I just don't seem to find as many cards in those colors, yet I'm always wanting them. But overall, I always make it work using the filler cards that I have printed using the Project Life app and using my large collection of digital products.