I'm still loving Project Life, and find that it's the perfect fit for where my little family is at this point in life. It is the perfect solution for the random photos that we end up with, and the random little stories that go with them.
This year, I'm continuing with the 9×12" size, but am switching things up a bit, going with a monthly format rather than a weekly format. In 2019, I found that I ended up with lots of weeks that didn't have many photos – and lots of weeks with too many photos. I always made it work, so it wasn't a huge issue. But my thinking, with moving to a monthly format, is that it will be an easier way to make the amount of photos for the month work, by simply using however many pages I need to fit the photos/stories in.
I am not going to limit myself to just one or two spreads per month. I don't like to narrow down our photos too much. Since Project Life is my main way of documenting these days (I just don't do too many individual layouts anymore), I like to include as many photos/stories as I can within the album. For the month of January, I ended up with 5 spreads, one of which included a 6×12" insert.
I have a lot of the Stories By The Month digital kits from Ali Edwards, which is where I pulled the "January Memories" card from. I have these cards for each month, and will try to use them. Just hoping the colors of the cards coordinate each month 😉
I skipped adding embellishments of any kind to my 2018 and 2019 albums, after using lots of embellishments/stickers in my 2017 album. I'm not necessarily going to set out to add embellishments – but if I feel like adding a little something here and there, I'll do it. Kind of winging it for the 2020 album, as far as extras/embellishing goes.
I am excited to go back to my individual journaling cards, since I skipped those in my 2019 album (I ended up going with a large 4×11" journaling card for each week). I do all of my journaling cards digitally, typing them up in Photoshop and printing them out on matte presentation paper.
I'm using the same 9×12" albums from Seven Paper (an off brand of Studio Calico several years ago) that I stocked up on years ago on a deals website. I have a huge collection of pocket pages for these albums, and one of the page configurations has the twelve 3×3" pockets. I have used these pages in other album projects, but I have never used them in my Project Life album.
I think the reason I haven't used them in the Project Life albums, is because if I used one for one week – I would have no choice but to use it for the following week as well. I love little square photos, so I'm excited to use them this year.
My plan is to use one of the 3×3" pocket pages each month. If for some reason I find that another one would work well, I will use two for that month. But I'll start out with working at least one into each month.
This second spread for the month of January, seen above, has a 6×12" insert on the right side.
I'm also keeping a lot of my digital journaling cards simple. I used to use this one card a lot – it had lines on it, and empty space on the top where I would add a digital stamp or something. Except that to type on those lines meant that I had to do a separate layer in Photoshop for each line. Much harder to do journaling that way.
I'm simply typing up my journaling on 3×3" or 3×4" canvases in Photoshop, and then adding digital stamps along the top/bottom of the cards. I might even get crazy at some point, and use actual physical stamps. Lol. But my collection of digital stamps is huge and they're so easy to add and size to what I need.
I will also be using some of the digital journaling cards that I used in my previous Project Life albums. My go-to cards come mostly from Ali Edwards, Cathy Zielske, and In A Creative Bubble.
I also decided to simplify my font choices for the year. I'm using one main journaling font, which is Rad Notebook by Rad & Happy. I also have two other fonts that I use here and there, mostly for when I add a date or something to the bottom of a journaling card.
Here's the third spread of the month, with the 6×12" insert on the left.
I still screenshot any Snapchat photos that my girls send me. Since I like to have some sort of journaling for most of the photos I include, it's nice when the Snapchat itself includes the journaling.
I still have a huge selection of filler cards that I have printed off the Project Life app, so I usually go through those first to see what will work.
I've also printed some filler cards from digital kits that I have, like the one above (I add the "must see TV' digital stamp to the TV on the card). And no, the This Is Us photo isn't MY phone screensaver. Lol. They shared it on their Instagram account, and I screenshot it, thinking it would be fun to use in my album.
A new thing that I wanted to do for our 2020 album is to include a "currently" card for each of us, each month. I'm not completely sure if I'll use the same card each month. The one above was found in one of my digital kits. I typed mine up first, printed it out and added it to the album. It wasn't until I typed up the girl's cards that I realized I needed a way to label them, so that we know who each of the cards goes too.
I ended up working these cards into the album, so that they sort of go side by side with our photos. My card is near one of my selfies. Sarah's card is next to one of her Snapchat photos. Etc, etc. For now, I went in and typed our names in the little TV at the top of the card. It's not the best solution, but it works for now. I can always change them later, or maybe I'll make us each a personalized card that I can use each month.
While I stuck to using filler cards straight from the Project Life app for the past two years, I'm just winging it this year. The card above is one I had from a kit club – while I don't belong to any kit clubs, and never have, I had picked up some PL cards on a big sale a few years ago from one of the sites. I still have older PL cards with rounded corners, and may or may not use any of those. I used them in my 2017 album, and the rounded corners didn't bother me. But I feel like they'd bug me now. Lol.
Here's the fourth spread for the month of January.
It did take some thinking to figure out how I would work my photos into a monthly format, when I first sat down to put these pages together. I laid out all of the photos for the month. I still do a photo order each month through the Freeprints app, as I like to have all of my photos in front of me to work with.
Then I laid out several of the pocket pages, knowing that I would use at least one of each of the three different pocket configurations. I did a lot of sorting and arranging, and moving photos around, until I was happy with how everything was laid out.
Once all of the photos were in place, I started typing up journaling cards. I do a LOT of copying and pasting from my Instagram, which helps knock out a lot of the journaling cards.
Like I mentioned above, I really do like to have journaling of some sort for most of the photos. I actually had a typed up journaling card for the photo of my breakfast burrito prep (the pic on the right above). But then Alyssa gave me the info for some of her photos, and I realized that I would much rather include the story for the photo of her boyfriend, since that was the day he met her dad for the first time. So I simply added a "breakfast" label to the other photo.
For these currently card that I want to include each month, I simply texted that card image to the girls and asked them to text me their answers. And then I typed them in.
This is the fifth, and last spread, for the month of January.
Once I started to get journaling cards added in, I worked filler cards in here and there was well. I was surprised at how easily the monthly format came together for me.
I have some other ideas of how to add some "extra" things to the monthly format, and will play around with those ideas when I can. Or when they fit in.
But after doing just one month, I can say that I'm loving this new approach, and I think it will be a fun change going into this year's album.
I also came across these monthly dividers in my stash, and thought they'd be fun to use. I believe these are from the very first Project Life type project – the one that started this way of documenting, which was the Project 365 by Becky Higgins. I want to say that was back in 2009.
I'll be sharing my monthly Project Life pages as I complete them, one month at a time. My February photos will be here in a few days, and I can't wait to get started on adding in another month.
Laura Vegas 