the month of april

My favourite month so far and I finally feel like I'm getting into a groove.

I find that scrapbooking by month makes the process easier. It helps me move through the layouts faster as I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time.

Thanks so much for your kind comments on my recent layouts! Here are the answers to the questions you asked:

Q. ABC asked how I get my layouts so bright.

A. They are bright because I gravitate to brightly coloured scrapbook kits and due to the processing I do on my pictures. I really like saturated colours and use a series of actions when I process my pictures that pump the colour up. With that being said, there's a threshold. You want to give them a bit of pop but you don't want to overdo it. The challenge is knowing where that threshold is and that's easier said than done when you edit on a laptop screen like I do.

Q. Bentonflocke (who correct me if I am wrong is also on her fourth consecutive Project 365 project - congrats!!!) asked which manufacturers I use aside from Becky Higgins.

A. The answer is whatever grabs me. This kit is by Miss Tiina. I gravitate toward doodles and bright colours so her style works for me. My layouts from March were from the BYOC series from The Lilypad. Each month multiple designers create elements using the same colour pallette. The result is a collection of beautifully coordinated elements and papers.

Looking around the various digital scrapbook stores, journaling cards are all the rage now so they are easy to find and pair up with other accessories and papers.

Q. Georgia and Darla asked what I do with my layouts when I am done and asked about Blurb books.

A. I work full time, so unfortunately I don't scrapbook much outside of my Project 365. With that being said, my 2010 Project 365 Blurb book was 130 pages, so that's a lot of scrapbooking in itself. Because it's sequential, it's a bit easier to bind into a book. The best advice I can give is to create your pages in photo editing software like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Build the pages to size so all you have to do is download the Blurb software and pop the pages into place.

So that's it! It's a lot of work, but words can't begin to describe how nice it is to have a book at the end of the year.

Or the next year.

*sigh*

Hopefully I can catch up soon. In the meantime, I give you April 2011:

the month of february

Thanks so much for the kind comments on my Blurb book! I really appreciate it. It was fun and it's nice to look back on an entire year of photographs and stories.

I find the stories are the most important part of Project 365. In almost every case I remember taking the picture, but I frequently forget the story behind it. The crazy things the kids said or other important things happening on a particular day. They are stories that I never would have remembered had I not documented them.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Thoughts on Project Life so far? Liking it. It's easy and the coordinated sets are nice. Not totally diggin' the Clementine set I used for these layouts though. It had less elements than the Cobalt set I used for January and it's just not my style.

But that's okay. It's done and I'm moving on to March. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that one day I might even catch up. Maybe one day I'll send a book to print in the year it was photographed and scrapbooked.

Highly unlikely, but a girl can dream.









Are you doing Project Life? I'd love to hear how it's working for you!

project life - january 2011

While my blogging fell apart towards the end of the year, I did complete my third year of photos. And since I'm only just putting the finishing touches on my 2010 book, I have a lot of work ahead of me putting 2011 together.

I've been looking for a system on and off for the past year as anybody who has scrapbooked their 365 can tell you, it's a monster job. I needed something I could do quickly and efficiently and the past two books have taken hundreds of hours to put together.

The problem is that well thought out and consistent looking systems are few and far between and they the majority of them involve me starting from scratch and reinventing the wheel on every spread. I don't have the time for that.

I had heard about Project Life by Becky Higgins, but all of the samples I had seen were paper-based and I'm not returning to that. The mess, clutter and the idea of printing out my pictures and going back to that method makes my head hurt. It would also mean that I would have to revert to thick binders on the shelf with no easy way to make a copy for each of the kids.

But...I looked into it again and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there is a digital version. That makes me happy.

What I like most about it is that it's pretty standardized and there's lots of room for journaling. I also like the idea that there's limited white space for me to play with. As much as I love white space, I always find the need to fill it.

So here we go. January 2011 done with Project Life.









So what are you doing? Are you doing project 365? Are you scrapbooking it? I'd love to hear about what system and supplies have worked for you!

fabulous friday challenge

Sorry I've been MIA everyone. It's been crazy around here and I haven't had time to blog.

The Elf on the Shelf went...okay. There were five days where Sam was so pissed at the kids' behaviour that he did not return out of protest...and they didn't care. His presence or lack of really didn't have much impact on their behaviour. They were just as crazy as they usually are and I quickly grew tired of coming up with new stuff for Sam to do late at night when all wanted to do was go to sleep. So...it was fun (at times) and we'll probably do it again next year, but I am relieved that it's over.

In the meantime...still taking pictures. Project 365 has exhausted me over the past three years but I am still. taking. pictures. I just can't stop. I want to stop, I just can't. So we'll see where that goes.

My main project right now is my Blurb book with my 2010 pictures.

Yes. You heard me right. 2010. As usual, I'm way behind but I'm getting there. Once this bad boy gets off to print I can focus on wrapping up my 2011 posts and my 2011 edition of the "Year in Review". Hopefully you'll be seeing that on the weekend.

In the meantime, I haven't really taken anything fabulous lately, but here's a sneak peak of the dividers from my 2010 Blurb book:



Now it's your turn! I hope you had a great holiday and I can't wait to see your shot for this week.

Happy Friday!

Just a reminder of the rules:

1. The picture has to be taken by you.
2. The picture has been taken during the past week and it can be a picture you have posted earlier in the week.
3. Link up using the link to your individual blog post and not your main blog address.
4. Please include the Fabulous Friday button (below) in your post to link back to my site.
5. Leave feedback for five other participants. Let them know what you think!
6. By linking up you are okay with me re-posting your photo here if you are chosen for the top five.
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the month of april $

It happened again. I fell behind on my Project 365 layouts. Fortunately it isn't that big of a deal anymore. I'm finding that they really don't take that long anymore now that I am scrapbooking by month instead of week. I've said it before and I'll say it again, thank goodness I blog almost every day or I would never remember half of the stories to capture in my layouts.

I'm not sure I love these, but I wanted to do something cute and "doodley". This is what I came up with:













Templates: P365: Simple Solutions April template set
Alphabet: Luv Song by CD Muckosky
Elements: Birthday Booya, Conversation Piece, Simple Pleasures, Dreams Take Flight, Garden Party, Graphies and Splatz Mats by CD Muckosky
Border: Life 365 kit by Gina Marie Huff at Weeds & Wildflowers
Paper: Life 365 kit by Gina Marie Huff at Weeds & Wildflowers, Sketchbook Pages II by Kate Hadfield at The Lily Pad
Font: Pea Hannah Rocky Road

national scrapbooking day $

Today is National Scrapbooking Day. While the boys were having their nap, I started and finished a creative team layout using one of Chrissy's new templates from her new Holey Moley set.

Earlier in the week I was inspired by a card I came across:



so I came up with this.



Template: Holey Moley by Chrissy W from Elemental Scraps
Kit: Bloom & Grow by Zoe Pearn from Sweet Shoppe Designs
Paper: Dreams Take Flight by CD Muckosky from The Lilypad, Life 365 by Gina Marie Huff from Weeds & Wildflowers
Elements: Soap Bubbles by Designs by Lili from The Lilypad
Alpha: Sweet Notes by Designs by Lili from The Lilypad
Font: Pea Hannah Rocky Road

how I completed my project 365 layouts in a month $

So maybe it was a month. Maybe it was a month and a half. I already don't remember. All I know is I jumped right into Project 365 for the second time while I was still overwhelmed by the thought of all of the weekly layouts I still had to complete for 2009. When I sat down and took a hard look, I really only had a third of the year scrapbooked.

It was at that point I had a brainwave. Sheri and I have both been doing Project 365 and doing weekly layouts. We use many of the same supplies and templates and we have a similar style. Maybe we could help each other out. I contacted Sheri and she was in agreement - let's team up to get our layouts done. We'd each disk our weekly layouts and give the other carte blanche to do whatever we wanted with them - totally rip them off, totally rework or modify wherever we felt like it.

We each collected our files (of course removing any supplies that the other did not have) and swapped disks. It saved a pile of time because the text boxes were all set up and the elements were already in place and we already had titling ideas if we chose to use them.

So here's how I managed to pull it off in the hopes that somebody will find this useful:

Layout #1 - photos swapped and text modified. That was about it.





Layout #2 - photos swapped, new text entered, numbering adjusted and new elements and papers put in place.





Layout #3 - basically totally redone, but I took cues from Sheri's layout for element placement. I loved the rows of flowers she used across her layout, so I went with something similar and did lines of hearts.





Layout #4 - I loved this layout Sheri did so I kept mine similar, swapping in some different supplies but it has a similar look and feel.





Then I took the same layout and modified it for another week later in the year.



From there on I tried to save time where I could by scraplifting myself. I made sure that layouts that I scraplifted had at least several layouts between them so the book would be more balanced. Here are some of my scraplifts.

I took the one page layout I did for week twenty six and turned it into a two week layout for weeks closer to the end of the year.





And I took one of my favourite two page layouts from the summer and turned it into a winter looking two page layout near the end of the year.





So just some tips for anybody trying to get their layouts done. Why re-invent the wheel if you don't have to? I hope you found this helpful!

the month of march $

I can't believe I have my March layouts complete and it's only April 4th. This new plan of attack is working so much better for me. I will most likely do some tweaking as there are some inconsistencies going on, but I am just going with it at this point. I like what I have done so far and if I can learn to stop obsessing over the 365 layouts I will have more time to work on other projects.

Anyway, here is March using the March 2010 set of Biograffiti templates:











Templates: P365: Simple Solutions {March 2010} template set by Biograffiti from ScrapArtist
Kit: Summer Beginnings Freebie by Melany Violette
Alphabet: Sweet Notes by Designs by Lili from The Lily Pad
Border: Life 365 by Gina Marie Huff from Weeds & Wildflowers
Dates: come with the March 2010 templates by Biograffiti from ScrapArtist
Font: Pea Jack & Jane

the month of february $

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to put my 2010 book together yet, but I am moving ahead with the layouts in a monthly format. So far so good. The Biograffiti templates are fantastic and I was able to do these layouts in no time. I just got the March template set and already have all of my pictures layed out and it took a half an hour tops. If you are looking for a quick way to get your pictures scrapped, I highly recommend them. They are quick and easy and the fact that they are pre-dated has saved me so much time (mind you, with that being said, I changed my dates for this month).

Anyway, here they are:











Templates: P365: Simple Solutions {February 2010} template set by Biograffiti from ScrapArtist
Paper: Smooches collab kit from Scrap Orchard, Out of This World kit by Ziggle Designs at Scrap Orchard, Book Bag Essentials kit from Digital Design Essentials
Alphabet: Sweet Notes by Designs by Lili from The Lily Pad
Border: Life 365 by Gina Marie Huff from Weeds & Wildflowers
Dates: Itty Bitty Dates by Biograffiti from ScrapArtist
Font: Pea Smashtastic