This is not a scrap booking blog, and I do not pretend to be an expert in anything of the sort. But with my 2012 Goal to document more, I’m spending significantly more time take photos and figuring out what to do with them. I thought I’d share some of progress I have made on Project Life since that has been an integral part of the strategy. I’ll probably only check in about this once per month because I know scrapbooking is not everyone’s bag, but I am really enjoying the process and you know I like to talk about stuff I love, so let’s get started!
If you haven’t heard of it before, Project Life is a simple system that comes ready-made to allow you to document a period of time. You can keep it as fussy or simple as your heart desires — which is what REALLY appealed to me. Because my heart? Desires very little fuss, but I want a memory book of 2012!
Let’s Talk About What’s Been Great:
*The Materials
I purchased the Clementine Core Kit and Binder along with various designs of photo pocket pages and it really is a plug and play version of a scrapbook. If I wanted to embellish nothing at all, and just insert pictures I printed, it would turn out super nice looking. You have no idea how great this is for someone like me who doesn’t really think like a crafter.
*The Inspiration on the Web
Since I don’t think like a crafter, all of the people doing this and talking about it on the web and sharing tutorials has really helped me out! People share free printables all over, and talk about their process and I have found all of it infinitely valuable, even if I am not going to do the same things. My project will ultimately be pretty simple, since I do not have a lot of time to devote to it, but I still would like it to be an accurate depiction of our lives and to look pretty.
Sites that have helped me do that include:
Becky’s Blog (obviously)
Kelly Purkey
Amy Tangerine
Elise Blaha
Jamaica Makes
Marcy Penner
Plucky Momo
Nettio Designs
Jessica Sprague
The Mom Creative
There is also so much inspiration on Pinterest it is a little overwhelming. This is no surprise though, because that’s kind of Pinterest’s thing, right? OVERSTIMULATION! It’s why we love and hate it, yes? I created a Project Life Pinboard for some of the things that caught my eye, like free printables or pages that are organized well or tell a great story and it’s been fun to reference that for brainstorming my own pages.
Speaking of, here is the start of mine:
Some of the journal cards I’m keeping private because it mentions some professional-life related things and well…you know about blogging and talking about your job. So I’m just going to keep that to myself. But you get the idea, right?
Let’s Talk About What’s Been Challenging:
*Taking Pictures
First of all, I was going to try and not use any Instagram pictures in this and just have it all be pictures that I really thought about and took. But OMG…HA! After the first week, that left me with about 3 usable shots.
So A) I need to take more pictures, in general and
B) I ended up loving the silly Instagram pics I had taken because HELLO those are full of every day life. I think I will be so happy to be able to look back on those mundane little snapshots of our days and have those memories. So Instagram, you’re totally in!
*Telling A Story
So I’ve been printing my photos just about every week via a combination of Costco and PostalPix — I don’t have a photo printer so this has been so easy to do, even though I can see it getting kind of expensive. (I will probably come up with an alternative solution shortly.) But the hardest part for me has been taking those photos and telling a cohesive, visual story. I did not anticipate this problem at all! See, that shows you how green I am at this memory keeping stuff! I’m actually contemplating taking Ali Edwards’ Storyology class because apparently this stuff can be taught for the bargain price of $14. 
*Getting Organized
I’m not sure if I will continue to organize this monthly, or by event, or by vignette (like the “books we’ve been reading” etc up above) but I will tell you this exercises a part of my creative brain that DOES NOT GET EXERCISED. And I kind of love that, even though it’s been a challenge. I think it will get easier as I get a better flow, but for now I’m just trucking along. Slowly.
*****
I have much more photos to include for this month, and I hope to get a chance to do that next week. Like I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a project I have a lot of time for — I’m not working on it every day — but I think what will be the key to making it an accurate reflection of our lives is to keep it up regularly and talk about the silly, small moments. Adding our grocery lists, talking about what we ate for dinner, journaling our dreams for the year. And if I can get it peppered with some personal snapshots too, all the better!
Project Life 2012 is underway! And I can’t wait to see how it ends.
