Project Life 2014 | January

This is going up a few days later than I had planned but here are my Project Life pages for the month of January. As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, my plan for 2014 is more of a monthly approach than a weekly approach. I am hoping for at least one spread a month if not more and inserts as needed. You can see my title page here and all Project Life posts here.

The January section has a spread over two Design A style 12x12 pages, a Design G style page, and an insert I made myself. You can see them layered above.

 The first page features a January Calendar card, and a journaling card with an overview of our month. There are also some journaling cards about being sick and a brunch date with someone we consider a "sister from another mister".

 Next is the insert I made using piece of card making plastic. I got this in pad form from Michaels about 4 years ago. I am not sure if they still carry it but it is thick and sturdy. This insert features most of the photos from Fat Mum Slim's Photo A Day for January. I printed the photos at home as 2x2 inch squares and adhered half of them on one side and the rest on the other side. Added some patterned paper as the edge to be added into the album itself. Everything is on using regular adhesive. I may go back and add some stitching along the edge were the plastic and paper meet. For now, it is good to me. It was simple, it is not perfect but it is done and that is all that matters.

The front of the Design G insert has some photos from our annual trip to BrewHaha. Again, I just got some photos, added them in and put in some embellishments to help tell the story. For the tickets, I used my X acto to cut out the preprinted label, slid the tickets under and added adhesive. Getting it done! I may go back and swap some of the photos out but for now it is finished.

 The back of the Design G insert and the other Design A style 12x12 has photos and journaling about the Gatsby party we attended, some details about a track meet, and our excitement about the precipitation we got.

 The photos from this night were all taken inside a dark pub with iPhones. The quality was not so great so we put filters on them before printing them. I loved the way it turned out.

 A lot of times the informational flyer or invite to events are not ideal sizes for adding to pockets and sometimes adding them as their own insert seems silly. In this case the flyer was 5x4 and trimming it would have taken away from the look and having it float would not add to the story, so I scanned it and resized it to 4x3 to fit the pocket. The journaling card here was trimmed and then layered on top of a scrap piece of gold paper and then I used a gold gel pen to write on the white space.

My favorite part of this spread is this quote. The card itself is the back of an ad that came with a Studio Calico kit. My printer doesn't do 3x4 size, so I washi taped the card to a 4x6 and ran it through the printer. I overlapped it a little too much so the tape skewed the edges of the text, but I love the look. Also visible is our tickets from the Track and Field meet. I layered them stuck a label over it and journaled around the edge. And done!

Simple is the name of the game these days. At the beginning of the year I struggled with whether or not I wanted to keep doing this. My 2012 and 2013 are not complete and I didn't want another album sitting at 90%. Approaching this project differently has really helped me stay on track. February is almost complete. Now, I just need to work on finding a good room and time of day to get it photographed.

Project Life supplies:
Binder and plastics via the Becky Higgins Amazon Storefront. Seafoam Project Life Kit. Seafoam Designer Paper. Elise Joy magic stamp. EK Success Metallic Writer Silver. StazOn Black Ink. Martha Stewart and Avery Labels. Studio Calico Antiquary Kit. Staples Date Stamp. WRMK Simply Happy Journaling Cards. Gelly Roll Gold Gel Pen. Zig Light Blue Dual Tip Marker.

Disclaimer: Project Life® is a memory keeping system creating by Becky Higgins. To see all my posts deatiling how I use her system to document our life story click here.