Gearing Up for Digital Project Life 2013

2012 was the first year that I decided to do Project Life. Because I knew there was a lot going on in my life that I wanted to capture and knowing that my scrapbooks are often mainly filled with the girls, some with my husband, and very little with me, I decided to do a Project Life album focusing on me, as well as one for each of my girls. Because we are all a big part of each other's daily lives, we of course had many cross-over memories. Doing my own album helped me to take Ali Edwards' advice and intentionally get more pictures of myself and document my life. Aside from toward the end of October through last weekend, I was able to keep on track with completing weekly pages. Last weekend I finally sifted through the ephemera and my picture files to get all three albums up to date. Such a good feeling.

In 2013 I will definitely continue with Project Life with some changes. I will switch over to a digital version, and I will be doing one for the family with an intentional focus to make sure each family member is represented fairly well.

I will create pages in Photo Shop Elements and then upload them into a Shutterfly Photo Book. Thanks to free Photo Shop tutorials on sites such as Ali Edwards, Cathy Zielske, and Jessica Sprague, as well as some classes from Jessica Sprague and Big Picture Classes, I have a basic working knowledge of how to use Photo Shop. Practice, practice, practice has helped to remember the basics through projects such as getting my weekly Project Life prints ready to digital Week in the Life. I also made two small 8x8 photo books using PSE and uploading to Shutterfly this year, so I have some familiarity with how that process will work.

I am excited to continue the Project Life journey in 2013. Last night I decided to get myself set up with a foundation for the year. I have quite a few digital products to choose from. If the new digital editions were available, I probably would have chosen the Olive edition, but I decided instead to get started now with what I have.

Last night I watched Jessica Sprague's tutorial to add her backgrounds. Then I went through and decided on two different papers to add for backgrounds. I have 5 Project Life digital kits. Though I like many of the papers in the kits, none were really standing out as far as the ideal kit to use for background papers. Since so little of the paper shows, I wanted it to be paper that would look good with just a little bit around the border showing. I also wanting fairly simple designs.

I ended up using Creative Memories digital papers from various Power Pallettes, rather than from the Project Life kits for each month. This morning I finished up saving Design A files for each of the weeks.

Here's a look into how I have the folders organized.

With January's I did add in the dates to each week on a Project Life Amber edition card. With the other months, I will wait until the actual months arrive to choose how to do the dates. Aside from the date cards and backgrounds for each month, I'm not sure what other aspects will be consistent throughout the months (aside from sticking with Design A which will be a familiar look). I also won't really know how the backgrounds look until I start adding pictures in. Right now I am trying to look past the colors of the photo/journaling placeholders on the Design A templates.

Even though I am organized and ready to go, I will be open to making changes along the way. I may decide to switch up some of the month's backgrounds, or I might decide to swap out Design A for some of the other designs from time to time. I will be drawing from digital products from Ali Edwards, Cathy Zielske, Creative Memories, and Becky Higgins. I am a little bit worried about straying from choosing a Project Life kit and mainly sticking with it because of the consistency it would provide; however, I am going to embrace the possibilities and just enjoy the process, knowing there's flexibility to change along the way. This will be my Project Life year to explore all those digital options!

Here is a look at how each of my months are right now:

January: I decided to put the date in a small space in order to save  the traditional Project Life date location for pictures/ephemera.

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December