February Project Life Blog Hop

This month I will be sharing how I stay "caught up" even though I have had very little time to be able to scrapbook since January.

Before the year started, I printed off the Project Life Journaling Pages from Marcy Penner and had the bound. I use this as a journal to keep track of things that happen during the day, funny quotes, and there is even a spot to write in your layout for the week.

Here are some images from my January and February journal pages. I like using the journal in this way because I can leave it open to the spread I am working on and put together my Project Life spreads very quickly.

Week 53 2013: December 29-31

January 1-5, 2014

January 6-12, 2014

January 13-19, 2014

January 20-26, 2014

January 27-February 2, 2014

February 3-9, 2014

February 10-16, 2014

February 17-23, 2014

I am using a combination of Design A and Design F pocket pages with 12x12 inserts in my album. Hopefully next month I will have some completed pages to share with you.

Please hop back to Loving Life's Little Blessings to find the next blog on our blog hop!

Free it up Friday!

Today is my first "Free it up Friday" for 2014 and I am excited to share some things with you.

First of all, if you read my blog in 2013, you may remember me talking about our house being on the market. Unfortunately it didn't sell, so we are going to be starting that process again shortly. In the meantime, I am going to be trying to keep up with my blog a little better this year.

For "Free it up Friday" this week, I am going to talk about my excessive collection of Project Life cards, and my decision and process to free up some space in my closet studio so I can actually work in there. At some point last year, I had been reading a thread on a message board about someone who had decided to take all their Project Life cards and sort them by color. I thought the idea of separating my kits was crazy, so I passed the idea over and continued to store all of my core kit boxes in my studio. Fast forward to last weekend...I was setting up my 2014 Project Life album, and my mind revisited the thought of color organized journaling cards. Admittedly I still thought it was crazy, but then I found this You Tube video. She did such a nice job explaining her process and her boxes looked so nice, that I thought I had to at least give it a try.

Working on my 2013 album gave me some more insight into how I scrapbook, and one thing that I tended to do was scrap by color. Therefore, this organization system, by color, seemed like it might make sense. Below I have some images of my process. I still have some of my kits in their boxes, but as I complete the albums that I am using them for, I will be adding the extra cards into my box. In the pictures you will see cards from Honey, Cinnamon, Rain, Midnight, Jade, Blush, and Kraft. Most of these kits were partials that I either split or traded with others.

The supplies I decided to use...We R Memory Keepers tab punch (file tab), Tim Holtz tiny attacher, Project Life totally blank cards in both the 4x6 and 3x4 sizes, Close to my Heart medium container, Project Life core kits, colored paper scraps, and a pen.

My next step was to punch out 2 tabs for each color.

Then I attached one tab to each card, creating a 3x4 and a 4x6 divider for each color.

Here is a quick picture of all the core kits I broke apart for this project.

Sorting the first kit into piles by color. If a card had one color on one side and a different color on the other, I split them in half. My rule of thumb was to decide which color was most prominent on the side of the card (what color I thought I would most likely use it for) for the multicolored cards.

I finished sorting the kits and adding them to the box. In the end, I added a few miscellaneous cards...month cards, days of the week cards, weekly overview cards, seasons, and holidays.

I haven't worked with using the cards much since I reorganized them, but the couple times I have looked for something has proven to me that this reorganization was worth it.

Hi and welcome to our September Project Life Blog Hop for our Project Life Connection Group “Project Everyday Blessings” We are here to sharing with you each month where we are with our Project Life System, Albums & Techniques. Its our hope that we will inspire you to capture memories and record them.

If you missed the full line up here it is:

Katina Martinez {Loving Life's Little Blessings}

Melissa Miller {Living Life Creatively & With Twins} 

EE Wang Kachinski http://www.eekachinski.blogspot.com/

If you came from: Katina Martinez {Loving Life's Little Blessings} You are on the right track.

Now Lets get started …. Here is my Project Life for this Month:

My life, like many others, has been crazy over the past few months. However, I still want to share what I am working on and my progress on Project Life. In order to be "caught up". We have been working diligently to get our house ready to sell, and thus many of my scrapping things have had to be packed up in the process. I will be very excited to move to a new house and pull all of my stuff out...hopefully in my own studio space. :)

As for my Project Life, I have not really worked on it at all since June. I have photos printed and journaling notes taken, but otherwise everything is sitting in Iris containers in my basement. Today, I am fortunate enough to be able to participate in a crop and will hopefully be able to get most of July done. July was a big month for my family, between Fourth of July, camping, and a big birthday party, there is a lot to scrapbook.

I'm hoping to have lots to share with you in October!

Thank you for stopping by today, and I hope that you join me in my renewed blogging journey as I share my progress, struggles and triumphs in preserving memories and catching up.

Please hop to – EE Wang Kachinski http://www.eekachinski.blogspot.com/

Thank you for coming by and you can find more Project Life fun at

http://projectlifeeverydayblessings.blogspot.com/

Project Life - Catching up on 2011: Photographs

Sorry this is late, we are hoping to get our house on the market shortly and I have been cleaning like a maniac to get stuff done.

I scrapbook to preserve memories. Plain and simple. With those memories, I love to have photographs, so today I am going to share with you my process for sorting and organizing my photos after they have been printed.

First of all, all of my digital photos are saved on a computer, external hard drive, and off-site backed up in folders first with the year and then each week has its own folder where the pictures are located. This makes is so easy to go through the photos I have when I need to find a specific one. The best part of digital photos is that I can see the exact date/time the photo was taken, provided my camera was set up correctly.

Here is a look at the drawer that currently contains all of the photos I have printed but not organized from 2010-2012. It's absolutely not how I want my photos to be stored, however they are protected from the light.

Normally, I like to keep them organized in the small 4x6 Iris cases that are made to hold photos. I have a few of the small Iris boxes that hold the photo cases, however I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all of them, so many of my cases are loose. When I pulled the 2011 cases out of the bin that holds my sorted and dated photos, I was quite surprised and excited to see that so many already had photos in them, and a lot of photos in some.

This made my job easier. In a couple of hours, I was able to go through the envelopes from the drawer and sort the 2011 pictures out and then sort them by month.

After the pictures are sorted by month, I use the computer to help me find the dates and use a small date stamp and StazOn ink to lightly stamp the date on the back of the photo. Then I sort the photos by date in the small Iris cases and set them aside to be scrapped.

I was able to complete this entire process (sans organizing them on the computer which I do as I download them off the camera) in 2 days! :) I feel like I am ready to get moving on these albums, and over the course of the next week, I plan to work on the January pictures. Friday, I am hoping to share my January pages, inserts and 12 x 12 layouts.

This system works really well for when I am behind on Project Life, because it keeps my photos together by month and makes them easier to find. Starting at the beginning of 2013, I began printing my photos every Saturday night, after my boys go to bed (weeks run Sunday-Saturday). When I pick them up from the printer I label the envelope with the week numbers and the dates and then throw them in the Iris box for the month I am on to keep the photos with the supplies...eventually I will blog about this process, but it probably won't be until my 2011 albums are complete.

I hope you will continue to join me on this journey and your comments are appreciated. Thanks for stopping by.

Project Life - Catching up on 2011: Getting Started

As I explain how I got started with my albums and organization, please understand that I am Type A...and a little OCD when it comes to my albums. I feel that I need to have everything color coordinated and match up as best as possible when I put together a week, and that does include my inserts.

Main Album

First, I put enough Design A page protectors into my album for the entire year. I know that I may eventually need another binder since this is the only album I do for the year and I end up using a lot of inserts (12x12 and Project Life Plastics) to include all my pictures and stories. Then I sorted my Amber Core Kit by color and design to match up the 4x6 cards with the 3x4 journaling and filler cards as best as possible. Once everything was organized the way I liked, I placed 1 4x6 card, 1 journaling card filler side showing and 6 journaling cards for each week. I also placed the first and last page cards into their respective protectors. These will change a little as I go along, because I like to include a family photo at the beginning of the album along with other embellishments. Additionally, I went through and stamped the dates for each week on the title card...which will probably be all I'll do with them unless I decide to put some embellishments on them for special weeks.

I took this picture before I had inserted the month dividers into the album. They are now in the correct spots in the album.

 

Journaling Binder

In this binder, I have printed 53 "weekly journaling sheets" from Marcy Penner and wrote the dates for the weeks at the top. My plan is to go through my pictures on the computer and make notes about the pictures based on notes I have in my 2011 box and what we can remember about the pictures. I will probably do these one month (about 4 weeks) at a time and do the notes so I don't get overwhelmed and give up.

Mini Album

I have looked through the cards in the Dear Lizzy Project Life Kit and they are so cute and will be fun to use. Until I get closer to working with the pictures from our trip to the zoo, this album, and kit, will just stay in the 2011 box and wait for me.

Pictures

I was pleasantly surprised when I went to collect my Iris photo boxes that are supposedly housing my 2011 pictures. I figured that I had only sorted and stamped a small amount of these photos, however from the looks of the boxes I have more done than I thought. Next week, I will devote my entire blog post to my method for sorting, organizing and storing my photos to make them easier to put into my albums. Until then, this is what 2011 currently looks like. :)

Cardstock Update: I have not made it to Michaels to try to match the cardstock cards from the Amber kit to get some 12 x 12 sheets of matching paper. I am hoping to have some time this weekend to do this and will post the colors with my next post.

I know this process is slow going at this point, but for me once everything is organized for a project it seems to come together a lot faster for me. I hope you continue to join me on this incredible journey on catching up on an entire year of photos using the "Project Life" method and products. Thanks for stopping by!

Project Life - Catching up on 2011: Organization

In a new series of posts on my blog, I will be sharing my process for catching up on all of my photos from 2011. This is the only family album on my shelf that has been entirely neglected and I really want to start working on it. One thing that I did to start working on this project was try to Google the topic of catching up on Project Life, but the only things I found were short picture blog posts and fast paced videos. No one really broke it down in a helpful way for me. I know that everyone does things differently, but I was hoping to see a "step-by-step" breakdown of how someone did this. That is my plan...a "step-by-step" on how I work through this album and a series of Friday blog posts to show you my process, progress and suggestions.

As I want to catch up on this album quickly, I am going to employ the "KISS" (Keep It Simple Silly) method and use Project Life.

My 2011 Album Supply List:
We R Memory Keepers 12x12 Burgundy Album (to match our other family albums)
8 1/2 x 11 Binder I bought at Walmart (for planning pages)
Amber Project Life Core Kit
53 Planning Pages (already in small binder)
Amber Edition 12x12 Coordinating Cardstock (patterned)
4x6 Amber Edition Cardstock Cards
3x4 Amber Edition Cardstock Cards
Design A Pocket Pages (already in binder)
Scissors, Smash date stamp, StazOn Timber Brown ink pad, Recollections photo markers, Tim Holtz tiny attacher, adhesive, We R Memory Keepers yellow corner rounder (1/8" and 3/8"), Fiskars paper trimmer (not pictured)
Bazzill plain cardstock (not pictured...I'm still trying to figure out what colors to buy)
Random Embellies from my stash and Cricut Die Cuts

We took a trip over Easter (2011) with the boys to the Minnesota Zoo. I am going to do a special mini album to document this trip, as I took a ton of pictures that would probably take up half of my 12x12 album in inserts to do.
Mini Album Supply List
Becky Higgins Blush Album
Project Life Dear Lizzy Mini Kit
Random Embellies from my stash and Cricut Die Cuts

Supplies!

This is how I have my supplies organized for this project. I have a Cropper Hopper Paper Holder for the  12x12 papers and the small box to hold 4x6 and 3x4 sized cards.

My photos from 2011 are in a drawer and not very organized, however they are printed. The first post (or two) will be devoted to how I start working with these.

Over the next few Fridays, I will be sharing my process with you. I hope you will join me in this journey. Please feel free to ask me questions!

June Blog Hop

Hi and welcome to our June Project Life Blog Hop for our Project Life Connection Group “Project Everyday Blessings” We are here to sharing with you each month where we are with our Project Life System, Albums & Techniques. Its our hope that we will inspire you to capture memories and record them.

If you missed the full line up here it is:

Katina Martinez {Loving Life's Little Blessings}

Melissa Miller {Living Life Creatively & With Twins} 

Deveney Stolk

Lisa Wilkinson 

Dionne Carter 

Jenny Bamford-Perkins {This Every Day Life}

Tiffani Paini

If you came from: Katina Martinez {Loving Life's Little Blessings} You are on the right track.

Now Lets get started …. Here is my Project Life for this Month:

My life, like many others, has been crazy over the past few months. However, I still want to share what I am working on and my progress on Project Life. In order to be "caught up", I have a long way to go, however the following is my current list of scrapbook projects and where I am at with each of them. I have a lot of goals at the moment, however I feel that as long as I am making progress on each thing that I am doing well.

2013 Project Life: I am very behind! I skipped all of May and have started the first week of June. In order to "keep up" and not feel overwhelmed by how behind I am, I am doing the following things.
1. Printing photos every week, labeling the envelope with the dates/week number and putting it into the Iris box that has my pre-determined supplies for that month. (Early on in 2013, I created an Iris box for each month with stuff from my stash and new supplies. This works really well for when I sit down to work on a layout, as I'm not using a Core Kit this year.)
2. Print and fill out a journal sheet for each week and stick in the box with the photos. This helps me when I go back to journal, so I can remember more of the details.
3. Don't stress about it! I have twin toddlers, who demand a lot of my time and I am in the midst of a looking for a new job. These things consume most of my time, and I try to find 10-20 minutes a day to sit with my supplies and work on a project.

Mini Albums: I am in the midst of working on three mini albums. I tried to make 2 ABCs of Me mini albums for the twins a few years ago, and I'm not sure that I really enjoyed working on them as much as I had hoped, so I set them aside and haven't finished/looked at them since. I know that the notes, photos and embellies are all stored together, and hopefully I can fall in love with these other minis I am doing to go back and finish them up. The three mini albums I am working on are all pocket page albums, two are the new Becky Higgins mini albums (Minnesota Zoo Field Trip and our backpacking trip to the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan); the other album is a Bo Bunny Misc Me album with Misc Me pocket pages for our 2013 Summer Bucket List project (which you can view on my blog).

2012 Album: I haven't touched this since January, but it is not complete. I have all the photos printed, and I just need to find time to sort through the photos and place them in my album.

2011 Album: This album is a process I am hoping to devote some time blogging about. I have tried many times to search in Google for suggestions on organizing to catch up, but I haven't found much out there for solid information. Currently, I am setting up everything to start this project, and will hopefully be starting my series of blog posts shortly on how I'm going to do this. I'm hoping to make this into an every Friday series of posts until I finish the album. If the process I have planned goes well, I feel that the rest of the albums I need to finish will also fall into place quickly for me and then I can move on to some older photos that I would like to scrap.

2010 Album: I actually have this year broken up into 2 parts. My twins were born in July, so I have my pregnancy (late 2009-July 2010) in one album that is almost complete. I am hoping this album will be completed by the end of the summer. I have a lot of notes and journaling, and the pictures are sorted and most are placed. Right now I try to take a little time each week (one afternoon/evening) and work on a week or two of this album. The other half of this year is much like 2011, the pictures are printed, but not much else has happened with it. July to October is finished, okay mainly complete, in the boys' books, so I'm not too concerned about getting those 3 months done quickly and I have notes for October through December.

Twins' Albums: These tend to get the back burner, because I feel that if I can get caught up in our family albums that going back and catching up in theirs will go that much faster. I'm trying to formulate a plan for working on their albums, and I think starting on their 3rd Birthday (end of July) I'm going to switch to using the Honey Core Kit and a slightly different plan of action.

Wedding Album and Pre-Pregnancy albums: These albums are a lot of ideas floating around in my head, and I have some papers and core kits saved for specific albums, but until I get caught up from late 2009 to today, I will not be working on these albums.

Complete Re-organization of my Scrapbook Space: I have been struggling with my tiny scrapbook space, a small closet upstairs. It has not been overly functional, as I haven't been able to rein in my supplies an organize it. Additionally, I feel the disorganization has been holding me back from getting as much done as I could some days. My mind craves organization, and it is frustrating to see my things scattered everywhere. During National Scrapbook Day, I signed up for an organization class through scrapbook.com, and so far that has been helping! I have gotten as far as taking everything out of my space and boxing the items based on what they are. The current week that I am on, involves sorting and organizing all my paper. This is taking me considerably longer that I thought it would, but I bought some new organizers and am hoping this will start to go faster.

Thank you for stopping by today, and I hope that you join me in my renewed blogging journey as I share my progress, struggles and triumphs in preserving memories and catching up.

Please hop to – Deveney Stolk

Thank you for coming by and you can find more Project Life fun at

http://projectlifeeverydayblessings.blogspot.com/