This scrapbooking post, however, contains a new form of scrapbooking that, although it may not have changed my life, definitely, 100%, erased my fears of scrapbooking. See, I went to school for advertising, so a lot of people think that I must be really creative. And maybe I am, with words...but when it comes to design...not so much. I know what I like, but I never know how to get there. My sister is a wonder woman when it comes to these things, but I can't call her every time I don't know whether to use paste or double-sided tape. (I'm sure she's reading this now, thinking, "You NEVER use paste in a scrapbook, dummy!")
This revolution is called Project Life. Project Life was created by another wonder woman named Becky Higgins. She is the ultimate scrapbooker, even formerly worked for a scrapbooking magazine. (Yes there are MAGAZINES for this shit. Who knew?) What Becky tapped into, that changed everything, is that there were a LOT of people like me out there. People with boxes of old photos, eons of hopes and dreams and plans to organize them all...later. And those of you who've been watching my new favorite channel, OWN, know that Peter Walsh says "later" is the best friend of clutter. Touche, Peter, touche.
So let's get to it. Becky is so awesome that she even has a video showing you a lot of what I'm showing you below. Here is the video. To me, Project Life is a kit that allows you to seamlessly and effortlessly organize all your photos without the hassle of: A) design work and B) a $300 trip to Hobby Lobby for supplies. The most common way people (including Becky herself) use the kit is to take one photo every day for the year, and put them all in the Project Life kit. If that sounds too daunting, you can use it for a baby's first year album (which I intend to do for Homer Gene) and just put a selection of the 2 billion photos from baby's first year in the album, rather than taking one a day. You can use it for a school year, for a summer trip, for a holiday album, whatever you want. That's the beauty of Project Life, you can organize it HOWEVER.YOU.WANT. No rules! You know I love that! :)
The kit comes with a 3-ring binder, plastic sleeves to hold all the photos for each week, title cards for each week, month dividers, journaling cards so you can have captions and notes for all the photos, a date stamp so you can date each title card or anything else you want, bi-fold journaling cards for those times when you just have a little more to say (or, like me, have big handwriting), arrow stickers to point from photos to notes if you choose to, several sheets of double-sided cardstock for whole page designs, and more!
Now if you're technologically savy, or just plain don't want all that "paper crap" (as Adam says) loitering in your closets, there is also an online version, which is a little more expensive...BUT you don't have to print out each week's photos, you just upload them to your computer like you normally would and use the Project Life program to build an album. So the cost pretty much evens out. (Side note: This is another place you could use your very own handwriting font that I mentioned here.)
There are two choices for the color scheme of this year's Project Life kit: The Amber Edition and the Turquoise Edition. The Amber edition is a little more yellow (obviously) and warm color-toned, and a little more flowery/girlie. Hopefully Homer will turn out to be a boy, because I bought the Turquoise Edition to use for his baby's first year album. The Turquoise edition is more cool-toned, shapes, graphics, browns, blue/teals and reds. If Homer turns out to be a girl, I will either use it anyway, or make my own version online and use the kit for a general 2011 album (yes, I'm doing TWO Project Life albums this year, I like it that much!).
I took some photos of my Turquoise Edition kit after it arrived in the mail, so that all of you can see what I'm talking about.
The Project Life kit
The Turquoise Edition binder
Some of the journaling cards
Close up of some journaling cards
Title/Date cards
Decorating cards for fun
Bi-fold cards for when you need to write more & the date stamp
Month dividers
Full page double-sided cardstock
Photo divider sleeves
One other tip, especially if you are design-challenged like me, check out the Project Life website for ideas on what to do with all this stuff, how to arrange it, cool layouts and etc. It really helps. I'll be posting pictures of my layouts once I get started, so you all can see. Just don't expect them to be pretty. :)
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