Do you know how hard it is to start Project Life while renovating and moving your craft room around? That was an added wrinkle I didn’t factor in when planning to start!
Wait. Did that sound whiny? That wasn’t a complaint, just an observation.
Since the main focus of Project Life, for me, is the story, I didn’t worry about whether I took a photo every day, but I did try to write on a journaling card every day. I was able to do that fairly easily at first, until I had some long, exhausting days that completely drove writing out of my mind.
When I started assembling the words and pictures, I realized I needed some 3×4 photographs as well. You might find yourself needing that too, so here are a couple printing templates for you:
3×4 photos on letter paper
Download it here: 3×4 collage letter paper.psd
3×4 photos on photo paper
Download this here: 3×4 on photo paper.psd
The hardest part for me was deciding on picture and page orientations. Because I wrote everything out before assembling the pages, I had to decide on how to deal with photos that worked better as one orientation, and journaling that didn’t match that orientation in the pocket pages.
Case in point: the very first journaling card I filled out for the last day of school had a horizontal orientation, as did the pics of the kids getting of the bus. Solution? Use one of the rotated pocket page designs, and print the photos out at 3×4 instead of 4×6.
The other issue right at the start was the fact that I couldn’t start with the photos in strict chronological order. This of course was a minor issue, with the solution being to group one day’s photos across the top, and subsequent days along the bottom and right side.
It works, with photos that tell related stories grouped together.
As I worked on later weeks, the process became easier, and the pages more streamlined.
That’s sort of the point of Project Life, don’t you think? To make it easy to tell stories and share photos?
At any rate, the last few pages were much easier to assemble than the first few.
I don’t know if you noticed or not, but these pages are not in strict week by week order. Some pages cover three days. Some ten. I let the stories I’d recorded and the photos I’d taken dictate the final pages, rather than the other way around.
Anyone else making Project Life pages? What’s your favorite part about it? I’m loving the excuse to write a little something every day. How about you?
