Project Life - how to be caught up? + Weeks 24 and 25

Hi everyone!!
I've been talking a lot about Project Life lately.
For me it seems to be another way of recording memories.
I scrapbook regular pages, I make about 4 pages a month, but it never seems to be enough. Even though the memories I scrapbook on those pages are one that really touch my soul, I feel like the whole of my story is not recorded with only some pages or some random stories here and there. So that's why Project Life is THE BEST THING I can do to record my story as a whole.

People as me how I manage to stay up to date.
First of all, I keep my album out and accessible!!!

I have it on a table, open at the right page, in my scraproom which is right next to our kitchen.
Next to my album, I have my journaling cards. I don't separate my cards by color but by "function" they can operate. In a kit you have some journaling cards, some other with a place to put a small picture, some that have some sentiments on them, some other are basic patterned paper or have a cute image on them.

    card for journaling

    card for smaller photo

So I keep the journaling cards next to my album and when something comes up like something one of my daughters did or said, or something that comes over and over again and is typical of our life style or family, I'll grab a card, the one that fits the content I want to put on it best, and I write! With a plain black pen. I really, for real, don't worry at all about the color scheme. I want to have memories down!!

At the end of the week or let's say as soon as I have time, when the week is over, I choose pictures that will go in my album.
I take pictures everyday. A lot of pictures everyday!! And I load them to my computer every couple of days. I save them in folders per date and I write a short description of what it contains. Sometimes it's just one word. When I choose my pictures, I'll check in the folders according to the dates I'm working on. I usually find 7 4x6 photos and some 3x4. I try to let one or two spots free for journaling, depending on how much explanations I feel the pictures need.

Here I don't have extra cards for journaling. I only decided to crop 2 pictures smaller and add them to cards so that I have some room to write a little more journaling than on a simple tiny tag.

If I already have cards in the album (random things that I wrote on the cards already) I'll work with the space available. Almost every week though, I'll add some inserts!! If I have 2 more 4x6 and 2 ore 3x4 that I want to add, I'll add a 6x12 insert and fill in the gaps with more photos and journaling.

    6x12 insert for 4 4x6 pictures and 4 3x4 pictures.

    reverse side of the 6x12 insert + another 8.5x11 insert.

For everything I have that is not the size of a picture, I insert a new page. I don't worry about the look. NEVER! I rather have the things in my album and it doesn't look nice and tidy as don't have it in my album!

When I'm done choosing and printing my pictures (I print at home!!!! I hate to wait a week to get my pictures and then don,t remember what I wanted to do with them or what I wanted to say, or take notes on post-it and rewrite everything. It feels like double work to me and it reminds me of school...! and that's not necessarily a good thing.) So when I'm done printing my pictures, I find some tiny tags (Elle's studio has a lot of choice) and I write little things. I staple them to the pictures and I call it good.

    I never have enough of these small tags!!!

Sometimes I find small scraps of paper that also work as tags. I use them, but I don't make them FOR my Project Life album. They are just there.

Sometime, I do a little more.... But what I do more is always to write infos on my pictures. It's rarely to embellish.

Here I spelled the name with letter stickers and stitched over it.

Here's an example of embellishing for fun (which, really, rarely occurs!!)

I like embellishing, I like the result, but it's never never never my priority and I would also NEVER GO BACK to embellish a page. Once my pictures and my journaling are done, I move on!

That's my way of doing Project Life and of keeping up with the album. As I said, I also do scrapbook pages where I embellish and get creative so my Project Life album is less a creative outlet and more a place to tell my story as a whole.

I hope this could help some of you and if you're a scrapbooker and not a Project Lifer, maybe it will give you an idea or the will to do it too. I'm telling you, it's well worth the time and money investment!! :)

And now here are my weeks 24 and 25!

Here I added a small note that Arielle wrote. It's her guests list for her birthday party. I was lucky that not everybody could make it! ;) When I add an ephemera like that, I also add a tiny tag to it to explain what it is.

Week 25:

Sometimes I have two pictures representing one event so I will print them smaller and combine them on a 4x6 card. This is also a way to create space to write my journaling.

Here's an example of a journaling card. I thought I'd need to say more than just: we were playing at the park, it was fun. I always try to go a little further than the obvious.

Beside my Project Life card kits (I have one from Becky Higgins - Seafoam edition and one from Studio Calico that come monthly), I sometimes print cards that I found on internet. Miss Tiina is sharing really nice one for free.

Sometime, while choosing my pictures, I write directly on them with Photoshop.

Here I added a little word with my white pen. It works really well too.

And I use Becky Higgins arrows (or star stickers, etc.) to highlight things in my photos. Here we didn't see the little baby birds very well...

I love love love these cute cards with free space for smaller pictures.

Ok, here I went carzy again and added a brad. ;) Wooooh!! lol It was to hide something I didn't like. ;)

Voilà!!
Hope you liked my post!!

See you soon!
Marie-Pierre